HARRIS COUNTY, Texas - In the Forest Cove neighborhood near Kingwood, entire homes are missing.
Joy Rizzi has lived there for more than 20 years and says the three townhouses to the right of hers were washed away down the river by the flood waters.
“This was violent,” Rizzi said. “Five feet, they kept telling us. This wasn’t rising water, this was force.”
Rizzi and her neighbors say that when water was released from Lake Conroe late in the flood, it caused the river to swell and flood with an intensity Forest Cove had never seen.
Homes appear to have been hit by tornadoes not flood waters. Hardly any homes in the area have been left untouched by the destructive river waters.
Rizzi’s home is in pieces and continues to fall. Water has filled the hollow gap beneath the concrete slab foundations of her home and others.
Rizzi believes her neighborhood could have survived the flood, as it had others in the past if the water from Lake Conroe had been released sooner.
She says some of the water could have been released before the storm made landfall to help lessen the blow.
“Five feet, we can handle five feet,” Rizzi said. “We can’t handle 74-cubic feet of water at once.”
Rizzi said she still has not been able to get in touch with one of her neighbors next door.