Boomtown, Flood Town

HOUSTON — For the third time in eight years, water gushed into Virginia Hammond’s northwest Houston home.

An aerial shot of downtown Houston
during the "Tax Day Flood" in April. 

It was 2 a.m. on April 18. Over the next several hours, her two granddaughters — ages 12 and 15 — perched on tables, scared to put their feet in the dark gray floodwater rising below them. It nearly topped 3 feet.

“They couldn’t get in the beds because the beds were wet. They couldn’t go to the bathroom because the water was over the toilet bowl,” Hammond recalled.

“We were in there, well, trapped.”

The storm that pummeled Hammond’s modest brick home — nicknamed the “Tax Day” flood because it fell on the deadline to file federal income taxes — came just 11 months after another, on Memorial Day 2015, that also crippled the city.

Read the Texas Tribune story - “Boomtown, Flood Town.”