Amazing pictures -- I heard (and your article confirms) that this line served 50% of the city of Houston. That's a lot of water! And it was only 35 years old -- that's troubling.

Jody went to the coast this morning to work on his shrimpboat, told me about it when he called tonight. I have been out all day and just came in, so I missed watching the news.

There are boil water notices going out for some areas due to the break.

This city has the weirdest flooding.

So far, I'm not affected, but dh is.

adella, sometime in the last few years, I saw a TV program that was about Houston's chronic flooding problems.

In one segment, the governmental department head responsible for the drainage agency (I don't remember if it was a county guy or a city guy) said point blank that the area's floodwater control system had been inadequate from the start and would remain so. It was built with too many cut corners. The desire was to do it at each stage as cheaply as possible so that the engineering was inadequate and the designs and construction were compromised and known to be lacking. And that likely nothing would ever change. He said "we know what's wrong, we know what would need to be done to fix it, but it's unlikely we'll ever see the money to do so". He also said so much as "if you want to live in the Houston area, you should expect periodic significant flooding".

The solution is to move elsewhere or inland where the drainage is better. If you stay, you know what to expect, whether from rainfall or from broken pipes. It's too bad.

When I head and saw the news, I was worrying about you. I am so glad you are ok, but I feel sad for the people that weren’t so lucky. What a mess was made by hitting that line.

This is definitely not the normal flooding. This was a huge water main that provides water to the majority of the city of Houston and some outlying areas. It looked like a mushroom cloud of water when it blew out. The hole left in the ground is huge. The amount of water that was gushing out of it was fairly devastating for the area where it happened.

Now that the water has been stopped it is draining well. And they are able to get back to the hole. We have been having beautiful sunny weather yesterday and today and tomorrow will be also. That will help dry out the area and they are busy removing the mud and debris from the roads.

I don't know if we will ever get the true story of what happened, but it is apparent somebody made a big mistake. Hopefully the people who got water had flood insurance. Which I think everyone should have if you live in a low lying city.

I remember when I was in Denver, attending a waterlily symposium, and someone said, "where you live is pretty low, isn't it?" I said, "oh, no. It is high where I live. It is 24 ft." Then I realized how that must've sounded to someone who lived in Denver, and we got a good laugh out of it.

I live on top of a hill now...over 300 ft. I didn't move due to the flooding....we only flooded that one time, but it was significant. I moved to get out of the mud. Winters are so wet down there. We get rain at least once a week up here, but I haven't had to wear rubber boots one time this winter. I wear canvas sneakers up here. This was in front of the barn.

I love the Houston area, but it was too hard for me, and the horses, to deal with. Also I didn't have any ties down there. It would be hard to leave close friends and family.

Someone on the news described the flooding as hitting like a Tsunami. I think I also heard someone say they don't usually flood there.

Our house was well above Harvey flood stage. My husband looked at maps before we bought. I personally saw more flooding in the last tropical storm because I wasn't at home. I was at school working on a project. The sky was dumping rain like maybe 3"-4" an hour. It was too windy for an umbrella so I got soaked going in. I was parked high and dry, but some of the folks in a different part of the lot had their cars flooded. The school couldn't let anyone go out to move them because of safety issues. My husband's was parked in a parking garage. The street in front of his work place flooded. He kept sending me pictures when vehicles got flooded as they tried to drive down the street. That's the thing I don't understand. People driving into flooded water where they can see it is already flooded happens every time.

The city has a lot of underpasses where they dug under ground level to put in a road that goes under the road at ground level. There are usually markers that indicate how high the water is at that point. The rough part of these is that it is usually a one way road and the cars get piled up behind so that no one can back up. The water appears to funnel there during a hard rain so people get stuck in their cars and have to try and climb up to get out. It's not an easy incline.

We were brought to this area because of work. As long as we plan to work, we will be here unless we get directed elsewhere. The big safety plan is to try and be aware as we can of the weather. Yesterday's event was unpredictable. As far as I know, no one got physically hurt. That's the positive.

I saw this on the news last night and all the cars that were caught in the break area were shown. What a shock for them and I'm glad all are safe.

The restaurants are apparently serving limited menus that either use purchased water or they only serve what doesn't need fresh water. Dh sent me a picture from lunch. Not sure where he ate. They had pizza and bottled soft drinks. I saw on the news this morning that Starbucks was serving cold brew drinks that didn't need water.

One of my friends went and retrieved her child from UH last night. The school has set up porta potties. It is closed. No need to be there if not necessary.

I saw that Starbucks was not serving coffee and teas. Seems like they could easily get bottled water to use.. I sure am glad we are not affected by the boiled water list.

The bakeries had huge pots of water boiling.

If I'm not mistaken, in my area, when water or electrical service goes out, restaurants and other food establishments have to close. There's no way to comply with the requirements of the health codes (hand washing being an obvious example).