How Harvey changed the shape of three families, one forever
HOUSTON - The road was chest-high in water, forcing the two men to slog across lawns that sloped up to brick homes.
When Andrew Pasek's sister evacuated her house in West Houston as the flood waters crept in, she left her cat behind. Pasek and his childhood friend Sean Stuart had come to retrieve it.
Partway there, in 2 feet of water, they neared a carriage light in a yard. Pasek suddenly screamed in pain and started kicking his leg. Behind him, Stuart felt the singe of electrical current in the water.
Pasek lost his balance and grabbed the light's metal post. He stiffened and fell in the water.
"Don't come near me," he shouted to Stuart. "Don't touch me."
When Hurricane Harvey swept into southeast Texas, it threatened to wipe entire neighborhoods off the grid.
In September 1900, the deadliest hurricane ever in America's history made landfall on the Texas coast, destroying the city of Galveston. That opened the way for Houston, its similar-sized rival, to become the region's metropolis, the fourth largest in the nation today.
Hurricane Harvey threatened to reconfigure the cityscape on this low-lying land once again.
As a Category 4 hurricane swirling off the Gulf of Mexico, its eye crossed the coast on Aug. 25, its winds ripping beach and fishing towns to pieces.
Then it stalled.
Even the slightest dips and rises on the flat coastal plain could determine which neighborhoods flooded. Residents found their
