About the time Milligan junior Gregory Jones-Rollins first heard about the strong hurricane heading towards Texas, his home state, his mother had already packed her bags and headed inland from Galveston.
According to Rollins, Galveston always seems to get the worst of tropical storms and hurricanes.
He nervously called his mother to make sure she, his sister and his two nephews were going to be safe. When he found out they were, he was a bit less skittish, but he knew Hurricane Harvey hadn’t hit yet.
Hurricane Harvey made its way to Texas the week of Aug. 25, devastating eastern parts of the state and into Louisiana. Over 50 inches of rain caused crippling flooding, especially in the Houston area. At least 39 people have died including a police officer, a family of six and a mother of a three-year-old daughter. Thousands of people were forced from their homes to find shelter from their flooding houses.
“My family left for Dickinson, TX. It’s further away from the coast and we have an apartment there.” Rollins said. Dickinson is further from the coast, but it’s a suburb of Houston: a city that suffered massive amounts of flooding from the crippling rain and winds.
“The hurricane brought tons of rain and flooding to Houston, and it just swept down to Dickinson,” Rollins said. “From the videos my mom sent me, there had to have been eight to 10 feet of water where the apartment was.”
Rollins also had another sister who had not contacted him since Harvey went through her area. After a day of waiting, he received a call notifying him she was safe.
“My mom kept telling me, ‘It’s flooded,’ but normally when it floods, it’s never that bad,” Rollins said. He couldn’t even recognize a picture of their apartment when it was sent to him.
In fleeing the hurricane, Rollins’ family only got closer to the destruction, and they were stuck in the Dickinson apartment for a few days before being rescued by an army unit in a boat and taken to a shelter back in Galveston.
“That was the worst couple of days for me,” Rollins said. “When my mom left that area, I wasn’t able to contact her for two days. It was so hard. It was a lot to think about.”
Rollins’ family lost all their cars due to flooding. In one picture that was sent to him, only the roof of his car is visible. Their home, however, is raised about 10-12 feet off the ground and did not flood.
When asked if he wanted to go back, he said he wanted to go that Thursday just to be with his family, but his mother said not to.
“It’s still pretty bad there. In Houston, dams and reservoirs were opened. Even in Dickinson, it’s still flooded.”
On the other side of Houston, in Bellaire, senior Praise Gichuru’s god-family, the Sylvester’s, were not expecting the hurricane to be as bad as it was.
“It’s important to note that Houston floods a lot…the hurricane was supposed to have subsided by the time it reached Houston anyway,” Gichuru said.
But when strong winds swept through the area, the Sylvester’s neighborhood had trees that had blown down on top of cars and toppled fences. That was even before the rain.
The Sylvester’s decided to stay in their home.
“But the thing was,” Gichuru said. “No one was expecting it to be as bad as it was. It just kept raining. The hurricane wasn’t moving. Momma Christy (Mrs. Sylvester) said that it was probably around 5 feet of water flooded the area.”
Fortunately, the home was also raised off the ground and so their home didn’t flood. So, the family went to help people.
“I’m just hearing stories of people who are helping people in the area and it gives me hope,” Gichuru said. “I even heard that a mosque opened it’s doors for people who needed shelter.”
Gichuru says she wasn’t that worried, from what it looked like, her god-family was getting along well. She even joked that they were building a better sense of community.