Houston Chronicle by Gabrielle Banks May 13, 2019
Hurricane Harvey victims tell judge no one told them they were living in a designated flood pool, say government is liable for failing to warn them
Elizabeth Burnham considered the two-story house on a quiet cul-de-sac in Bear Creek Village her forever home, a place where —thanks to a loan from her mother — the single mom could raise her two children, send them to the highly desirable Katy ISD schools and live out her days in a peaceful haven adorned with her own quirky art installations.
Three years after she purchased the property, though, Burnham waded into her home after Hurricane Harvey, amid murky brown water to her chest, to survey all that she’d lost — an heirloom dresser submerged in a pile of sewage, her mother’s childhood rolltop desk seemingly unsalvageable, mold growing on couches.
The neighborhood changed, too, after everyone started piling their belongings on the curb, Burnham, who buys scrap metal for a living, told a federal judge in Houston Monday, wiping tears from her eyes.
“After Harvey it was like a zombie apocalypse. My house was broken into. I was so frustrated about everything that happened, and I could scream bloody murder in the streets and nobody would come because nobody was there,†she testified. “And the stench, it was just horrific.â€
Burnham, who was recently married by Santa Claus on a flatbed during the Art Car Parade, is one of thousands of people whose homes and businesses flooded upstream of the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs in the wake of the epic 2017 downpour.
Many property owners upstream of the decades-old federal government dams in the areas west of Houston say they had no idea they lived inside a reservoir when they bought their properties. Burnham and thousands like her have signed onto federal lawsuits suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for taking possession of their land to store floodwater.
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