Sunday, September 3, 2017

Houston Strong

A week after Harvey made landfall and we're still here.  Last Saturday, things were pretty much normal. Then on Sunday, all hell broke loose.


I-10 from one end of town to the other was under water for the most part.


These semi's were going thru but when they got thru here, they would be stuck with road closures and high water. 



A lot of the underpasses were flooded and you can see a white truck or car on the far right side IN the water under the N in Transtar. 



Yeah... We all know how high those signs over the freeway are.  That's how deep the water on the freeway was. They were showing one bridge with a sign saying the clearance height was 17' 4" and the water was almost up to the bottom of the bridge.

Last year on Tax Day, April 15  and Memorial Day, we had a Lot of rain and a few places got flooded. Below they were comparing the amount of water that we got. Even as of the time they had this up, they were saying we had far exceeded this and we were at more like 600+ Billion gallons.


They were telling everyone to just stay put. Stay home as long as it was safe to do so.

There was no going to the barn. A lot of people were not going to work on Monday. Tuesday was questionable and Wednesday was still up in the air too. 

Sunday morning I got a text from one of the girls at the barn. At 7 am there was water in the barn knee deep and rising. Horses were all being kicked out into the pastures.  Later she sent me this->


If you look closely, you can see the water is almost up to Kat's stomach. He's standing in front of my TB mare and the water is up just over her knees.  He used to give me grief at water hazards at driving competitions...  little brat.

You can also see there is higher ground behind them and they could go stand there, but no, they choose to stand IN the water.

The round pens in the foreground are under water and so was everything else.

What followed over this past week was, well, interesting to put it in one word. There were a couple girls moved their horses out of the barn, drama erupted on Facebook, neither of them are coming back and at one point the barn owner and everyone out there had to leave the property because there was water being released from a levee and things could be getting a whole lot worse.

Most of the horses were already moved to a neighbors property, but mine stayed behind with a few others. Mine were actually ON the trailer for the last trip out and it was decided that getting out of the driveway one last time, wasn't going to happen.  I let them know that whatever they needed to do with my horses, I'm good with that. They know to behave, are easy to catch, lead, load, tie and just deal with in general. What I heard was that my mare couldn't be caught and nobody at the barn could be reached for updates.

When I spoke to the one girl primarily taking care of my horses, I thanked her for the brief or quick updates every day and I explained to her that I completely understand that at times, she couldn't be reached or fire off quick responses to text messages because she was dealing with shit that changed from minute to minute. I appreciated everything she did for my horses and essentially treating them as her own. She told me it was no problem and thanked me for being one of the easiest people to deal with out there.  When shit like this happens, adding to the drama is just sooo not my game.







1 comment: