HANDS-ON LEARNING Chemistry students work to solve the problems at the watershed caused by Hurricane Harvey. – page 3
SCHOOLOGY TAKEOVER Teachers have found many ways to incorporate Schoology into their lessons and daily routines.
– page 2
GOLD RUSH
POSTSEASON PLAY NEARS
State champion Jacob Allen has traveled the country to compete in wheelchair racing.
The volleyball team has been all smiles as they have dominated district opponents.
– page 11
– page 10
Kingwood Park Times OCTOBER 2018 • VOLUME 5 • ISSUE 1 • KINGWOOD, TX 77339
REMEMBERING HARVEY
One year after Hurricane Harvey,
Memories still vivid of devastation, fright by Nick Farace Editor-In-Chief
I
t was Monday, so early in the morning that the sky was dark and the streets were quiet. Yet, the noise that filled English teacher Caryn Raspberry's ears that morning was unsettling. Gurgling water seemed to echo from the pipes. As she and her husband crawled out of bed to see what was going on, they never expected what was ahead. * Just a week earlier when Rasberry first heard about Hurricane Harvey, she didn’t think much of the pending storm. “I have lived here my whole life, and I didn’t expect much,” she said. Nevertheless, the fifth-year teacher decided to take a trip to the grocery store to buy non-perishable food items along with water and batteries. Even when the power went out a day after the rain started, she was RASBERRY unfazed. “The English teacher in me came out, and I would sit and read books by candlelight,” she said. Rasberry sat by the windows inside of her hot, dark apartment and watched the rain pour with her husband and daughter for hours and hours. She met her husband on the first day of school in 2008. The two were first year teachers right out of college, and gelled instantly. “We had adjoining classrooms and we had a door connecting our rooms,” she said. “We used to flirt during the day and in between classes, it was so cute.” When Harvey approached, the
Photo contributed by Caryn Rasberry
Piles of furniture and personal belongings were stacked up outside the King's Harbor apartment complex where English teacher Caryn Rasberry lived with her husband and young daughter. The family had to walk through waist-high water to safety after Hurricane Harvey hit Houston and water flooded much of Kingwood in August 2017. couple was enjoying the quiet time with their daughter, who was just a year old at the time. * Their family time turned suddenly scary after the noises in the pipes led the couple outside to investigate. “The parking lot was quickly filling with water, and our cars were in the middle of it,” Rasberry said. “The first thing we decided to do was pack up our things and put them in the car so we could make our escape.” Rasberry said she and her husband packed up the most valuable things in backpacks and trash bags, including things necessary to keep their daughter
occupied. They loaded things up onto kitchen counters, jammed items in cabinets and threw clothes up onto their mattress. One of the hardest parts about this situation was the choice they made to leave their dog. “We didn’t have any room to carry the dog, and we decided that we could come back for him later,” Rasberry said. Her young, small family was forced to walk from their apartment in King’s Harbor all the way to Town Center, where they met her father-in-law, who planned to provide shelter for them during the flood. At that point, the water was up to her thighs.
“We were nervous about walking in the water because it was so muddy,” she said. “We slipped many times and tripped over curbs and branches in the water. The thought of snakes in the water really creeped me out as well.” About an hour later, Rasberry and her husband returned for their dog and other valuables. They carried the dog in a large plastic container, floating him along as they walked back to Town Center with water up to their waistlines. Rasberry said she continued to believe there would only be a few more inches of rain. As she walked away from her home and everything she owned, she had no idea she wouldn’t be back for
four more days. “We had no idea what was going on back at the apartment complex,” she said. “We were at my father-in-laws for four days and all I could think about was the apartment.” Rasberry’s daughter didn’t fully grasp the harsh reality that had set in upon her family. She continually asked for toys that she often played with at home, but Rasberry told her the toys were “on vacation.” On Thursday of the same week, she and her husband received an email from the apartment landlord, saying that considerable damage had been done to first-floor apartments, which increased their anxiety and desire to return home. “Going back was the most horrific sight, it looked like a warzone,” Rasberry said. “We could tell right away that our home had been flooded with more than seven feet of water.” Rasberry’s husband is about 6-foot-3. When he stood next to the water line on the garage, it was way over his head. Rasberry couldn’t take in the scene and said she felt sick looking at the damage. The refrigerator was on top of the kitchen counter, the couch was wedged out the window, and the queen mattress was stuck inside the living room. The only things that were salvageable were some clothing items that had floated on the bed in the water. “I didn’t think it was real, I was in disbelief and shock as to how much damage the water caused,” she said. Standing there, hand in hand in hand, the young family was faced with perhaps the greatest challenge in their lives. Having lost everything in the worst natural disaster in Houston
RASBERRY, Continued on page 7
City makes move to prevent future flooding by Nick Farace
Photo by Kathleen Ortiz
Businesses and apartments around Kings Harbor had more than five feet of water in them when Hurricane Harvey hit in August 2017.
Editor-in-Chief City Councilman Dave Martin has begun a project to ensure catastrophic flooding does not devastate Houston again. It starts with restructuring the Lake Houston dam. Martin hopes to add six more gates to the four already on the dam, which would allow for controlled release of excess water from the lake. “The plan is to have the excess water from Lake Houston flow through the dam and into the spillway which leads to the Gulf of Mexico,” Martin said. This process is a great engineering and constructional feat, which will take an estimated three to seven years to complete. “We have to make sure we are careful and that the dam is stable, because if we make a mistake, flooding could happen again,” he said.
Last year, Texas governor Greg Abbott appointed two members from the Kingwood community to the San Jacinto River Authority, the organization in charge of controlling the river in this area. This committee was in command of the Conroe dam during Harvey, and no Kingwood representatives were on it during or before the hurricane. “They agreed to lower the amount of water by two feet under the holding capacity,” Martin said. “This gives them the ability to better control the San Jacinto River in times of heavy rain.” As a Kingwood resident for 18 years, Martin said he wants to make sure flooding doesn’t happen again because he knows how special this town is. “The Kingwood Bubble is a unique place and we have to prevent flooding at all costs, because if we flood again, we will have an even harder time recovering,” he said.