Houston: The Perpetual Disaster City

Welcome to the First Indefinite Major Urban Hazardland

Houston is hazard lands. Some of it is officially classified that way, and some of it isn’t, but in any meaningful sense, we are in a state of perpetual crisis.

I know that people experience natural disasters everywhere, but we are THE major US city for disasters, like the Taylor Swift of greatest US natural disaster hits (tracks include Beryl, Harvey, Ike, Allison, and Rita).

It floods here all the time. Our detention ponds can't really keep up. We have made some good investments in recent years, but it followed decades of no investments at all. Our disasters are hardly Black Swans; everyone knew they were coming for years, even if they did not know exactly when.

In every incident, stuff was knocked down, power went out, floods, house damage, and the same old dance of insurance companies and disaster relief and PR campaigns about how strong and heroic we are as we’re picking up leaves and mucking houses.

Again.

And Again.

Wind damage is now picking up from disaster to disaster and blowing down utility polls, power lines, fences, and all kinds of other residential and commercial structures. It happens often enough that we are unable to even fully rebuild from one to the next.

I am seeing stuff I have never seen in a lifetime living here. Last summer we clocked 100+ degrees for 45 days, and topped at 109 degrees. Two years prior, a freeze during COVID knocked out the grid for days for most Houstonians, and killed hundreds.

As many have pointed out, it’s an every year thing: the Tax Day floods of 2016; Harvey in 2017; the Independence Day floods of 2018; Tropical Storm Imelda in 2019; Tropical Storm Beta in 2020; the freeze in 2021; the heat last year… Beryl this year…I guess 2022 was a sabbatical, but more than likely I am just forgetting something. It’ s like that.

We recently had a tornado event. We’ve never had tornadoes really… we are at sea level and there is nowhere to hide from them. I was driving in the area of it when it (very suddenly) hit. Apparently some forecasters elsewhere caught it earlier in the day; nobody here was ready at all. We had 15 minutes of warning in a text. I was out picking up Mexican food like it was any given day. Suddenly, I got a text from the disaster response service and it said to get to shelter, but it was too late: I had driven into hell. The sky was almost black. Trees ahead of me on either side of the road whipsawed back and forth. Electric lines rose and extended way out over the road with the wind. Street lights went out one at a time in rapid succession. Traffic lights went out immediately.

When I finally got into the neighborhood off the main street, I felt small debris ping the top of my car. The rain was so heavy I could barely see. I had to get out and move a large branch at one point to keep driving; it was unsafe to stop in the canopied neighborhoods, where giant branches had fallen and still others leaned so far over that they might snap at any moment. The palm trees on Westheimer leaned further than I have ever seen them lean. All I could do was go home, and when I got there, my wife and dogs were huddled at the bottom of the stairs, winds shaking the place like a freight train next door.

People often die of this stuff: from drowning, heat, winds, sizable falling debris. Some can't get their medicines. Electronic medical devices become a life or death liability. If you can afford a generator, you're fine. If not, who knows.

The aftermath of any disaster here is that a major region, with one of the most active ports in the world, the 4th largest city in the US, and millions of people in surrounding cities and counties, come to a standstill. 2.2 million Centerpoint customers (who knows how many people) are without power here right now. The roads are a mess. People can't get to work. There are a few cooling centers open, but you have to get to them. If you don't have a ride, you have to call 3-1-1 to get to it, but 3-1-1 is also who you call to report infrastructure issues.

We are always in response mode. There is almost a cult-like commitment to under-preparing, a flag-waving at the idea of someone getting their hands dirty because we're cowboys or whatever. Some talk about "resilience," and it is good to be tough in the face or hardship, but I can't help but wonder if a city should strive less for being hard-nosed and more for being a place of prosperity where someone can grow up and enjoy themselves. We believe in ourselves and our neighbors. No one needs to hear that we are "strong" or "resilient." The population here ***must*** be, because we keep going through this stuff and sticking it out.

Whenever a bunch of people make money and a bunch of other people lose it for no good reason, one or two hundred policy failures lurk. I have massive thoughts on the causation and politics of this. More on that later.

But I mainly want to just witness to people outside of this place that we are living in perhaps the first modern, consistent, major urban disaster zone. And I want to work with the people here to protect one another.

Roll out the red carpet and windstorms, and fasten your seatbelt.

Houston 3000 has arrived.