08:39 PM CDT on Wednesday, May 31, 2006

By Nancy Holland / 11 News

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KHOU-TV

Houston's Office of Emergency Management and residents in Kashmere Gardens are preparing for hurricane season.

People at Houston’s Emergency Management office are said this week’s severe weather is preparing them for hurricane season.

On one small street, people watch the sky and the bayou and the calendar.

“It has got up to about shoulder high.  In the house?  Yes ma’am in the house,” said Kashmere Gardens resident Evelyn Brown.

On the eve of storm season, especially under threatening skies, it is impossible to forget what has happened here, more than once.

That this neighborhood will flood again is a virtual certainty.  What people here can hope for is warning.

At the place where they try to provide that warning, the lights began to flash on the flood map on the very eve of storm season.

“Today we were supposed to have our yearly staff meeting in which we go over activation policies, review everybody’s three day kit, required to have a three day supply on us at all times in case we do activate, recall procedures, instead we’ve actually activated our EOC for real,” said Rusty Cornelius, Harris Co. Emergency Management.

In Kashmere Gardens they may not know that the people in Emergency Management plan a nightlong vigil to watch the water.

Like Alma Boudreaux, on her way to work, they will just watch the water too.

“I’ll come home to a dry house I hope.  If not, I gotta do what I gotta do.  Got all my stuff packed.  Got all the supplies I need already.  Oh yeah.  I keep my stuff well stacked up, ahead of myself so if I’ve got to leave, I’ve got to leave,” said Boudreaux.

And they will make their own plans for the storm season ahead.

Emergency Management said if the rain comes steadily instead of all at once, it will be fine.

So far that’s what’s happened Wednesday, and it’s only six months until the end of storm season.