They'd come in from the lighthouse and was on
the roof with the West.
They lost some of their children.
And after the lull of the storm, of course,
they came back down, so that means some sort
of an eye or the backlash, as they call it,
brought them back downstream when the tide
started going out.
And the roof of this house hit around Morgan's
Point, and the men, a ship that had gone aground
there at Morgan's Point, heard a moaning, and
they went over there and they rescued
Ms. West from this roof and took her into their
tug or their boat or whatever it was
and delivered a baby within 30 minutes after
they had brought her off of this roof.
She was pregnant.
Ms. West died in childbirth, and the child was
named Charles Storm West after that.
But it absolutely wiped out Lynchburg with this
storm, all of the hotels and all of business.
So that was one severe storm that happened here.
I think the 1900 storm did damage up here
because that was a direct hit.
The 1915 storm did damage here, but we didn't
have the population and the growth that we
have now.
So there's not much mention of Baytown.
But as I can repeat and say, that subsidence
has taken at least 10 feet of the elevation
of Brownwood.
And that's, you can sit in your home and look
up at your ceiling, and you can say that where
my ceiling is now is once where my slab was.
That's the best way I can describe the loss of elevation.
It's not something that opens up like a
sinkhole like we hear about that's happened
down in
Fort Bend County.
It's not like the opening of the salt caverns
that suddenly opens big holes.
It's a gradual going down or compaction of the soil.
We were not bothered with cracking a slab.
There was just an easy going down.
But year to year, we could see that this has
happened all over Harris County.
With each storm, I think we're going to see
more areas covered with water.
I think we're going to see more areas covered
with rain, freshwater flooding, because subsidence
alters your drainage.
And if we don't do some corrective measures,
then as we have done here in Baytown, then
we're not going to have a good place to live
along the Gulf Coast ever.
I think they're beginning to see in Galveston
now that they're going to have to tighten
down where they let apartments and condominiums
be built.
I think you can even see that down at the Padre
Island, because it's been so long since
the Gulf Coast has been hit by these severe storms.
And it's not if it happens again, it's when it
happens again.
We knew all along that sooner or later, there
would be a storm that would wipe us out.
We just didn't know when.
But you're never emotionally prepared for the
damage that it does.
And it's going to happen again.
Some of them were very small storms and minor
storms, like the one in 1943.
And there's different types of storms.
There's one that come in with a lot of rain,
one that comes in with tidal surges, one that
comes in with winds and spins off tornadoes,
and you never know what it's going to bring
But this is not new to the Baytown area.
We have not lost lives, because we do have a
warning system.
Back in the 1800s and in the early 1900s, they
had no warning systems.
They were just there.
Some of the people, I think, could tell.
I think people who've lived on the coast very
long can begin to tell by nature, or certain
birds start coming in.
We had a lot of people that lived on the Bay in
Brownwood, lived there 10-15 years.
And they never learned whether the tide was
coming in or going out.
They would call and say, what's the tide doing?
And you could say, what's it in your front yard?
I mean, they had a better tide gauge than those
of us living in did.
A tide can come up and be very flat and very
smooth, and it could come on up and flood
a home.
But if there wasn't some ripples or some things
like that going on, then they wouldn't realize this.
So I think there has to be still a lot of
education when you're living on the water,
and you better learn signs that tell you that
storms are brewing.
Because nature does tell you.
Even your small animals tell you, your dogs
tell you.
They feel they've become nervous and excited.
They seem to sense a danger long before you do.
But that's the way the old timers could tell if
they were goose creek during the 1875 storm
was a shelter for a lot of the steamers that
came up in goose creek that weren't harmed.
So many of them were wrecks that stayed out in
the San Jacinto and up in Buffalo Bios.
But they were desperate for food.
They were desperate for water.
And I think they sort of experienced this
during Alicia.
We had no power, no electricity.
For a while, we were going to be allowed five
gallons of water a day because our water plant
was destroyed until they could get electricity
through the pumps.
I think we found out what they mean now when
they say, have some canned foods, draw up
some water.
And I think these things, they have some candles.
Have some sort of preparations made because our
convenience stores didn't have, they soon
sold out of things.
We were not having power for cooking.
We were not having power for the operation of
our grocery stores that we could go in
and buy.
So I think we could see that we could be in
very serious condition if we don't start making
plans for the next storm.
On our first rescue, but I did lose my temper
and say, stupid, stupid, stupid for staying
down there.
And that you've risked your life and you have
risked the life of the police and the public
works department and you should have heeded the warning.
I know I said this and this is the way I feel,
but I also, I suppose I can't understand them
in a way because it's animal instinct to
protect your home.
And man is animal and he has the same instinct,
I must stay here and protect my home.
And I can understand this to a degree.
But stubbornness? No.
And some of them said, I'm going to write it
out, I want to see what it's like.
And they found out.
One of the men that stayed in said when he
hears hurricane in the Gulf, he's leaving
long before it gets here.
A lot of the people that stayed even in Baytown
on the higher ground say that they've been
told that if you're on high ground, stay put
and don't interfere with the people evacuating
and they assure me that they're not going to
interfere with them, they're going to be
way ahead of them because I think the people
who had all sorts of damage to their home
don't want to go through that anymore.
But I do, I can understand people wanting to
stay and protect their property or protect
their home.
But when you're living in a danger fair, no I
do not.
But I do think because the tides went up and
came down and stayed out a long time that
people had a, and it was not until wee hours in
the morning that we heard that this thing
was not going into Matagorda.
I'm not exactly sure when they heard it.
I know that two hours before, when I was
talking to National Weather and two hours later it
was on Galveston, I don't know whether they
temporarily lost the storm or what, which
they could.
They do a lot of times when the judges are
approaching land.
I know they were having trouble with their
radar and they were losing power too so it's
highly possible that they sort of lost the
location of the storm for a while.
September 16th, 1983.
Starting with Leon Warner, who stayed in
Brownwood during Hurricane Alicia.
I don't know.
I don't know if it's a tale or not, but you
start off down there whenever it comes in.
Of course, I never figured that Alicia would
ever do the damage that she did when she come
in there.
I don't think anybody did.
I've loaded my furniture five times down there
and I've never had water in my yard.
I lived at 143 Ridgeway right on the Bay Shore
there at the perimeter road right on the corner.
I never figured it would come in there and do
the damage it did.
In fact, the last I heard from the weather
people over there that she was going in between
Matagorda and Palacios and I think that's what
everybody heard, same thing I did from
talking to other people.
So I just think that we were a little
misinformed by the Weather bureau on that, but
it come
in over Galveston at 1:40 and it wasn't
supposed to be anywhere to hit land before 6:40 in
the morning.
I went ahead and, of course, the kids were up
and I said, well, if anything happens or
they come down here with the emergency vehicle,
well, you all go ahead and wake me up.
And I just laid down and went to sleep because
when they said Matagorda and Palacios, I done
a quick little calculation of what six and a
half foot tide would do to me and I said,
well, I'm going to have two and a half foot of
water in the house.
So I put everything up at that level.
Then about 2:30 in the morning, they come down
there with the ANFIB and they said, well,
the fence did and told us that we had 15-30
minutes to get out because they had a tide
surge coming in of eight and a half to ten feet.
So they were pretty good at guessing that now
because it was about 3:10, 3:15, I guess.
At this time, still no rain.
There was no rain whatsoever because my son and
I walked outside and we looked and it
was in the people's yard next door and I said,
well, I guess we need to start getting up
some things and get out of here before we could
get back to the back room to the back
of the house over there and head back up where
the water had already come in the house.
And then the ANFIB come down there and took
them at about 3.30, I guess, and it was already
a little deep and still high wind but no rain,
hadn't had any rain yet.
But whenever she came, she came in there, of
course, I stayed down there all night long.
And when they left, I had got up on the table
in a chair, the dog and myself, he didn't
leave either so I think he about drowned in me
but when the water come up past the table
and he decided he was going to take a stroll,
it upset the table and there I was in the
water swimming in the house and at that time,
it was about four and a half feet in there.
So I got a hold of the freezer which was
floating and I got on top of it.
He decided he wanted there too and he dumped that.
I wouldn't deny it.
It was a big dog?
Oh no, it was, I guess he weighs 30, £40 but
just enough that I got to the cabinet
and I climbed up on the cabinet and got me a
chair and sitting it with my knees and I
was holding on to the back of the chair and it
was blowing out there.
I could, you could just see it, you know, it
was blowing and...
Now your electricity was gone back then.
It was gone at 2:42 in the morning.
That's what time the clock on the stove set
when it went out but I stayed right there
in that chair watching, I never thought about
any snakes or anything else up until that
time and in the top of my cabinet up there, I
had a flashlight and so I got the flashlight
out and was looking around, of course all my
belongings and everything, you know, were
floating in the house.
Things that were in the kitchen or in the
bedroom and things were in the bedroom were
coming into the kitchen and it just, you know,
totally destroyed.
The windows were still intact in the house but
sometime up in the morning hours I couldn't
tell because even when it was daylight it
wasn't daylight but you could distinguish
outside things moving down the street that, you
know, shouldn't have been there.
Well there were some tops of some houses moving
down through there and there was a couple
of small boats that was going down where used
to be the street and you could watch the wind
outside and just lay the trees over before it
would break them off and some of them just
bent, just almost touching the ground and I
would say, judging by the wind, that it
was in excess of a hundred miles an hour and it
got to a seven and a half foot level in
the house and I busted out a window there by
the kitchen and I figured seven and a half
foot, I only got a half foot to go, you know,
six inches so I said I'm not going to be able
to breathe here pretty shortly so when it got
up to a halfway point at the very top
most part of the window I broke it out and I
swam out and I got up on top of the roof
and I stayed up there and all the dogs,
sometimes during the night, I heard him yelping
in the
back and I remember thinking in my mind, well I
guess he drowned and so I went on up on
top of the house and I was up there, I don't
know how long seemed like an eternity to me,
I was on the roof, I was hanging on to a stack
on top of the house over there where a vent
pipe come through and it was blowing so hard
and the wind was hitting me so hard it was
stinging me.
Then the neighbor's tree next door fell on the
house, of course I couldn't see that,
it was too dark but I knew that something
jarred the house and the first thing I thought
about it was one of the barges got loose in the
bay out there and floated up there because
we were just an extension from the bay, we were
seven foot, so I figured a barge would
hit the house or something, I really couldn't
tell but things were whistling over the top
of my head because I was on the leeward side of
the house and they were whistling over
my head so fast, I said well I'm going to die
up here so I better go back in the house
and when I went back into the house, well I got
the flashlight and I started looking
around and I saw, oh yeah I did swim in, it was
still seven and a half feet, it never
come any higher but I wouldn't have taken any
chances but better than staying on top
of the roof after the tree fell on the house, I
said well I'm going to be a whole lot better
off if I just go back in the house because it
didn't bust any windows out except in the
back part of the house and I imagine it was
debris that busted that out but it's a little,
it feels a little bit funny because you're
sitting in your house there and you got the
wave action and the wave action was hitting the
top of the ceiling and it's kind of like
being in a fish bowl, you know you can imagine
how fish feels because it was just, oh yeah
I had to get up to my neck but I was up as high
as I could get and I was just kind of
in a steep position on the chair but it's like
being in a fish bowl, you know you can
imagine being in an aquarium like one of these
covered underground things you walk in up
under, that's what it looked like from the
inside of the house and of course my furniture
was floating out of the door because whenever
my wife and them left, they left about three
thirty in the infib, they left the door open
and then it knocked the front door open and
a lot of the stuff was floating out and I
remember towards the latter part of the afternoon
just before I got rescued, of course I you know
I've done my share of crying, I lost
nineteen years down there so I was watching it
and all of the stuff in my house, you know
it was just unbelievable and I know it's
material things but people never understand
until they've
either been through a flood or a fire to
destroy everything they got so there at the
last part
of it I remember the Tupperware was floating
out of the cabinet and I was trying to save
the Tupperware, I was throwing it way over into
one corner of the dining room over there
because the windows were still intact and I
don't know it, many many times I'm not a
real religious person but I tell you what, when
that water was coming up and it was coming
up fast, I'd done my share of praying down
there that night because as far as being scared,
I don't really think I was that scared until
the water come up, the wind and none of that
I don't think ever bothered me, even when I got
up on top of the house and I was using
pretty good judgment and sense but then when I
got back in and I saw the first snake then
I used that, the rest of the time that I was
down in there I used it like a searchlight
and I throwed about oh five copperheads out the
window, I had a piece of quarter round,
they were just swimming, they were trying to
get where I was you know I didn't really
blame them but I didn't want them there so as
they swam up I had, we just got through
remodeling in there and I had a piece of
quarter round that I hadn't put down that was about
four feet long and as they swam through the
water I'd get them under their belly and flip
them out the window so it just, I don't know
it's an experience I wouldn't take a million
dollars for but I wouldn't get ¢15 to go
through another one, there's just no
way, it's bad for your displace, you don't have
everybody's well meaning I know but well
meaning at that time didn't mean a whole lot to
me of course the only thing I thought about
whenever I come down out of Brownwood was to
get my family together and see what kind
of remnants of our life we can put back
together again, it was three thirty in the afternoon,
the storm was over, the water was down to
around three feet, three and a half feet and
they rescued me a little small aluminum boat,
the silver fence come down there.
What's the meaning of your house?
The house is totally intact, there's probably
maybe five, six busted windows in the doors,
cabinets, everything you know is warped on it
but the house is totally intact, there's
no damage but some people down there they have
slabs, that's all they got left, down
on the perimeter road, on Crow road and all
them houses are destroyed, I guess sometime
around the best I could judge probably six
thirty 7:00 in the morning there
was a tornado come through there because I
heard it, I've been through one one time before
when I was working for Brown and Root and it
just sounds like just a big old rolling
train come through and you can feel it whenever
it comes through because it emptied three
to four inches of water out of the house, just
pulled it out and I couldn't tell how
close it was but it was just kind of a
deafening roar, if you've ever been up in an airplane
and your ears just kind of just pop, I heard
this from the policeman of our 146 that all
of a sudden it used to hurt, they just couldn't
get it, get the ears to be in and it was long
back, seven or eight, just like you're pulling
a vacuum on something and it was over very
quick but you can see the evidence down if you
go down Milder and down around Bayshore
and around there because the houses are totally
destroyed yet there'll be kind of a staggered
pattern in the houses, all those abstained
damage and don't have walls anymore, they're
not rubble, there's ten twelve houses down
there just laid to waste, I mean there's nothing
left but the slab and a pile of lumber where it
used to be, no upright studs, no anything
so I'm pretty well convinced it was a tornado
come through there too, which I guess is my
problem, which I guess is normal, they usually
do that but when I heard it come through I
was on the P's and q's because although that
brick house, you know, figured huff and Puff
and blow the house down.
Well is there a number of buildings that have
had the bricks blown off of them?
Yeah they're just, they're pulled off and you
can tell where one passed in because it
just sucks everything into the center and it's
just laying in rubble right there, you
know, there's nothing out there, it wasn't, you
got to figure everything that's left was
in the water and it was picking up the water
with it because when it passed, like I said
it pulled three to four inches out of the
house, you could tell it, but you still had
heavy wave action even on up in the morning
when the winds were the highest, when it would
blow real hard, I mean it was blowing hard now
because I was, it'd blow my car out of
the garage and up into my yard, one car I had
in the garage and it broke the garage
door down and come out into my yard and I had a
20 foot boat there that I had filled
up with water because that's what I've always
been told, it was sitting on the trailer and
it floated it two locks over from me, things
that moved that you wouldn't even imagine
would move, moved, I had three big tool
cabinets loaded with tools that were made out
of wood,
I've got one left, the other two I haven't even
found and I searched all over Brownwood
because I had a ton of parts and tools and then
I'm trying to retrieve what I can, but
if you go down there, my insurance lapsed on
the 12th and the storm come in on the 18th
so I was only six days out, but it was a
decision that you make, the money's been tight anyway
so I paid the light bill and still paid the
insurance payment, I don't think I'd ever
do that again either, I think I'd do that even
before I paid my insurance, but you have
no idea how, you know, and I'm not the only
one, there's many a family down there now
that's misplaced, now some of them are going to
come out real good, but on the whole, the
people that have been down there for years and
the people that own their homes and have
paid for them and I know three or four that
have been paying on their houses for 20 years
and just paid them off in the last two or three
months, I feel real sorry for them people
because now these people are getting up in age
and they've got to start all over again
they've got 30 years and the insurance thing
will cover their loss, it never does, I don't
care if it's now or in the future, if you ever
look back, your insurance is not going
to do it, there's a man down there I know of
personally that has $76,000 worth of insurance
and they've offered him $4,600 in wind damage,
I was down there and I know of course that
the wind was there before the water was, the
wind got there first, we had heavy winds when
it was only knee deep in my house, so I know
that they're taking a beating on that and
they can't replace it, some people down there
over seven years on a house, some three or
four and then you know you've got some people
down there that run in there and bought them
houses for $10,000 and they didn't have nothing
invested in them, no time, I lived there for
six years, I enjoyed it, it was peaceful, it
was beautiful down there, we knew that
there was always that chance that it would come
in but if you'd have told me a week before
that that a hurricane was going to come in
there and destroy everything everybody had
in Brownwood, I'd have never believed it, you
could not have convinced me, you'd have
got on a soap box, but it did, I mean six years
we've been threatened and then just
all of a sudden overnight it'll do it, people
better get their things together, the worst
I've ever seen, like this if you go down to
Brownwood it's maybe some more pictures
that Daddy brought home and it's bad, I mean it
looks, it's bad down there.
At my house it went out the same day about 6:00
that afternoon and then some parts
of it, what was in the bowl because it was kind
of a bowl down in there, it was two weeks
because the pumps weren't working, they didn't
have the pumps working to pump it out of the
bowl and they tried unsuccessfully seven times
to bring some pumps down there to pump it
out and it just took a long time, some of them
people down there didn't get in there
as quick as they should have, even through all
of it I went in there and I saved quite
a bit of my stuff, it was a half-two situation,
my washer and dryer was working to do it,
seven and a half feet of water because I was
down there trying to save what I could and
I pulled it out and took it to Carl Wash and
put WD-40 on it, cleaned it up, took it home,
let it dry out a couple of hours and plugged it
in, it's been working ever since.
My TV set, I saved it, flushed it all out with
fresh water, took it over there, let
it sit for about four days, plugged it in,
she's playing, I don't have all the channels
I should because I got a sensor touch remote
control and of course the remote control was
showing it out because it had a battery in it
but I saved, I feel fortunate, I saved
quite a bit of my stuff that was down in there
but you just figure you know you want to,
if it goes out tomorrow you can't say anything.
We were unable to save any clothes because the
clothes were just, they were staying so
bad that you couldn't do anything with them.
We did save dishes in pots and pans and stuff
like that that we sanitized and were able
to use but clothes, there was no way and
everything that was in the closet on hangers
was all
in the closet but it was just, it was a
nightmare, it really was a nightmare.
Well it comes to life, you know, and you're
living it, that's what's bad, you pinch
yourself and you know you're awake and you know
this is happening, this is it, this is
what you've been scared of and you proved you
stayed here to watch it but I was coming
out and whenever they come down and picked up
my wife and kids I was still, I was barefooted
and I was walking down the hall and the water
was, I couldn't see what was on the floor
and I kept stepping on things and the jellyfish
were in the house and you could see them lighting
up in the water, you know they just, just a
real luminous blue light and one of them
got on my foot over there and it stung me and I
was mad and I was, the rest of my family
resorted to the front part of the house and
they was hollering for them to come on out
because the rain was coming down by this time
heavy and there was a tree blocking the door
and they moved it and then they got on out and
they was hollering for me and I was getting
mad and I told them, I said well y'all just go
on, just take off and I'll be fine, I'll
fend for myself and I knew I was going to do
what I had to to survive, you know there
was no doubt about that but it was touch and go
down there.