How Houston's newest homes survived Hurricane Harvey
As Hurricane Harvey approached Houston, Kevin Kelly hunkered down in his brick house, which was built in 2009 in a federally designated flood zone.
He set his alarm to ring every two hours throughout the night so he could monitor water creeping closer from a creek overflowing a quarter of a mile away.
From his upstairs window, as bolts of lightning flashed across the sky and wind battered his walls, he and his wife watched as record-setting rains turned his street into a river.
"The question was how much furniture were we going to put upstairs," Kelly recalled.
In the end, the water came within 5 feet of his house and no closer. Many of his neighbors were not so lucky.
What helped save Kelly was a Houston building regulation that ensured his house was situated on higher ground than older homes.
No other major metropolitan area in the
