A year ago, the German expat Carina Klatt-Missal fled hurricane Harvey in Houston. How do her family and the city recover?
By Janine Gürtler
Houston/Halle (Saale) – Carina Klatt-Missal still remembers the terrible stench from the dirty floods, in which the smell of dead animals mixed with petrol and rotten furniture. A year ago, the German expat from Halle (Saale) fled with her family from hurricane “Harvey”. The storm also hit the Texan metropolis Houston, where Klatt-Missal lives for three years with her husband Dirk Missal and the two children Jakob (10) and Jonas (12) in the suburbs.
Back then, she was telling our reporters about the state of emergency that Houston was in: about cities and airports that were buried under the water, about people who wrote their names and social security number on their bodies in order to be identifiable in the event of death.
One year after Hurricane Harvey, people still live in ruins
One year after the catastrophe, most parts of destruction have been eliminated, but normality has not returned. “There are many lands that are completely gone – and people who have nothing left,” says the 37-year-old nurse in a phone interview. The region around Houston is known as “swamp land”, tornadoes and cyclones hit the people here frequently. But none of them was as devastating as Harvey.
Tens of thousands of people became homeless. Many are still without shelter. “Some people used to live hotels until this year,” says Klatt-Missal. Especially old people, she says, refusing to leave their homes, live in ruins.
Hurricane Harvey: “Everyone around us was literally drowning”
Carina Klatt-Missal and her family got lucky. Her house is located on a higher level, they did not have to moan more than watermarks on the walls. “But everyone around us was literally drowning,” she says.
For the German expat, the weeks after the floodings were nerve-racking. There was hardly any food, looting was part of the agenda. Even wet furniture, families had exposed in their front gardens to dry, was stolen. “People spent nights outside in garden chairs to protect their belongings,” Klatt-Missal recalls.
„ People spent nights outside in garden chairs to protect their belongings.”
Carina Klatt-Missal
But the disaster also brought Houston together. Klatt-Missal and her family helped cleaning up dozens of homes – equipped with surgical masks and rubber boots to protect themselves from the pathogens in the wastewater.
People lived in a furniture exhibition
Furniture chain owner Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale – a legend in Houston – allowed homeless people to live in his stores for months. People organized themselves via Facebook and distributed blankets, clothing and food to victims of the storm. But even now, with the Navy, aid organizations and reporters gone long ago, the cohesion of the Texans is unbroken. “People help wherever they can,” Klatt-Missal says.
On the weekends, her husband Dirk renovated destroyed houses with his work colleagues. Because the authorities are often overwhelmed, the Houstoners have to pitch in themselves.
After Hurricane Harvey, not everyone wants to stay
However, politicians in Texas haven’t rethought safety measures, says Klatt-Missal. Although drains were enlarged and barricades set new, the monotonous infrastructure, that has made it so easy for Harvey to flood entire small towns, remains. “Houston is always drowning,” Klatt-Missal says. It’s more a statement than a criticism. She never thought about moving away. Friends of them, a family from Norway, however, have returned to their homeland after Harvey. Not everybody wants to live in fear of the next flood.
