CROSBY, Texas (AP) – Silvia Casas’ eyes welled with tears Friday as she surveyed the damage from Harvey to what once was a working class, mostly Hispanic neighborhood near Crosby, Texas.
Large trees with their roots reaching into the air were pulled from the ground by Harvey’s floodwaters. Recreational Vehicles were crumpled like tin cans. Entire houses were picked up and moved 20 or 30 feet from where they once sat, leaving piles of wood and splintered debris and PVC pipes sticking from the ground as the only reminder of once-familiar structures.
Near a 30-foot high pile of debris, once houses and treasured belongings now stacked against a telephone pole, someone had hung a painting of the Virgin de Guadalupe from a tree branch. Around the corner, a sinkhole had swallowed two cars and was filled with brown, mucky water.
A neighborhood stray dog, fed by everyone, weathered the flood by standing on the Casas’ roof. Their cinderblock house was one of the few structures that wasn’t thrown by floodwaters, but inside, a pile of furniture and splintered belongings sat in the middle of the floor, under a ceiling pocked with peeling paint from the floodwaters.
Silvia stopped to survey the outdoor kitchen that used to stand on the side of the house where several generations would gather.