Tropical Storm Imelda
Houston Chronicle
04/29/2020
The story posted on HoustonChronicle.com at 8:10 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept 18, 2019, proved to be prescient. "Don't let your guard down," the headline read, quoting· a loal meteorologist who cautioned residents not to misinterpret the weakening winds of Tropical Storm Imelda as a sign that the worst was behind them.
The worst, it turned out, was just beginning. The slow .. Jlloving system turned into a major rain event, inundating bayous and creeks overnight and causing major flooding across a wide swath of southeast Texas.
Imelda's impact was felt for days and extended hundreds of miles, placing extraordinary pressure on local news organizations to keep up. The Houston Chronicle newsroom of more than 200 multimedia journalists, many of whom had covered similarly devastating t]ooding after Hurricane Harvey, fanned out across the region.
The story of the storm and its immediate aftermath - told in real-time in pictures and in words, online, on social media and in print - provided a vital information lifeline to a community still coming to grips with its increased vulnerability to flooding.
Over a two-day period, the newspaper's staff posted more than 100 dispatches from the city and surrounding suburbs, ranging from the simple but essential lists offloaded intersections and closed schools and businesses, to heartbreaking personaI stories of lost life and property and gripping tales of highwater rescue.
Our readers, both print and online, learned a great deal from our reporting. For instance, Imelda quickly became the No. 5 rain-making event in the U.S. Readers also were surprised by the detail in one story about how a herd of 40 goats are fixtures on the banks of a bayou right in Houston. We also took them to Jefferson County, about two hours east of Houston, which was the hardest-hit region. There we talked to Denise Broussard and her husband, who were trapped in their flooded house as a 6-foot alligator circled the waters.
In the end, Imelda would cause five deaths, submerge hundreds of homes, and cause an estimated $2 billion in property damage. Houston Chronicle journalists captured it all as it happened, engaging readers with authoritative coverage on multiple platforms.
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Submitted by Elizabeth Pudwill.