Local connection to hurricane horrors

Thanks to purchasing their home and rental property on high ground in and near Houston — on a 500-year flood plain — David Hoffman avoided flood damage that surrounded him with Hurricane Harvey’s deadly and extremely destructive effects.

Hoffman, who grew up in Farragut and graduated from Knoxville Catholic High School in 1997, and wife, Laura Hoffman, “have seen the good and the bad,” John Hoffman, David’s father and a Farragut resident, said about his son’s home at The Woodlands in Conroe, Texas. It’s about 30 miles from downtown Houston.

“When we talked the other day,” David said, “‘there are parts of Houston where you’d go into it and you’d say, what hurricane? What rain? It was just all normal,’” John added.

However, severe flooding “can be just a few blocks away,”

John said he learned from David. “… If there’s only a few feet of elevation change in your favor, you’re dry.

“But folks six blocks away are underwater,” John added.

David “spent a weekend helping a friend more or less tear out the entire inside of his house that was damaged pretty heavily down in the city,” John said.

“In his practice [as an oral surgeon] he was dealing with patients who were having issues,” the father added.

John and Mike Singletary both are members of The Rotary Club of Farragut.

Singletary’s daughter, Angie Dailey, and son-in-law, Kevin Daily, also avoided any flood damage at their home in Spring, Texas, “about 15 miles from Houston,” Singletary said.

About Kevin’s fishing boat rescue of flood-stranded victims, “He did that for at least four days,” Singletary said.

Singletary said the floodwaters were close to their home.

“The neighborhood she lives in is a good-sized neighborhood, and on her street further down the road there was some flooding,” he said.

On Sept. 8, “my daughter [was] helping to gather supplies to help people in their neighborhood.”

In the Houston metro area as a whole, “She said it was just a terrible mess,” Singletary said.