Spokane horticulturist stranded by Harvey

Shannan Knox was hanging out with her nieces at her sister’s house in northwest Houston when Hurricane Harvey hit.

The Spokane landscape horticulturist was born and raised in Houston and was in town to visit family. Her grandmother, or “memaw,” is 94 and in poor health, “so I felt like I needed to spend some time with her,” Knox said in an email this week.

Her husband, Casper Fry executive chef Mike McElroy, had remained in Spokane. The couple moved here, where he was born and raised, just over a year ago.

Knox, 39, was due back Monday after a nine-day visit. But those plans changed during the storm. Airports in Houston were closed until further notice. So her parents were planning to drive her to Austin, about two and a half hours to the west, on Wednesday so she could catch a flight back to Spokane, where Knox works for the gardening business Garden Up.

Harvey hit Houston on Friday evening as a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 130 mph. Saturday, it weakened to a tropical storm, but catastrophic flooding continues throughout southeast Texas. Some parts of Houston have seen more than 50 inches of rain – more than what’s typical in an entire year.

“It happened so fast that, before I knew, water was up to the bottom of the SUV I’m driving, so I ran out and moved it into a neighbor’s driveway to avoid flooding it. I called my dad, and he informed me that the street was flooded at their house and to stay put. So we hunkered down there for the night and just watched the rain,” said Knox, whose sister and parents live across White Oak Bayou from each other. It connects to Buffalo Bayou, which runs through downtown Houston. Her grandmother lives “across the street and one house over.”

Over the years, White Oak has flooded. “During Hurricane Rita, the house took on 4 inches of water, and my grandma was trapped inside until help arrived,” Knox said.

This time, she said, “The storm itself wasn’t really that bad, compared to storms I’ve been through in the past, but there was just sheets of rain pummeling the city. …

“Eventually, the water went down, so at around 4 a.m. (Saturday) I drove safely back home to the house I grew up in” a short distance away. “ …A couple hours later, my mom woke me up because the streets were flooding again.”

The living room sits lower than the rest of the house, so they moved all the furniture into the dining room and kitchen “and just waited and watched the water rise.”

It came all the way up to the front porch, but then “it started to slack off and didn’t get into the house.”

Knox has friends and family members spread across Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest metro area with about 6.6 million people.

“There is no way we could have evacuated,” she said. “That would have caused many more deaths and disasters.”

According to an editorial Tuesday in USA Today, the metro area’s “roads and rails simply aren’t equipped to handle such a large exodus.”

What Knox is hearing, so far, is that her friends and family members are “safe and dry for the most part.”

But, “This is not the case for most of the city and outlying areas.”

Knox encourages “anyone who has the means to help to donate to relief efforts with money or manpower.

“This is going to be a long road to rebuild,” she said. “But our city has a heart the size of Texas.”