Which neighborhoods were hardest hit by last month’s floods? Try looking at this map to find answers. Zoomed out as it is, you can see some overall patterns. But to get a sense of the scope of the devastation in certain Houston neighborhoods, you’ll want to zoom in. Into this part of Meyerland, for example:
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The data came in from the city’s 311 help line — cleaned up and assembled in map form by the Chronicle‘s Mike Morris. It covers approximately 1,989 of the estimated 2,589 properties county officials say were damaged in the flood. The pins are colored to represent city workers’ judgment of the extent of the damage for a particular property: Red stars for a destroyed home, red pins for major damage, orange pins for minor damage, and yellow pins for “affected” properties. Those assessments will likely differ from any insurance appraisals.
- See the scope of the damage from Houston’s Memorial Day flood [Houston Chronicle]
Map: Houston Chronicle
This is pretty close to a murder map
This is very interesting. Thanks for posting. I’ve seen debris in front of nearly every house and business on both North and South Braeswood between Hillcroft and the Loop since Memorial Day. I guess the folks living west of Chimney Rock didn’t have as much water in their houses and did not call 311. This also doesn’t show much damage in Willow Meadows, but if you checked in on Cliffwood or Greenwillow in the week after the flood, you saw tons of debris in front of nearly every house. Very sad. I hope these families can rebuild soon.
Ditto on what Mr. Clean said but I thought most of the flooded homes were north of the bayou and not South. I’m just outside Willow Meadows and the other side of Westbury and thankful it stopped raining when it did.
I know for a fact that many homes which indicate “1 foot” of water on this map, instead only had a few inches of water. That is a big difference.
Not even close to showing all the damaged homes. This doesn’t even show any houses South and West of Chimney Rock at were also under water. There was also damage North and East of Braeswood and Chimney Rock that is not shown – Caversham, Loch Lomond, etc.
People call 311 when their house floods? What’s the point of that?
yes we are in meyerland and should have a yellow pin on our house, affected (water just in garage and laundry room), but my street just has a few pins. I didn’t see the point in calling 311.
Parkwest 3 was hit a lot harder than this. Hillcroft/West Bellfort. Many more homes hit in that triangle.
this map is pretty inaccurate. I live in Meyerland and it has all the wrong houses on our block marked as flooded
What an interesting study in whom calls 311.
This map does not show flooded houses south of 610 along cliffwood to west bellfort
At least for the Brays Bayou watershed, the map rather closely overlays the 100 yr flood plain, so no surprises here. Also matches exactly what the Rice U/TMC Flood Alert System was showing at that time. BTW, saw a few homes with flooding east of Stella Link on S. Braeswood.
So, where’s all the Clear Lake flooding?
Memebag/chris: was thinking the same thing. A map of 311 callers.
Inaccurate – the map marks houses as flooded that were completely unaffected. For example, the group at wigton and balmforth in meyerland. The reason it’s oddly separated from any other group is because it’s mis-marked. Those houses were dry.
Why would anyone would buy in Bellaire or Meyerland? They drown every time there is a rain event. The mediocre schools aren’t worth the flooding issues, and now the insurance hikes. They should demo a block of houses and make a retaining pond somewhere near 610.
my family spent several days helping the family at the corner of s. Braeswood and s. Rice; they do not appear as a pin on this map but took several feet of water.
Buy all the houses in one of the most flood affected areas and build the next Astroworld at either richmond especially if light rail put there, or by meyerland.
It’s a map of those who called 311. The City requested people do this to help them understand boundaries for picking up debris, helping elderly residents, etc. So those that didn’t call 311 (because they didn’t know to), aren’t represented, but you get a general idea from the volume shown.
I know that parts of the Spring Branch area flooded. I have neighbors who flooded and called 311… Why is the Spring Branch area not represented on this map. This is not an accurate representation at all.
Doesn’t show half of the houses that flooded. Stella Link and N. Braeswood had at least 70 flooded houses. Same with Linkwood.
In regards to Larchmont, the map posted by this site and the Houston Chronicle are very wrong. Many houses that flooded were not marked. And many houses that did not have water are marked that they did. The degree of flooding marked per house was also wrong in many cases. You reported that my house had some damage by the way you denote the orange pin. I called and reported street flooding. I had zero damage at my house. I raised my lot before I built 8 years ago.
But what concerns me the most is that in Larchmont’s case, it is not noted any additional reason why flooding was so severe. It is presumed that this would be our normal flood pattern during an 11 1/4 inch rain event during an 8 hour period. During that storm almost every storm drain in the neighborhood was blocked due to the complete street reconstruction project NSR 453. Most of our sheet flow stayed in the neighborhood and never entered the storm sewer drainage pipe due to debris barriers required by city code on construction sites. Some were mesh barriers that let hardly anything through and then became completely blocked when soil gathered from flood water on top and around them. There were also hay bale barriers that were sucked into the entrance of the pipe, obstructing or blocking flow completely. So the degree of flooding was much greater than if we would have been able to shed some of our sheet flow before Buffalo Bayou, W-129 and the box culvert on Westpark were overwhelmed. Therefore this article leads to assumptions that are incorrect by error in fact and by omission. The articles title should actually read ” Where We Assume Houston Flooded and Where We Assume It Didn’t Flood On Memorial Day”. Please make you headline accurate as well as the articles you post or reference.
Has the City of Bellaire provided any information as to which houses flooded in their municipality? Those wouldn’t be included in a City of Houston 311 database.
No pins showing for the small townhome community at 7655 S. Braeswood near Fondren, those folks got hit real bad.
This comment thread is sort of ridiculous. There are people saying, “hey, this map isn’t right!” and then other people saying, “why would anyone report flooding to 311?”
Now you know: if you want an accurate map of who got flooded where, you should report it to 311. Houston OEM makes this request after flood events.
@Sara: How does Houston OEM make that request? However they do it, they aren’t reaching me. I call 311 when I want to report something to the city, like a broken water main. I figure they already know when it’s raining a lot.
@Memebag: In fairness, I’ve only ever seen the requests on social media. I don’t watch or listen to local news, so they might make the request there. I also work with Houston OEM in my role at my job, so I’m a little more connected to their messaging.
@Sara: Well if they want to reach me they’ll need to use anti-social media.
To my great surprise, my house is listed on your map as being under two feet of water and it has never flooded. I did not call 311 and to my knowledge, none of the houses in my neighborhood flooded – yet four are listed. This information should not be trusted. The data is not valid.
This is incorrect. It shows that we had major flood damage. We did not have any flood damage. Our house remained dry.
This is not accurate. My property is showing 3 ft of water f=damage, and it took on only 1-2 inches.