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Tropical Storm Allison devastated southeast
Texas in June 2001, causing $5.5 billion in
damage. The Houston area was hit the hardest.
Allison remains the only tropical storm to have
its name retired by the National Weather
Service, a distinction usually reserved for hurricanes.
Frank Billingsley Tropical Storm Allison was
a weak storm to begin with. It came into Texas
and moved North of Houston. And then after
another day or two it started to move very
slowly to the southwest of Houston. So here it
is parked Southwest of Houston and it's
grabbing moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and
it just became a spinning wheel of moisture
just pulling more and more rain into Southeast
Texas.
It started raining on a Friday, about 4 o'clock
in the afternoon. And it didn't stop until 4
o'clock in the morning the next day. 12 hours
of solid rain and in some cases, as much as
three inches per hour.
So it's coming down in sheets. You can't see
anything in front of you. It's coming right
across the yard and across the patio and right
to this edge here is where the water came. So
this whole backyard was covered. Thank
goodness it stopped. And of course, I didn't
have any flood insurance. So I'm thinking, just
one more hour of rain and I'm in trouble.
Neighbors who had a newer home and had
built a little higher were going through the
same thing. Their homes were also becoming
islands. Those people who, like me, living
right around this neighborhood thought they
weren't in a high-risk flood area, and they got
flooded. And their homes got ruined.
I'm a television meteorologist; I know what
flooding can do. I've studied it, I've seen it. I've
seen the devastation that flooding can cause
but because I am not here in Houston in what
we call a "high-risk flood area" I didn't have
flood insurance. I just had the regular
homeowners. That doesn't cover you for flood.
So here I am on television all night long telling
people that the flood is coming, and I myself
am making deals with higher powers because
I don't have flood insurance. The next day, I
called my agent.
MJ Lane When Frank called and he asked
me about flood insurance, I thought to myself,
well isn’t that kind of strange? Here we have
one of our number one meteorologists in the
area giving information to the public about a
hurricane or tropical storm and this man
doesn't have flood insurance?!
At the time of his phone call, he told me that
he noticed that it was several inches from
coming into his house and I said now that is a
real problem. We need to make sure that we
protect your house.
Frank Billingsley After my close call with
Allison, I'll never own a home again that does
not have flood insurance.
In 2008 Texas was again battered by a major
storm. This time it was Hurricane Ike - the
third most destructive hurricane ever to make
landfall in the United States.
Ike made landfall at Galveston on September
13, causing nearly 200 deaths $28.7 billion in
damages.
Frank Billingsley Ike was a much different
situation because Ike was a storm that was in
some sense predictable. We didn't know
exactly where Ike would go but we knew
pretty well what Ike would do. Because you
could almost envision this 20 foot wall of water
coming at you. Though it was pretty clear that
wherever Ike actually went into, they were
going to see a huge surge of water, a huge
flood event.
You look at Ike and it is very comparable to
Katrina. There are some people who can't just
find their house because the house is gone,
they can't find their lot because the land is
gone.
This is my home in Galveston Island. It's a
new home so it's built to code but that doesn't
keep the water from coming in. And I had 30
inches, 2' feet of water that came in the lower
level. About $8,000 of damage is what
occurred here. Because I had flood insurance,
which cost me $400 a year, six thousand of
that eight thousand was covered. You want to
have flood insurance, especially, obviously on
Galveston Island. Thank goodness I did.
You never know whether you're going to be
the one that gets away with the water just
coming to your doorstep and stopping, or if
you're going to have devastating
floodwaters in your home. You just never
know.
The storm happened on September the 13th. I
made the claims in the next two weeks after
that. And probably by the first week of
November, I got my check.
And you hope you never have to call your
insurance agent other than to say hello and
happy birthday, but if it does happen to you,
you want to have an agent to call. You want to
have that insurance policy on your side. It's
that simple.