HOUSTON – As we reach the one-year mark from the 2024 Houston derecho, many Houstonians have already turned the page from the storm that caught one of the nation’s largest cities off guard.
Friday is the one-year anniversary of the storm that caused a level of damage that many compared to the destruction of hurricanes like Harvey and Ike.
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The downtown skyline was littered with broken windows in high rises; trees were blown over in neighborhoods across the city and roofs were torn from homes and apartment buildings.
“It’s been one heck of a hard year,” said Paul Castillo of Oak Forest.
It’s been one year since KPRC 2 last visited Paul‘s home at the corner of Bolivia Boulevard and W 43rd Street.
“Now, you remember last year when you came in, we had all that damage in the living room and look at it now,” he said while walking us through his rebuilt home.
Last year, it’s what was on the outside of his home that caught our attention.
A giant piece of a tree was sticking out of his roof after piercing his shingles like a toothpick.
“Where I was sitting and my wife was watching TV, the tree had fallen just two feet from me,” Castillo said. “Had I got up to get some water or something at that time, it would have fallen down on us.”
Paul‘s story is like many in Houston after the derecho. He battled long waits for insurance money as well as speed bumps to get FEMA funding.
He filed four different FEMA cases.
“It took nearly a year until I reached out to you when you did what you did and that one little simple work that you did, I got the reimbursement that was due me almost a year later,” Castillo said.
Gage Goulding: “I hope you never have to do that again.”
Paul Castillo: “I hope I don’t. It’s not fun.”
Gage Goulding: “That sounds miserable.”
Paul Castillo: “It is, and it’s stressing emotionally, physically.”
The rebuild of his home took half of a year. But it took nearly a full year to be made full financially for the roughly $40,000 work of work.
He and his family lived with tarps strewn about their home to keep the outside elements outside. (That didn’t work too well)
“A rat, not a normal rat, but one of those tree rats with big ears and long tails, got in the house and started running into a room and I heard a girl, 21-year-old girl, screaming at the top of her lungs,” Castillo said of his niece visiting at the time. “Here I am half asleep, three o’clock in the morning, ‘What, what’s going on?!’”
He jokes about it now.
There’s one thing his family is taking away from the derecho. It’s not that the government is slow to respond or insurance companies don’t want to pay out.
It’s that life is fragile. He learned that lesson last year.
“We ran into the bathroom, put covers over us, blankets over us and got down and just peered open, looking at the things swirling in here, and that was the freakiest part that I saw. And it still sticks with me today that it’s scary, you know, it’s a traumatic experience that,” Castillo said. It’s just, that’s one thing about living in Houston. You got to get ready for these storms."
