13 Survey on how often Houston area homes flood repeatedly

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — When Stephen and Ellen Leventhal first walked into their home in 2017 after Hurricane Harvey dumped 1 trillion gallons of water in Harris County, they were unrecognizable.

“We had been putting things on our dining room table thinking, ‘Oh, okay, we’re going to go ahead and save these things,’ but it caused the table to fall in the middle,” Ellen Leventhal said. “But the worst part was our anniversary, and we were thinking of putting our wedding album up high and it was pretty high up, but we lost everything. There wasn’t a single photo left. You couldn’t even walk around the house . You had to crawl over things.

Harvey wasn’t the first time the couple experienced flooding in their Meyerland-area home. Water also entered their home during the 2016 Tax Day floods and the 2015 Memorial Day floods.

Whether you live in a flood-prone area or not, repeated flooding affects us all because many of these at-risk homes are rebuilt repeatedly thanks to taxpayer-funded FEMA flood insurance.

13 investigates the number of chronically flooded homes here in the Houston area, tonight at 10 p.m. on ABC13 Houston.

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