How Hurricane Harvey Ravaged, Then Changed Houston

HOUSTON, TX — It began like most storm warnings at peak hurricane season: uncertain path, slight shifts, potentially damaging, too early to determine. Translation: probably fine. Except this time, it wasn't fine. This time, the storm turned into Hurricane Harvey — a uniquely brutal Atlantic system that would unleash unfathomable destruction and human suffering on the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coasts.

As recently as Tuesday, Aug. 22, the monster we now know as Harvey was no more than a motley collection of tropical storm "remnants" putzing around the Caribbean. What a difference 72 hours can make.

After crossing the Gulf into Texas that Friday night, Harvey — by then a Category 4 hurricane — spent the next week on a torturously slow loop between Houston and the coast, dumping some 27 trillion gallons and 50 inches of rain onto the flat, flood-prone region and earning a sinister name as likely the worst flood storm in U.S. history. Murky, frothing, powerful floodwaters filled the city's buildings, streets and waterways, in some places building up 10 to 20 feet or more. Upward of 30,000 people fled for shelter as their homes drowned. Thousands had to be fished out of rising waters by rescue crews in boats and helicopters.

Others weren't so lucky. At last count, Harvey had killed at least 60 across eight counties, with reports of hundreds still missing.

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Also See: Harvey Could Be One Of The Most Expensive Storms In US History

The storm's specs are staggering — baffling for the layperson, but also for veteran meteorologists who've been studying storms for decades. The National Weather Service has called it "unprecedented" and "beyond anything experienced." How exactly has a chaos this immense manifested itself on the ground? How has Harvey changed the physical reality of one of America's largest, most diverse and fastest-growing metro areas?

And most important: What's next for Houston?

Where The Water Went

Various mapping projects by government agencies, rescue organizations and data scientists have made it easier to visualize Harvey's precise impact on the Houston city grid.

This interactive map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, shows real-time satellite images of Harvey's floodwaters. It even shows how much they rise or fall each day. Here's another version of the same map, only with pre-Harvey satellite images for side-by-side comparison.

Another telling visual: This heat map, below, of all the 911 calls placed during the storm. It gives us a good idea of which parts of Houston got the worst of Harvey's wrath — starting with pockets in the northeast, but soon spreading to neighborhoods all across the city.

For a better idea of how fast Harvey's rains came down — and built up — check out this time-lapse footage, shot over 15 hours on a surveillance camera outside a Houston apartment complex.

Here's another fascinating bird's-eye view of flooding in the coastal area between Houston and Corpus Christi. Drag the bar right or left to compare before-and-after shots. (Via Airbus Defence and Space.)

And here are some photo comparisons of major Houston-area arteries, pre- and post-storm:

Rural communities near Houston were some of the hardest hit. These before-and-after satellite images from DigitalGlobe show the towns of (top to bottom) Holiday Lakes, Brookshire, Simonton and Wharton:

And here are a few more devastating context shots from Getty Images.

How Harvey Met Houston: A Timeline

December 2016

ProPublica and the Texas Tribune publish a doomsday report on the catastrophic flooding that could overtake the rapidly expanding city of Houston if a storm the size and scope of Harvey were to hit. The report blames city officials for letting real-estate developers "pave over crucial acres of prairie land that once absorbed huge amounts of rainwater." Blocked by cement, the runoff then "chokes the city’s vast bayou network, drainage systems and two huge federally owned reservoirs, endangering many nearby homes," it says.

Texas A&M natural-hazard scientist Sam Brody is worried, too. “More people die here than anywhere else from floods," he says in the report. "More property per capita is lost here. And the problem’s getting worse."

Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017

Halfway across the world, the storm that will be Harvey is born. He forms when an air pattern off Africa's west coast called a "tropical wave" merges with a "broad area of low pressure" near the Cabo Verde Islands, according to the National Weather Service.

Monday, Aug. 14 to Monday, Aug. 21

As solar-eclipse mania overtakes the U.S., Harvey heads west.

He wanders in the vague direction of Barbados for a "disorganized" first few days above Earth, weather officials say, before growing into an NWS-certified "tropical storm" and making a soft landing over some Caribbean islands. At that point, Harvey veers back into the open ocean and lies low for the next couple days; so low, in fact, that officials downgrade him to "tropical wave" status (as when he was born).

Undeterred, Harvey pushes on toward the Yucatan Peninsula — the final land mass between him and the Gulf of Mexico.

Tuesday, Aug. 22

Top brass at the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center are starting to feel uncomfortable about Harvey's stakeout near the Gulf. These are "very warm waters," they say, which will almost certainly allow what is now just a harmless blob of "remnants" to regroup into a full-on tropical cyclone.

The rest of America, meanwhile, is preoccupied with the eclipse (still), the fate of the county's Confederate relics and President Tump's plans for the war in Afghanistan (and Sheriff Joe). Texas is hot, dry and partly cloudy. BBQ season's in full swing. Life goes on.

Wednesday, Aug. 23

Seemingly overnight, the far-off Harvey system morphs into a highly plausible nightmare scenario for Houston and environs. Harvey is on track to bust through the weak winds above the Gulf by Friday, meteorologists warn, and breach the coast as a major hurricane. Twenty inches of rain — and maybe twice that — could fall within a matter of days, they say.

The governors of Texas and Louisiana perk up. An emergency plan will be in place by then, they promise.

Thursday, Aug. 24

Things are getting very real. By late morning, Harvey — now an official hurricane — is lumbering toward Texas in an 80 mph spin. The mayors of several Texas coastal towns start urging residents to pack up what they can and get out.

In what appears to be unprecedented weather forecast, the National Weather Service spikes Harvey's rainfall potential to 30 to 40 inches.

So unfamiliar is this scenario, that the weather service has no choice but to add two new colors to its rain prediction model. (The scale has always stopped at dark purple, or "15 inches"; now, dark purple will mean "15 to 20 inches," and two lighter shades of purple will represent "20 to 30 inches" and "30 inches or greater.")

It's the first of many weather records Harvey will smash in the coming days.

Friday, Aug. 25

Weather forecasters have officially dropped all qualifiers. Harvey will be "catastrophic and life-threatening," leaving "swaths of tornado-like damage" in his wake, the National Weather Service warns. "Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months."

Thousands of coast-dwellers, including more than 10,000 in Rockport, heed the warnings and split town right before Harvey's impending Friday-night landfall. They're forced to ask themselves: What do you bring when you don't know if you'll be back?

Rockport Mayor Patrick Rios sends a chilling message to those who linger. “We’re suggesting if people are going to stay here, mark their arm with a Sharpie pen with their name and Social Security number,” he says. Houston's mayor, on the other hand, hasn't issued a single evacuation order — a decision for which he'll later take heat, as thousands of flooded-in Houstonians are forced to scramble to their rooftops and call for help.

Back in Washington, Trump has just one message for Texas.

Around 10 p.m., it happens. Harvey makes landfall in Rockport as a Category 4 hurricane and begins ravaging the Texas coastline with torrential rains and 130 mph winds. Buildings turn to splinters; the splinters are strewn onto highways. Stoplights, telephone poles, billboards, palm trees, sailboats and basketball hoops are uprooted, toppled, tossed and smashed back down in pieces. Turtles land in living rooms.

Two people are dead; many more are injured. And Harvey, whose coattails have already begun to drench the Houston metro area, is headed inland.

Saturday, Aug. 26

Harvey and Houston are one. By midday Saturday, the city has been pelted with a full 16 inches of rain. Its rivers and bayous are filled to the brim. In a brief afternoon respite, the scope of the threat comes into focus: Houston can't absorb much more of this.

Yet by nightfall, another deluge — then another. And another. In one jarring, all-caps warning late Saturday night, the National Weather Service doesn't cloud the threat. "FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY FOR LIFE THREATENING CATASTROPHIC FLOODING," says an alert issued for Texas' huge, already hard-hit "triangle region," stretching from Corpus Christi to Travis County to Chambers County, including the major cities of Houston, Austin and San Antonio.

And with that, the NWS has invented an entire new category of weather event.

How The City Shut Down

As soon as Houston officials accepted that Harvey's impact would indeed be all the NWS had cracked it up to be — and not soon enough, some critics say — they began issuing orders for an across-the-board shutdown of the vast network of gears that make America's fourth-largest city run.

Airports were closed. The Port of Galveston, a cruise-ship favorite, went still. The Houston Zoo was locked up. The public bus system was halted — partly so buses could be used to shuttle people to shelters. All Houston schools were shuttered, right on the cusp of the new academic year.

Museums went on lockdown, and staffers sealed off any cracks that could let in the storm. Weddings were postponed. Scores of football games were canceled — including the Lone Star Showdown between the Texans and Cowboys, a dear Texas ritual. The state's booming oil industry went dark: Ten major refineries halted production, setting off a (somewhat misguided) nationwide panic over rising gas prices.

Staffers at a plastics plant at risk of exploding in nearby Crosby sealed off all the plant's volatile chemicals and fled the premises, evacuating everyone within a 1.5-mile radius.

In the end, though, two tons of chemicals at the plant would explode anyway, injuring 10 emergency responders. And there could be more accidents yet.

What The City Became

“This is the biggest flood in the history of Texas,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Sunday morning, just a day-and-a-half into Harvey's five-day run.

But the people of Houston already knew that. Daylight on Sunday had revealed an unrecognizable city. Matte, brown water covered nearly every surface. Hundreds of thousands of residents were without power. An untold number — thousands, at least — were stranded in their homes as increasingly nasty floodwaters seeped under the door. More than 3,500 people would call 911, begging for help; when many of them couldn't get through to police, they tried sending out last-ditch pleas on social media.

Multiple city hospitals, too, were forced to start evacuating medically vulnerable patients, ventilators and all, as Harvey's waters swirled into lower floors. Hospitals equipped with better flood infrastructure slammed shut their massive "submarine" doors, hoping for the best.

The words and warnings coming from local government officials sounded surreal, otherworldly. With hundreds of frantic 911 calls still pouring in per hour, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told the city to pray. Houston's police chief ordered people to "stay put" at all costs — because no matter how bad it was inside their house, it was worse outside. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner pleaded: "Do not get out on the road!"

At one especially apocalyptic moment, the police chief tweeted that "people getting into attic to escape floodwater" should only do so if they had "an ax or means to break through" to their roof. Once there, they were instructed to use a red bandana to flag down rescuers. And under no circumstances were they to wade through the floodwaters in their front yard, officials warned, where they might be electrocuted by downed lines, stung by roving flotillas of fire ants or bitten by venomous snakes or alligators who had strayed from the busting bayous and could now be lurking underwater.

Many wondered: Why wasn't Houston evacuated before it came to this?

"No one knew what direction it would go," Turner, the mayor, argued a day after Harvey turned Houston into an urban swamp of never-before-seen proportions. "How can you send your residents somewhere when you don't know where the storm's gonna go?" he asked. "If you think the situation right now is bad? You give an order to evacuate and you’re creating a nightmare."

And besides, the Texas governor said, it was too late to be having this debate. "We've moved beyond whether or not there should have been an evacuation or not," he said. "We're at a stage where we just need to respond to the emergencies the people of Houston are facing.”

With help from thousands of National Guard and Coast Guard troops, local cops and sheriff's deputies launched mission after mission to save stranded residents — pulling them onto boats and, for people who could climb onto their rooftops, airlifting them out with helicopters. But the government's rescue teams were operating at max capacity; they couldn't answer every call for help. (And they might have been underprepared: Multiple police officers told BuzzFeed News anonymously that the force "had not gone through flood training, had no access to boats, and were unable to respond to an untold number of emergency calls because the department had only a limited fleet of high-water vehicles.")

They needed help. A lot of it. And over the next few days, they'd get it — from every corner of America.

How The Country Helped

Already in town by Friday, when Harvey was still in the Gulf somewhere, was Louisiana's famous "Cajun Navy," a crew of hundreds of volunteers that formed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and has been credited with saving thousands of lives. They roared into Houston that night in pickups and SUVs without having to be asked, an epic fleet of watercraft in tow — including kayaks, airboats, duck boats and fishing skiffs outfitted with searchlights that can reportedly "light up a neighborhood at night like it’s the daytime."

The first 10 states to send help — and helicopters — were California, New York, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah, Missouri, Ohio, Arizona, Louisiana and Florida. Over the coming week, the rest of the country would follow suit.

The feds rallied, too, installing Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) personnel on the ground to begin the long process of helping flood victims sort out what kind of aid they might be eligible for as they prepared to rebuild their lives. The 14,000-troop-strong National Guard showed up — as did the Coast Guard, to pull off swift-water rescues. Trump declared a state of disaster in various counties, initiating the formal process for federal money to flow.

The president would be widely panned, however, for his notably safe, dry visit to Corpus Christi and Austin on Tuesday. He didn't meet with any evacuees — a decision the administration defended, saying that Trump wading into the floodwaters would have put unneeded strain on police, who were very much still in fast-and-furious rescue mode.

Trump would later return to Houston to meet with locals stuck at shelters.

"We saw a lot of happiness," he said afterward. "It’s been really nice. It’s been a wonderful thing. As tough as this was, it’s been a wonderful thing, I think even for the country to watch it and for the world to watch. It’s been beautiful."

And it was. Houston's distress call was heard all across the U.S. To this day, volunteer rescuers — both licensed and rogue — and boxes upon boxes of supplies continue to pour in from coast to coast. From Massachusetts, Air Station Cape Cod sent two helicopters, an airplane and 18 crew members. New York City sent more than 100 city emergency personnel. Hundreds of cities held drives for food, blankets, diapers — the works. Boston sent cots. Wisconsin sent 17,000 pounds of cheese. Nine hundred miles north, the small town of Harvey, Illinois, redeemed itself for its newly tarnished name by offering 10 free homes to Texans whose old ones were ravaged by the hurricane.

The many pets and wild animals soaked and stranded in the flood zone saw their heroes swoop in as well. Humane societies and animal shelters from Atlanta to Birmingham to Tinley Park to Chicago Heights to the Hudson Valley to Madison and beyond took in strays whose kennels were flooded. "They had to swim a little," one rescuer said. “There are flies in the water. The dogs are a little traumatized."

Harvey had gone viral, in the best kind of way. No one could tear their attention from the watery hell unfolding in Houston — nor could they bear to be the one who didn't help. Celebs and moguls started trying to out-donate each other. Target and the Kardashians each threw in $500,000. The New England Patriots, NBA star James Harden — and Trump — offered $1 million. Taylor Swift upped the ante to $1.5 million. Dell blew them all out of the water with a cool $36 mill.

And although in smaller doses, thousands of regular folks, many of them turned off by reports of Red Cross's high overhead costs, began donating to local organizations and found other indie avenues of sending help.

Texas-based televangelist Joel Osteen learned the power of this crowdsourced caring when he was mass-shamed for quietly closing the doors of his megachurch as thousands in the area sought shelter. He initially claimed the church was flooded in — but was soon called out by a series of guerrilla investigators, who posted widely viewed videos showing the church grounds were plagued by a couple puddles, at most. "There's kids out there that need shelter, and wouldn't it be nice if a man we worship would just show his face and tell us he cares?" one of them asked. Osteen had no choice: He opened his stadium-sized church to Houston's stranded.

By Monday, as Harvey continued tirelessly upping the flood lines, hundreds of shelters had opened for the displaced. They were lined with row upon row of cots, blankets, food, baby supplies and other essentials — along with piles of whatever Houstonians had been able to grab as water filled their homes.

Shelters took the form of convention centers, libraries, churches (including, eventually, Osteen's), retirement homes, high schools, gyms — even a furniture store and, in Port Arthur, a bowling alley. The giant Austin Convention Center opened its doors, too, as did centers in Dallas, San Antonio and across the state line in Louisiana.

Amid all this goodwill, a few sketch-balls and scammers would come out of the woodwork, as they invariably do in disasters of this magnitude. Officials warned of robbers going door to door, pretending to be FEMA staffers, insurance inspectors, FBI agents or Homeland Security agents and telling people to evacuate "so they can rob empty houses." And although the corporation later claimed it was an honest mistake, one Best Buy near Houston started trying to sell cases of water to hurricane survivors for more than $42 each. Again, an army of internet shamers quickly took care of that.

Harvey's Icons: A Hall Of Fame

For all the destruction and loss Harvey brought to the now-battered Texas Gulf Coast — much of which has yet to be uncovered — the humans and animals in his path refused to be victims. Amid the heartbreak were moments of humor and joy. Neighbors helped neighbors. Rescues were crowdsourced. Everyday heroism abounded. And in real time, these tales of astounding goodness were woven into Harvey's lore.

There was the local television news reporter who — breathless and stumbling over her words on a desolate highway overpass — flagged down a truck full of sheriff's deputies, still on air, and begged them to save a semi driver stuck on the road below, floodwaters quickly filling his cab.

There were the fearless ladies of the La Vita Bella nursing home, pictured waiting patiently to be rescued as Harvey's muck crept up past the arms of their wheelchairs. With the help of social media, rescue crews got them out them just in time.

There was the smiling, happy family of four who told of fleeing Harvey three separate times: first, from their flooded home; second, from their trapped minivan; and finally, from a shelter with no drinking water.

There was the father who waded back into his flooded home and played what might be his final concerto on the family piano — showing his son, who loved the old thing, that it still worked just fine. "I really think God is going to do something completely new here," he wrote on Instagram, in a reflection of the deep faith that endured in this Bible Belt city now faced with biblical floods.

There were the two fearless cowboys who saved a horse from drowning in his pen as Harvey's waters rose.

There were the bakers stuck inside their Houston bakery for nearly 48 hours, sleeping on sacks of flour by night and baking hundreds of bread items by day — the lot of which they'd later hand out to people in need.

There was Otis the storm dog, a proactive refugee.

There was this unstoppable orange cat.

There were the floating islands of fire ants, as awe-inspiring as they were terrifying, who would cling together in flotillas of as many as 500,000 on the surfaces of Harvey's surge until they hit higher ground.

There was the Houston Gator Squad, a team of tireless first responders who normally take nuisance calls for gators who end up in places they shouldn't. During Harvey, they pleaded for empathy. Alligators "are not seeking you out for food or trying to be aggressive," the group wrote on Facebook after saving one gator from a driveway in a Houston suburb. "They are trying to deal with the weather like the rest of us.”

There was the team of five game wardens and state troopers who wrangled this 12-foot alligator, twice the normal size for the area — then kindly transported him to a safer place.

There was the little boy who saved his pet monkey from the storm.

There was this firefighter, who worked tirelessly to save families from Harvey — only to learn by end-of-week that he was now at risk for deportation, under a new rule proposed by Trump. And rescue volunteer Alonso Guillen, pictured below, would have been in the same situation, had he not died in the storm.

There was the tragic drowning of determined Houston Police Sgt. Steve Perez in the line of duty Sunday — a knife to Houston's wounded heart. Perez was apparently overtaken by floodwaters as he drove to the station. His last words as he walked out the door that morning? "We’ve got work to do."

The sergeant's wife would later say: "This is the way he would want to go."

There was 25-year old Andrew Pasek, electrocuted to death as he waded out into Harvey's dangerous waters to rescue his sister's cat.

There was the horrific mass drowning of six members of Saldivar family, who became trapped together inside their van while trying to flee the city — the single deadliest moment of the storm. The oldest victim was 84-year-old Manuel Saldivar; the youngest, his granddaughter Daisy Saldivar, just 6 years old. A GoFundMe campaign for their funeral costs quickly raised $50,000 while Harvey still raged.

And then, in a final act of love and heroism that shook even the most jaded storm-watchers, there was local mom Colette Sulcer, 41, who drowned in Beaumont while trying to swim her 3-year-old girl to safety. Rescue crews found the terrified child clinging to the back of her dead mother in Harvey's swamps, about a mile from their car — hypothermic but alive.

How The City Came Back To Life

Finally, on Tuesday, Aug. 29, Hurricane Harvey packed up and headed west — and the sun shined on Houston for the first time in days. But it was a bittersweet moment. Because now the city could see what it lost.

Rescue missions were largely replaced by door-to-door searches for those who may not have gotten out of their homes in time. For the first time since Harvey hit, Houston city officials began forcing some residents to evacuate so overflowing reservoirs could be un-dammed and floodwaters released — all with the painful knowledge that neighborhoods downstream would likely flood anew.

"You’re going to have more dire rescues at the beginning," one emergency worker said. "Now it's more of that 'Okay, come with us' type situation."

By Thursday, parts of the city were cautiously coming back to life. Residents began reclaiming their urban traditions, cautiously venturing outside for non-Harvey-related reasons — going to work, or out to eat, or for jogs on the streets that weren't still flooded. Lights were coming back on (except for in the 14,000 homes still without power). City institutions began re-opening: the port, the zoo, the airports, the bus lines. Where they could, trash trucks lurched back into service. Houston CBS affiliate KHOU finally signed off from their storm coverage after 138 straight hours on air. The Houston Astros scheduled a game with the New York Mets.

But while some things started returning to normal, it only became more clear how much had changed. For every road that re-opened, a new group of neighbors could return home to survey their own personal piece of the wreckage. The amount of work it would take to turn Houston back into Houston — schools back into schools, shops back into shops, homes back into homes — had become almost too vast to comprehend.

The light of the new week also shifted focus to Houston's suburbs and nearby coastal towns, many of which had gotten rocked even harder than the big city and were now facing the worst of the flooding so far, nearly a week after Harvey struck.

The schools in Rockport were so damaged that they were declared closed indefinitely. And Beaumont was basically an island — an island with no drinking water. By Thursday, the Neches River, which flows through the center of town, was worse off than ever — overflowing both from continued rains and the reservoir releases upstream. At one point, a group of Beaumont residents watched as a home eaten by the storm "floated down the river in front of them."

How Harvey Changed Houston

For the parts of southeast Texas still swamped, the situation under the water's surface has gotten more mysterious — and hazardous — each day. By now, rainwater has been stewing with countless ground-level contaminants for more than a week, forming a sticky, noxious, foul-smelling soup whose dark coloring obscures all sorts of dangerous chunks hiding underwater.

There have been reports of car parts, metal debris, fire hydrants, glass shards, electrical wires, cockroaches, human excrement, sharp lawn ornaments and much, much more spotted in Houston's languishing storm swamp — picked up from all the homes, garages, schools, gas stations, etc. it has raided along the way.

Also in the water: E. Coli, reportedly at levels 125 times higher than is safe for swimming. It's one of a host of sketchy bacteria believed to be feeding off the swamp's increasing warmth. Sewage is also seeping into the mix. And there has been major concern, in recent days, about unattended Superfund sites whose toxic bits may be merging with all the floodwater: At one site, the Associated Press spotted a "rusted incinerator... poking out of the murky soup," as well a pair of suspicious-looking "tall white tanks" that had tipped over.

Around 95 percent of Houston was dry as of Labor Day, officials said. But the areas still submerged could stay underwater for another 10 to 15 days.

As this awful liquid slowly subsides, there are worries about what it will leave on surfaces it's touched. That mess, though, is being slowly eclipsed in notoriety by Houston's current (and future) biggest enemy: mold.

"Submerging a city means introducing a new ecosystem of fungal growth that will change the health of the population in ways we are only beginning to understand," writes the Atlantic.

As neighbors empty all the wet and molding stuff from their homes into piles on the sidewalk, the air in Houston "smells musty," one reporter notes. "Sour, even"

Breathing in mold can cause major respiratory problems, allergies, asthma or other long-term illness, especially if you already have weak lungs, according to the World Health Organization.

Residents have been warned to trash anything that's not drying out properly or can't be scrubbed of spores — including carpet, drywall and, heart-wrenching as it may be, sentimental items like photo albums and stuffed animals. Many wore face masks and other protective gear as they sorted through their soggy belongings and threw them in heaps on the sidewalk over Labor Day Weekend. And they'll have to keep an eye out for stealthy mold growth in the coming months, as Harvey's trail may not even be fully visible at this point.

This woman had to throw out almost everything her family owned. "You feel like at this age you're ready to retire, then you lose everything," she told BuzzFeed News. "We had no savings other than this house."

Only about 20 percent of Houstonians had flood insurance before Harvey hit; the rest will have to apply for federal FEMA funds to repair their homes and pay for temporary housing in the meantime. Over half a million applications have reportedly been filled out so far. (Here's how to submit one of your own.)

Thousands of Texans displaced by Harvey were still staying at shelters more than a week later, officials said. Another 70,000 or so were using government funds to stay at hotels and rental apartments.

This will be the new norm. As homeowners rebuild what they lost in the coming months and years, Houston is destined to remain a city of homegrown refugees. “It’s a long process," FEMA officials said on Labor Day. "Housing is going to be very frustrating in Texas. We have to set the expectations.”

The city's schools plan to reopen on Sept. 11. However, at least 10,000 kids attend campuses that are so damaged that they'll probably have to transfer, according to the Associated Press.

Just like its people, Houston itself will need a healthy share of FEMA funds to rebuild public infrastructure — more than any disaster-hit city in history, if early predictions pan out. Moody’s is putting the total cost of cleaning up after Harvey at possibly more than $100 billion; Abbott, the governor of Texas, thinks the bill will come out to more like $180 billion.

Even once the money's in the bank, it will take years for the resources and repairs to sink in.

And it will take much longer than that for Houston to forget Harvey's heavy toll: the loved ones lost, the lives undone, the collective shattering of a community's sense of security and peace of mind. This was not the first storm to flood Houston in recent years. (Although it was by far the worst). Neighbors are tired of fleeing and rebuilding. If the city doesn't immediately and radically alter its infrastructure to handle the Harveys of the future, urban-planning experts fear, this exhausting cycle of destruction may become a way of life.

Featured photo: A volunteer carries a woman whose home was impacted by severe flooding following Hurricane Harvey in north Houston August 29, 2017 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)