'Worst night of my career': Houston officials made agonizing decisions as Harvey flooded city

Chad Smith, a Task Force One member from the Dallas Fire Dept., carries Christian Rodriguez, 1, from a rescue boat as people are transferred to a pickup point along Edgebrook Sunday, August 27, 2017. Chad Smith, a Task Force One member from the Dallas Fire Dept., carries Christian Rodriguez, 1, from a rescue boat as people are transferred to a pickup point along Edgebrook Sunday, August 27, 2017. Photo: Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle Photo: Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 81 Caption Close 'Worst night of my career': Houston officials made agonizing decisions as Harvey flooded city 1 / 81 Back to Gallery

Eight hours after Hurricane Harvey's landfall, Jeff Lindner sank into one of the 98 chairs on the floor of the windowless emergency operations center, a cavernous building near Interstate 10 and the 610 West loop.

Lindner, meteorologist for the Harris County Flood Control District, had watched Harvey intensify on the radar over a span of 40 hours from an ordinary tropical depression into a Category 4 hurricane — the first to strike the Texas coast since Ike in 2008.

Harvey's eye made landfall at 10 p.m. the night before on San Jose Island, northeast of Corpus Christi. Winds peaked at 130 mph, and the storm surge reached 12 feet.

Most hurricanes typically move inland, away from the coast. But Harvey was predicted to stall over southeast Texas for days.

The National Weather Service was forecasting rainfall totals for Harris County of 20 to 30 inches, with isolated totals of 35 inches or more.

Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle Harris County Flood Control Meteorologist Jeff Lindner speaks...

Lindner, 35, knew Harvey's forecast was unprecedented. He'd done his best in TV appearances to explain what to expect. But how do you explain what 30 inches of rain looks like?

Lindner checked the county's rainfall gauges. More than 2 inches had fallen within an hour near his house close to Addicks reservoir.

He was grateful that his wife, Lillie, and two children, ages 3 and 5, had left for Smithville, up near Austin, the day before.

He needed to focus.

HOUSTON GIVES: Meteorologist Jeff Lindner provided calm during the height of the storm

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Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez/Houston Chronicle Harris County Fire Marshal Assistant Chief Bob Royall, center, and...

Bob Royall and Rodney Reed, assistant chiefs with the Harris County Fire Marshal's Office, were taking calls from local fire departments from their seats in the Harris County Emergency Operations Center early Saturday morning. They'd assembled a database of more than 40 boats and dozens of high-water vehicles owned by local fire departments, not including Houston's.

A man was clinging to the Texas 225 bridge in rushing floodwater.

Royall called the U.S. Coast Guard. The helicopter pilot couldn't reach the man but spotted a pregnant woman and child who had climbed up on a roof. The crew flew them to safety.

Royall and Reed enlisted constables with airboats to reach stranded ambulances.

LESSONS LEARNED: Harvey laid bare lack of resources, training at Houston Fire Department

At daybreak, Royall stood next to Harris County Emergency Management Director Mark Sloan and stared at a big-screen TV with the radar of the storm. Another band of rain swirled over the city.

His phone buzzed with requests from local fire departments begging for boats and rescue vehicles.

He had none left. It was the emptiest feeling of his life.

He picked up his cellphone and texted his wife and two grown sons.

"When you wake up in the morning," he typed, "I want you to understand this has been the worst night of my career."

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Photo: Photo Courtesy Of Marisol Byrd Aaron Byrd, civil research engineer in ERDCs Coastal Hydraulics...

Roughly 400 miles northeast of the heart of the storm, Aaron Byrd's phone vibrated during Sunday school at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Vicksburg, close to the Mississippi River. Byrd, a 40-year-old civil research engineer in the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, glanced down and saw it was an email from the lab's director, who was on assignment to the Corps' Operations Center.

Oh no, he thought.

Houston's Addicks and Barker dams are among the most critical dams in the Corps' inventory, the email read. We need information on them now.

Byrd helped develop an inundation modeling technology that can forecast flood depths up to five days in advance.

The Corps' technology collects data on the water levels on the ground, topography, forecast rainfall and other factors. Then a supercomputer calculates millions of math equations that produce maps showing the flow of water.

Developing Storm Hurricane Harvey was the most destructive storm in Houston's history. The late-August storm dumped up to 60 inches of rain on southeast Texas, but the resulting damage was multiplied by actions taken ­– and not taken – during the past 50 years. Our seven-part series explains why the storm's damage was both a natural and man-made disaster.

HARVEY'S DEVASTATION: Harvey caused more than $74M in damage to flood control infrastructure

The Corps had used it during hurricanes Irene in 2011 and Sandy in 2012. That Friday, Byrd and his team had used it to monitor Harvey as it hit the Texas coast.

At that point, the forecast included in the Corps' bulletin on Addicks and Barker was relatively unremarkable: 10 to 15 inches of rain. No overtopping was expected, the bulletin said.

But Harvey had defied that forecast.

Byrd stood up in Sunday school and walked to the door, heading for the lab.

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By Monday afternoon -- 64 hours after landfall -- Byrd had a model running that took into account the flooding already occurring, the rainfall, the releases and the forecast.

The flooding would not just be "one home here, one home there," he saw. "It was going to be miles and miles of homes."

The Corps asked Byrd to run a second model. People had built homes inside the reservoirs, he was told. Some of them would start flooding within hours, once the flood pool reached 103.4 feet in Addicks.

At 9 a.m., it was at 103.37.

Addicks is built to hold water up to 108 feet above sea level before it flows around the north end of the dam; above 111.5, the water would top the emergency spillway. The math is simple. Some of the homes would be nearly 8 feet underwater if the reservoir level reached the spillway.

Barker had the same problem. The emergency spillway was at 105.1 feet. The lowest homes were 97.1 feet.

The Corps wanted to know which homes were going to flood, and where, to get the information to first responders.

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Byrd pulled up Google Earth. He felt like falling out of his chair. He called another researcher over to his computer.

It showed row after row of homes in the flood pools, thousands of them.

Byrd scanned the area near Addicks' spillway. There was a commercial center and sprawling subdivisions with two-story homes at the bottom of the spillway.

"How did they get permission to build there?"

The trillion gallons of water that Harvey dumped on Harris County during four days in August — enough to fill the Astrodome more than 3,300 times — revealed the downside of Houston's dynamic economy. The region's growth formula, which relies heavily on abundant, cheap housing and lax regulation, suddenly had a death toll in the dozens and a price tag in the billions.

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Developing Storm reveals Houston's reckoning as nature ruled, and man reacted. Read part 1 of the series — and more stories from Houston officials who faced one agonizing decision after another as Harvey flooded the city — on our subscriber website, HoustonChronicle.com.

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