Safety Moment #2 - Never, EVER, Drive into Water

I seem to have become a poster child for safety violations. Two major ones, one resulting in personal injury, one resulting in loss of property, inside of a month! This is the tale of the second one.

Monday morning, I had a 9am appointment for some dermatological allergy testing, located in an unfamiliar part of the new southern edge of the Medical Center. For those in Houston, that is north of OST, west of Cambridge (which is east of Fannin, south of the bayou). The punch line? I was going to have to keep my back dry until Thursday and I still don't have a cell phone. Plus, seriously inclement weather was in the forecast. Thus, the stage is set.

At approximately 10:06am, I left the medical facility in a monsoon, and having lived in Houston for 40 years now, I know a monsoon when I see one. Visibility is nil, and the roadways (Cambridge and OST) were full of water across most lanes. But I needed to get to work, or, at least, home to telecommute, right? So, I slogged on.

At 10:15 am, I found myself in high water, barely making it through it. Minutes later, I crossed through a flooding intersection and minutes later again, I came up to what I believe to be an access road for 610, completely underwater with cars floating in it. I realized then that I wasn't on Fannin (no rail!) and I didn't know where I was. I turned around. And around. And around, as every avenue I attempted to flee was flooded (and none had a street sign).

The only good call I made that morning was to drive back to the Valero at the flooding intersection, where I parked and where, finally, there were street signs. Per the Key Map, it turned out that I was on Knight Rd at Holly Hall, so just east of the old Astrodome.

Then I began worrying about the wrong things - getting to work, getting stuck where I was for an hour or two. Instead of focusing on staying safe, I allowed myself to panic and make a decision that, had I been off that day, I don't think I would have made. I had food, water, our Kindle, shelter, and security. What did it really matter whether I got to work in an hour or not at all that day?

The rain let up some, so I got back out on the road, deciding to backtrack up Knight to OST and try to make it to Main St then home, where I will just request permission to telecommute for the day.

That was stupid, just stupid. I could see that the intersection was still flooded and the Metro bus was still sitting in the middle of Knight, where I'd passed it earlier on my lost way south. I passed the bus, realized the water is higher, I think, than when I came southbound, saw the stalled car in the middle of the 4-lane road (crown is always highest point in a city), went to its right, and immediately stalled out myself.

Yes, I freaked out.

Water immediately started coming in all the doors, so I frantically gathered stuff up - I had our Christmas-present Kindle DX with me, my birthday-present Canon camera with me, plus stuff for heading into work (lunch, etc.).

As I am gathering stuff on the inside of the car, shoving it into the reusable grocery bags in the back seat, a Waste Management trash truck vrooms by me, sending the car bobbing like a boat. Yes, I freak out again. I waited for the waves to subside a bit, then pushed the passenger's side door open against the water, and dropped down into 29 inch deep water (in case you're wondering, that's crotch-height on me), shoved the door a few times to get it closed, and walked back to that Valero that I had so recently left.

After hours of hanging out at the Valero, using their phone to call AAA and Roy, and fruitlessly awaiting a tow from AAA (and sopping wet from pretty much the waist down), the rain truly let up at last, and I walked back up to the car. I took pictures, which are at the end of this update.

I finally decided to walk to the light rail, in hopes of getting into the med center transit station, and from there, on any bus route that will get me within a mile of home. It took 2 rail rides to get to the transit station a mere 2 stops north (they had to transfer us to the actual NB line one stop north of Reliant as the entire rail system was messed up by the flooding - take note, all ye who are certain that Houston is destined for mass transit!!), where I eventually discovered that the buses were simply not running, as no buses for any route had been in or out of the transit center for over an hour. After a futile attempt to get a guard at the UTHSC restricted facility across the street to call me a cab, I walked back over to the rail line and took a 3rd rail ride, to the Marriott Med Center, where I grabbed some water and located a cab and got home.

That was over 4 hours after my ordeal began. It took me over 2 hours to get home once I started. And I've totaled our 1997 Buick LeSabre, which had over 186,000 miles on it, and which we had no immediate plans to replace any time soon. I'm devastated.

Remember, never, ever, ever, EVER drive into water. Ever. I knew that rule and disobeyed it a couple of times Monday before finally getting burnt. Just stupid. Too worried about getting to work and not worried enough about staying safe.

Here are some pictures with captions.

Roy & I went back to the car around 6 to retrieve the rest of my belongings from it. It still had water in it and an HPD officer had just finished setting up flares around it, as it was in a dark stretch of the street. Our repair shop picked it up around 7pm. When I called Tuesday morning, their shop had picked up 35 flooded cars on Monday. He didn't hold out much hope for ours.

By the way, according to the Harris County Flood Control District bayou rainfall data, the area I was in received over 4.1 inches between 9am and 11am during the flash flood. And it didn't start raining until well after my appointment began, so somewhere around 9:20 or so. That is an incredible amount of water being dumped onto flat surfaces in a very small amount of time - it is no wonder that we had flash flooding.

One last sad footnote to this tale: somewhere along the way on Monday, I lost one of the pearl stud earrings that were part of Roy's wedding gift to me. I realized it in the Valero bathroom, and carefully searched my raincoat and shirt for it, to no avail. One positive footnote: throughout the entire mess, I managed to keep my back dry, so the expensive dermatological testing was not ruined along with everything else that day.