FRIENDSWOOD, Texas - On a warm summer day in Friendswood, nothing could look less menacing, less capable of harm than the gentle Gulf-bound flow of Clear Creek.
It wasn't always so.
On June 5, 2001, in just three hours time, Tropical Storm Allison unloaded more than ten inches of rain fall on Friendswood and the worst was yet to come.
"Allison backed down on us with another 17 inches of rain," recalls Terry Byrd, Friendswood Fire Marshall and Emergency Management Director.
By the time the storm mercifully moved on close to five hundred homes in the town of 35,000 had flood damage.
Most of the water having burst over Clear Creek's swollen banks.
No where was the damage greater than Imperial Estates - a neighborhood where homeowners knowingly traded flood risk for natural beauty.
"There are going to be pros and cons to living anywhere and I guess this is the con of living here," said flood stricken resident Mike Stacy in a 2001 interview with Fox 26.
A decade ago when Allison unloaded on the Gulf Coast there were hundreds of residents living in Imperial Estates, but these days you can count the number of homes on one hand.
"They kind of merge, all of the messes and you kind of remember the highlights of them," says long time resident Janice Frankie who continues to make her home in Imperial Estates.
Frankie says she once had plenty of neighbors, but not any more, not since Allison.
''They were really lovely homes that people had put a lot of their selves into and it was really a shame that they had to lose them," said Frankie.
Deemed almost certain to flood again, Friendswood gave Imperial Estates homeowners a choice - raise their houses substantially or accept a federally funded buy-out.
Nearly all took the cash.
Where prime dwellings once stood only grass and timber remain.
The buyouts have proven a genuine relief for Friendswood's emergency manager.
"They are not there to flood anymore and that really has been a key factor in lessening the impact of flood waters," insists Byrd
With more than her share of hurricanes and high water in the rear view of 76-years of living Janice Frankie refuses to run from Clear Creek.
"Any place you go you are going to have some kind of a mess and I know what these messes are," says Frankie with a smile.
