300 League City homes damaged during freak weekend storm

07:54 AM CDT on Friday, April 24, 2009

By Rhiannon Meyers / The Daily News
LEAGUE CITY, Texas — Scores of people are gutting their houses after a freak storm dumped as many as 10 inches of rain Saturday in parts of Galveston County.

The weekend storm caused more damage in north county areas than Hurricane Ike did when it came ashore over Galveston on Sept. 13, officials said.

In League City, which appears to be the hardest hit in the northern part of Galveston County, 300 houses flooded, Dena Demaret, assistant emergency management coordinator said.

Half of those received between 6 inches and 2 feet of water, she said.

“It just kept coming in,” said Scott Guzman, who lives in the Claremont subdivision on the city’s west side. “I’ve never seen currents go through a house like that.”

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Parts of League City — including Guzman’s neighborhood — received as much as 8 inches of rain in 90 minutes Saturday afternoon, Public Works Director Larry Herbert said.

The quick, torrential rainfall overwhelmed the city’s drainage system, which is designed to drain off 2 inches of rain an hour, Herbert said.

From the inside of his single-level house on Raven Knoll Court, Guzman watched the water swallow up his yard and seep through his walls.

As the water filled his house like a bowl and pooled in his kitchen, Guzman plucked his computer and other valuable belongings from the floor. Water receded within an hour, leaving behind a soggy mess of his carpet and walls.

Guzman has been living in a hotel since Saturday.

“I’ve never been through anything like this before,” he said.

Raven Knoll Court was littered Thursday with pieces of wet carpet cut into strips, sheets of soggy gypsum wall board, castoff pink insulation, chunks of broken baseboards and dead cars.

“We fared fine during Hurricane Ike, but this rainstorm wiped us out,” Bryan Schneider said.

Claremont subdivision and the other badly flooded neighborhoods are not in federally designated flood zones.

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