Texas Expects Another Flood

During the hot sunny weather expected this week, many of us will quickly forget about last week’s record rainfalls. However, for many homeowners, a bright sunny day simply won’t fix their flood ravaged home. This week many homeowners are realizing for the first time that their homeowner’s policy simply doesn’t cover flood damage. For them, this is a devastating blow in an already terrible situation.

You might consider yourself lucky if you don’t live in a flood zone and don’t need to worry about this. I thought this too when I bought my home three years ago. I was pleased to hear that I didn’t need flood insurance. Mother Nature would challenge that belief several times.

What I didn’t realize then, is that my house is downhill from several other homes in the neighborhood and that water naturally flows downhill. Combine this fact with poor backyard drainage and a large overgrown tree and you have a recipe for flooding. Lots of water with nowhere to go.

My saving grace was that I love these storms. I love to watch the lightening and the rain and hail. I’m a NOAA, and weather app junky. It was during one nasty storm that my love of these storms turned to fear. While watching one striking storm in the safety of a well sheltered patio, I notice water lapping up to the top of my foundation. The entire yard was covered in water, grass nowhere to be seen, water quickly approaching the back door within a half inch of beginning to flow into our hardwood floors.

I took action by quickly taking out the shovel and spade and attempting to give the water an escape route. My progress appeared to be working only to be foiled by large tree roots running perpendicular to the house and right up to the foundation that completely blocked the water from flowing out into the front yard and into the street gutters.

My neighbors must have thought I’d lost it. Hacking away with an axe at tree roots during a thunderstorm in my bright orange raincoat. Well I did manage to create a channel through one of the roots and the water did flow enough to save the day. I’d won that battle, but the war wasn’t over.

Over the span of the next few years I ended up paying for that tree to get cut down, having the roots ground up into fine mulch. Then there was the cost of adding rain gutters, and finally adding French drains. At last I could enjoy storm watching once more. That is until last week when the water once again came lapping at my back door again.

Maybe, it’s time for flood insurance after all to cover me next time. Ultimately it may be cheaper than the thousands I’ve spent trying to beat Mother Nature? It seems that it’s either that, or new retaining walls, fence, more drainage pipes, and more rain gutters.