A viral video of elementary students, clutching lunchboxes while traversing a narrow catwalk of benches assembled down a flooded school hallway, has provoked varying reactions.
One is that Houston ISDs decision to hold classes Thursday in the wake of Tropical Storm Imelda was a maddening mistake that put young children, and later their parents, who braved sloshing streets to pick them up, in danger.
Another is that some ingenious teacher at Durham Elementary has learned the chief lesson of an increasingly erratic pattern of torrential rain events to hit our flood-prone metropolis: adapt.
Beyond them both is another realization: We have become a city without refuge.
There are no more certain shelters from these storms. So-called biblical events have become mere bookmarks in a new testament to climate reality.
High ground, as much as it ever existed, is an ever-fluid notion. Danger is not neatly confined or defined by floodways or zones or plains. The peril we used to measure in the trickle of centuries is now gushing in yearly increments.
Last week, Imeldas rains struck those still rebuilding from Hurricane Harvey and those spared by that historic storm. In terms of patterns and predictions, experts continue to do their best, but basically, were off the grid.
Every flood in Houston is unique, said Matt Lanza, a meteorologist who runs the Space City Weather blog with Eric Berger.
He told a Chronicle reporter that hard-to-forecast freak storms that may target previously unscathed areas have become Houstons reality: It doesnt matter if you get 5 inches of rain or 45. It depends on where it fills, how fast, what the conditions were like prior to when it fell and any other combination of things.
While the frustrations of parents and staff over districts decisions last week are understandable, so too is the impossible position of a superintendent trying to outguess a moving target.
Was Houston ISDs decision to hold classes Thursday really gross incompetence, as a sixth-grade East End teacher and union leader tweeted? Should HISD interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan and others have known after a predawn call with Harris County emergency management officials that theyd be inviting chaos and putting parents and kids in harms way?
Thank you for helping our families, HISD trustee Diana Davila tweeted sarcastically to Lathan that day, linking to images of firefighters helping families on flooded roads.
Blame isnt that easy to assign. Safety is a calculation these days, not a constant.
Youre damned if you do and damned if you dont, said Alief Superintendent H.D. Chambers, who was on the same 3 a.m. call as Lathan and also chose to keep schools open. In some cases, he said, school is the safest place because children may be left home alone if parents have to report to work.
The calls are getting harder to make, though.
