A year since Harvey, revisiting the area near Tidwell, Mesa and the Beltway

It's been 365 days. That's how much time has past since the folks that live on Hector Madrigal's street had to evacuate from the flooding brought on by Harvey. “I just remembered the streets were already pooling up and by the time we left the river over there was already getting to about street level”, says Hector Madrigal.

The Madrigal's finished remodeling their home back in June, but some of their neighbors are still working on repairs. Ismael Ortega says, "I have to fix the floor and I’ve still got a lot of work”. Ismael lives across the street and has been trying to patch things up as he goes. “The sheet rock is new everything is new right here”, says Ortega.

Then there are homes like Flora Salene's. The beautiful one story near Mt. Houston had about three feet of water in it.  Salene says, "we did do the kitchen, everything is re-done, the floors and then we painted the house we changed all the sheet rock, we still have pieces right here, we don’t have no decorations yet”. To this say she is still having contractors come out. She has even received help from J.J. Watt's fund and some of her best friends. The Salene's lived without heat and air conditioning for months and during that time her eldest daughter was able to keep her rank and graduate from C.E. King in the top ten percent of her class. Her school, also flooded. Luckily their home is almost complete now, but Salene says the biggest take away from it all is that through everyhting her family was able to pull through and stay strong.

Salene says, "you can always replace everything that you have except your family, there’s no way you can replace them, that’s what matters ha ha, yes that’s it that’s all that matters your family your love ones”.