article: The couple had abandoned the house in the middle of the night as the water rose over their shoulders and the floorboards floated loose. In the morning they waded back in to rescue some photographs. Nothing else could be salvaged. "Some of the people in those pictures are not even with us anymore, those are our memories," said Ms Lopez, 32. They had already sent their two young daughters to Ms Lopez's mother, on higher ground. "They're safe," Mr Fernandez said. "But we've lost every material possession we owned." Their house, on Rippling Water Drive, was one of thousands in the area that flooded on Monday as Hurricane Harvey dumped record rainfall on Houston and the nearby Addicks reservoir filled beyond capacity for the first time in its 70-year history. As the level in the reservoir rose past its 108ft (33m) limit, water began pouring over an emergency spillway. Fearing the dam around the reservoir would fail, the Army Corps of Engineers began to let out 4,000 cubic feet (113 cubic metres) of water per second into Buffalo Bayou, flooding nearby neighbourhoods including Bear Creek. "The flooding here is not just from the rain, the flooding here is because they released the reservoir," Ms Lopez said. "They notified us they would do it at 7pm and at 1am they released the water. We didn't have enough time. Now everything is gone. If you walk down to my house now, all you will find is a wreck." Mr Fernandez flicked away his cigarette and, after a final glance towards the house, the couple got in their truck and made their way to Ms Lopez's brother's house. There were just a handful of residents left on Rippling Water Drive on Tuesday morning. An eerie silence had descended over the worst-affected parts of Bear Creek, punctuated only by sporadic calls from volunteer rescue boats and the chop of a military helicopter making low passes overhead. As the water level rose, there were fears that a torrent would wash through. The Addicks and Barker reservoirs, built by the government in the 1940s to hold back excessive rainwater along the bayou, store more than half a billion cubic metres of water between them, and the US Army Corps of Engineers has rated the decaying dams around the reservoirs as "extremely high risk". The flooding in the surrounding neighbourhoods would last at least four to five weeks, warned Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist at the Harris County Flood Control District. On Tuesday he advised anyone still there to get out. "Once the water comes into the street, you aren't going to be able to leave," he said. In the Colonies neighbourhoods, just streets away from where water flows from the reservoirs into the bayou, a volunteer army had brought together jeeps, pick-up trucks and military surplus vehicles to rescue stranded residents. Organised on Facebook by two local off-road recovery groups, and manned from a makeshift radio control centre a few miles away, the group scoured the flooded streets for anyone stuck in their home. Josh James, 26, waded through
summary: As the rain began to fall harder around Bear Creek Village on Tuesday, Leticia Lopez and her husband Edgar Fernandez huddled under an awning, pausing for a cigarette and a final look down the street in the direction of their house.