Live: What Houston's flooded neighborhoods look like after Harvey

Follow this story for live updates and video as neighborhoods around Houston begin to asses the damage of Hurricane Harvey. Got a Houston-related story tip? Email us at VICENewsEIC at gmail.com.

Greenspoint — At just past 1:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, Dawn Lindley was sitting in her bed in the Greenspoint neighborhood of Houston, waiting for Hurricane Harvey to end.

That’s when her bedroom ceiling caved in — just a couple of feet away from the edge of her mattress.

“It was like boom, like a tornado was coming through the ceiling,” said Lindley, who lives on the second floor of the Salado at Cityview apartment complex. “I was scared. I ran out of the apartment, to my friend’s house.”

Lindley has lived in this apartment complex since 2009. It’s flooded after every major storm, she says, but Lindley can’t afford to move. The neighbor whose house she fled to, Alberta Jones, says the same thing. Greenspoint, which is south of Bush Intercontinental Airport, is overwhelmingly low-income, and its residents are still reeling from the “Tax Day” floods that soaked Houston in April 2016.

“We had flooding up to your chest” this time, said Stephany Solorzano, the complex’s leasing manager, who took 15 families into her place over the weekend. “I constantly didn’t stop washing for three days straight, everybody taking a shower. They told us that they were going to cut the water, so we were filling tubs up, in case the water went out. It didn’t go out, but we still have it there just in case.”

“Today was finally the day where they were all going back to their homes, trying to get back to normal,” she said, as she stood out in the complex’s parking lot, watching tenants gather up donated clothing and diapers from the back of a pickup truck. The complex is now in the process of rebuilding — tearing out flooded carpets, putting out the trash. “We’re trying to advance the most we can. We want everybody to feel comfortable.”

Lindley’s not sure when her ceiling will get fixed, but she’s grateful that her 9-year-old daughter, Miracle Davis, was staying at her father’s. “I just imagine, okay, what if my daughter were here?” she said. “I want to be able to feel comfortable about my daughter being over here.”

— Carter Sherman

Westchester — Even as the flooding from Hurricane Harvey recedes around most of Houston, some neighborhoods are still taking on water, including the Westchester neighborhood situated along the Buffalo Bayou.

As officials unleash water from the decades-old Barker and Addicks reservoirs in a controlled release to keep them from overflowing — and to ensure that they don’t break — people living in West Houston neighborhoods like Westchester can only watch and wait, hoping that the water doesn’t engulf their cars or their houses.

As you enter the neighborhood, there’s a police officer advising not to go any further. A makeshift sign on the block where the water starts warning of the water ahead.

Two blocks up from that sign, the water in the street is up to your knees. Three blocks up, the current is strong and the water is up to your waist. Beyond that, no one — other than the snakes and the alligators — knows just how deep it is. Read more.

— Carter Sherman and Michael Hopper