Tropical Storm Allison devastated southeast 
Texas in June 2001, causing $5.5 billion in 
damage. The Houston area was hit the 
hardest.

Allison remains the only tropical storm to have 
its name retired by the National Weather 
Service, a distinction usually reserved for 
hurricanes.

Frank Billingsley - Tropical Storm Allison was 
a weak storm to begin with. It came into Texas 
and moved North of Houston. And then after 
another day or two it started to move very 
slowly to the southwest of Houston. So here it 
is parked Southwest of Houston and it's 
grabbing moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and 
it just became a spinning wheel of moisture 
just pulling more and more rain into Southeast 
Texas.

It started raining on a Friday, about 4 o'clock 
in the afternoon. And it didn't stop until 4 
o'clock in the morning the next day. 12 hours 
of solid rain and in some cases, as much as 
three inches per hour. 

So it's coming down in sheets. You can't see 
anything in front of you. It's coming right 
across the yard and across the patio and right 
to this edge here is where the water came. So 
this whole backyard was covered. Thank 
goodness it stopped. And of course, I didn't 
have any flood insurance. So I'm thinking, just 
one more hour of rain and I'm in trouble.

Neighbors who had a newer home and had 
built a little higher were going through the 
same thing. Their homes were also becoming 
islands. Those people who, like me, living 
right around this neighborhood thought they 
weren't in a high-risk flood area, and they got 
flooded. And their homes got ruined.

I'm a television meteorologist; I know what 
flooding can do. I've studied it, I've seen it. I've 
seen the devastation that flooding can cause 
but because I am not here in Houston in what 
we call a "high-risk flood area" I didn't have 
flood insurance. I just had the regular 
homeowners. That doesn't cover you for flood.

So here I am on television all night long telling 
people that the flood is coming, and I myself 
am making deals with higher powers because 
I don't have flood insurance. The next day, I 
called my agent.

MJ Lane - When Frank called and he asked 
me about flood insurance, I thought to myself, 
well isn’t that kind of strange? Here we have 
one of our number one meteorologists in the 
area giving information to the public about a 
hurricane or tropical storm and this man 
doesn't have flood insurance?!

At the time of his phone call, he told me that 
he noticed that it was several inches from 
coming into his house and I said now that is a 
real problem. We need to make sure that we 
protect your house. 

Frank Billingsley - After my close call with 
Allison, I'll never own a home again that does 
not have flood insurance. 

In 2008 Texas was again battered by a major 
storm. This time it was Hurricane Ike - the 
third most destructive hurricane ever to make 
landfall in the United States. 

Ike made landfall at Galveston on September 
13, causing nearly 200 deaths $28.7 billion in 
damages. 

Frank Billingsley - Ike was a much different 
situation because Ike was a storm that was in 
some sense predictable. We didn't know 
exactly where Ike would go but we knew 
pretty well what Ike would do. Because you 
could almost envision this 20 foot wall of water 
coming at you. Though it was pretty clear that 
wherever Ike actually went into, they were 
going to see a huge surge of water, a huge 
flood event. 

You look at Ike and it is very comparable to 
Katrina. There are some people who can't just 
find their house because the house is gone, 
they can't find their lot because the land is 
gone.

This is my home in Galveston Island. It's a 
new home so it's built to code but that doesn't 
keep the water from coming in. And I had 30 
inches, 2 ' feet of water that came in the lower 
level. About $8,000 of damage is what 
occurred here. Because I had flood insurance, 
which cost me $400 a year, six thousand of 
that eight thousand was covered. You want to 
have flood insurance, especially, obviously on 
Galveston Island. Thank goodness I did.

You never know whether you're going to be 
the one that gets away with the water just 
coming to your doorstep and stopping, or if 
you're going to have devastating 
floodwaters in your home. You just never 
know. 

The storm happened on September the 13th. I 
made the claims in the next two weeks after 
that. And probably by the first week of 
November, I got my check. 

And you hope you never have to call your 
insurance agent other than to say hello and 
happy birthday, but if it does happen to you, 
you want to have an agent to call. You want to 
have that insurance policy on your side. It's 
that simple.