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Surviving Harvey
A long and fraught recovery
Sept. 12, 2017
About this series
In the aftermath of Harvey’s landfall, The Washington Post documented scenes of fear, despair and hope.
Where to start? There are mounds of debris, paperwork, donations. More than 32,000 people will stay displaced for months, many in shelters and motels.
Brookside Village, Houston
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MARIA ANTWINE
“Things had started molding, things were just smelly because of the carpet being wet.”
“So it was just, oh my God, I have to separate with these things. And that was very, very difficult.”
Songwood, Houston
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MARIA ANTWINE
“So this out here, this is all of our bedrooms. Beds. Dressers.”
“Tubs. Freezers. Refrigerators. Clothes. Shoes.”
“We lost everything in our home.”
“I’m supposed to be getting married. October the 21st. So I lost a lot of my wedding stuff, and that’s kind of tearing me inside.”
“But I would mostly say that I’m grateful, at this point, for our lives.”
Songwood, Houston
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ANTHONY MCCALL
“This room was, basically I considered it the safest room although the water was deep in here.”
“When the water was here, it was just, you know, no hope.”
“It’s just the rain never stopped. It was just like, you know, Noah. You know? Just going to constantly rain.”
“This bedroom, I just redone this bedroom, and it’s destroyed. It’s got rain damage there you can see inside.”
“Every, every, every room is just, you know? Every room. You know?”
“So we’re just going to try to figure it out as best as we can on our own.”
“And it’s just going to take a lot of work.”
“That’s all I know, it’s going to take a whole lot of work. You know?”
Songwood, Houston
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DEBBIE CURRIE
“So all of our memories are sitting out here.”
“My father served the year in Vietnam. And he had written my mother letters, and she had saved those all these years.”
“I guess you always just thought you’re parents are going to be there. And your stuff is going to be there with them.”
“It’s so much harder when it’s your life and your parent’s life that’s out at the edge of the curb.”
“So we’ve walked through my childhood memories, we’ve walked through, you know, my nephew’s birth and childhood memories and graduation from college.”
“And it’s just really hard.”
One heartache follows another. Some return to the ruin they fled. They dig in and muck out.
Some are now nomads, forced to move from shelter to shelter.
The Milson family took shelter at Lone Star College for a week. Classes started, so they moved to a motel for three days. Now all 11 are back in the garage of the home they rented in Houston.
Cypress Terrace, Houston
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LYNN MILSON
“These gloves are not gonna work!”
“Hey, give me them heavy duty gloves.”
“So I’m just trying to cut this carpet up. It’s wet and it’s nasty.”
“Trying to get to a layer where I can push it back and make it easier to pull it up like that.”
“We’ve been trying to get in contact with the landlord since the day after the flood when we ended up in the shelter.”
“They just pushed us to the side again and say, we have to talk to their insurance company, that depends on them.”
“To this point we have to live in the garage. I have to pull everything up because it’s so bad.”
“The smell is so bad that me and my wife, we already got sick from it.”
“It’s going through everything in the shelter, to getting kicked out of the hotel, to coming here.”
“Back to what we was running from.”
Cypress Terrace, Houston
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LYNN MILSON
“All y’all are going to school tomorrow.”
IZABELLA SMITH
“I have to wear school clothes. I don’t have any.”
LYNN MILSON
“I’m going to get, we’re going to work something out for you. Bell Bell, Bell Bell, listen to me.”
“Bell Bell, Bell. Bell. Listen to me. Okay?”
“All your clothes are damaged. We all know this, okay? All right? So what? All right? Okay, so.”
“We’re going to send you to school tomorrow, okay? I’m going to find you something to wear. All right? All right?”
“And I’m going to send a note to the school, and I’m going to let them know.”
“Because you know more than anybody, we don’t care about fashion or anything like that. All right? All right? All right?”
Cypress Terrace, Houston
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CYNTHIA LAWRENCE
“We’re actually homeless. I’ve never been homeless before, and I can actually say, I’m homeless now.”
“I’ve been wanting to come home. But coming home to this is not what I wanted.”
People who have endured disasters before have a saying: “It’s not about surviving the hurricane. It’s about surviving after the hurricane.
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Credits
Text
Ann Gerhart
Story and presentation
Kevin Schaul and Samuel Granados
Video and photo editing
Reem Akkad, Jayne Orenstein and Marisa Schwartz Taylor
Video footage
Nicole Ellis, Erin O'Connor, Ashleigh Joplin, Bastien Inzaurralde
Drone footage
Temple Northup
Photography
Michael Robinson Chavez and Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post, Spencer Platt/Getty Images
More in this series
‘Where are we supposed to go?’
Episode 1 · Aug. 30
Throughout Southeast Texas, rainfall of biblical proportions has flooded tens of thousands of people out of their homes.
Watch this episode
A makeshift army, marching on adrenaline
Episode 2 · Sept. 2
The labor of saving and serving flood victims seems without end. The relief workers, exhausted, push on.
Watch this episode
A long and fraught recovery
Episode 3 · Sept. 12
Throughout Houston, thousands are struggling every day to find a place to call home.
Watch again
More coverage
Here’s how you can help Texas residents affected by Harvey
What the flooding and rescues of Hurricane Harvey look like, in videos
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