Lyngrove Drive at Sunnywood Drive

About 13 miles from the airport, a few blocks from the interstate and far from the downtown skyline, the mountains of Lyngrove Drive were growing higher and higher. People pulled out the flood-ravaged contents of their homes and piled them at the curb in mounds rising roughly six feet high in some cases: refrigerators, carpets, wallboard, sofas, cabinets, drawers, luggage, picture frames. It was broken junk, breaking hearts.

“Nobody gives you your stuff for free,” said Sabrina Rodriguez, 30, as she stood on the lawn a few steps away from her pile. “You work for it. And to see everything go, just like that. It might not have gone all the way to my roof, but this right here is going to take money. It’s going to take money to fix, money that I don’t have.”

One of Ms. Rodriguez’s neighbors, Rigoberto Galdamez, 40, stood inside his empty home and bent down next to the kitchen to show the waterline on a cabinet — about one foot of water. Not a lot, it seemed. But just enough.

“Everything’s ruined,” said Mr. Galdamez, who did not have flood insurance. “The way I see it, it’s like material stuff. You can get it back. Lives, you cannot get them back.”

Before the flood, the largely Latino families on this block of Lyngrove Drive were friendly, but not close. It was a blue-collar place where working and sleeping and raising a family were more valued than socializing. Mr. Galdamez makes $16 an hour working in construction; Ms. Rodriguez’s husband is a welder.

After the flood, the block is closer. Harvey, of all terrible things, brought this block together.

As the waters rose, Ms. Rodriguez and her husband evacuated their four children on a small motorboat. Her husband had tried to drive through the water in his pickup truck, seeking a safe escape route for his family, but the truck died and water rushed in.

“We lived here for, like, 11 years,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “My neighbors over there, I actually knew them just by saying hi. I never knew his name. He’s actually the one who helped my husband pull out the truck.”