HOUSTON-Zane Gifford surveyed the loading dock at the base of a 20-story office tower in the Galleria area and recalled the Memorial Day flood of 2015.
The Houston Chronicle reports 9 feet of water inundated the basement of 3000 Post Oak, flooding mechanical equipment, the management office and the employee deli. It took Gifford, the building's chief engineer, a week to reopen the tower, a month to get it off the standby generator and nine months to fully restore everything.
"These dumpsters were floating around," Gifford said, pointing inside the loading dock. "You don't want to go through what we've been through. It's stressful."
Gifford's employer, Riverview Realty Partners, which manages the property at 3000 Post Oak, turned to FloodBreak, a Houston-based company that manufactures and installs floodgates around the world. The gates consist of hollow aluminum panels that float up from the ground as the floodwater rises, creating a waterproof barrier. They range from 18 inches tall to 16 feet tall, and cost between $1,000 for a doorway gate to more than $1 million for the largest one.
FloodBreak has installed more than 2,500 floodgates around the world, including 85 around the Bayou City. About half of the hospitals in the Texas Medical Center use them, as well as the University of Houston, BP's Energy Corridor campus and the Galleria.
None of the gates-including the ones installed at 3000 Post Oak-have flooded, even during Hurricane Harvey.
"We sleep better at night," Courtney Alters, 3000 Post Oaks' property manager, said.
FloodBreak has fielded dozens of calls from prospective customers interested in installing floodgates after Harvey. As property managers finish cleaning out their waterlogged buildings, president Lou Waters expects his volume of calls and contract work to rise. "Unfortunately, disaster drives a lot of business because it increases awareness," Waters said. "We always see a spike in demand after a flood."
Waters founded FloodBreak in 2001 after Tropical Storm Allison flooded the garage of his Bellaire home. An engineer by training, Waters invented, patented and sold one of the first passive floodgates on the market. Today, FloodBreak's president reckons his company controls 98 percent of the passive floodgate market.
Historically, Houston buildings have used active floodgates, like a swing gate or bulkhead door, that must be physically or mechanically closed. Passive floodgates, like FloodBreak's, don't require any electricity or human intervention. You just set it and forget it.
"During Allison, nearly every hospital in the Medical Center got nailed even though they had floodgates because the water came in the middle of the night on a weekend," Waters said.
Riverview Realty Partners used to hire workers to nail plywood around entry doors and set out hundreds of sandbags around 3000 Post Oak. No more.
After the Memorial Day flood, FloodBreak worked with Houston engineering firm Walter P Moore to install a 25-foot-wide, 2.7-foot-tall floodgate at the entrance of the loading dock. The loading dock was spared when the Tax Day flood hit in 2016, but the office complex's 10-story parking garage took on a foot of water, damaging elevators and cars.
Several weeks before Harvey, FloodBreak installed five more floodgates around the parking garage. The office complex did not suffer any damage from the hurricane.
FloodBreak is now focusing on Houston after helping to rebuild New York City after Hurricane Sandy.
FloodBreak's biggest gate to date is a 13-foot-tall, 100-foot-long floodgate at New York University's Langone Medical Center. The company also is installing more than 2,000 floodgates around sidewalk subway vent grates in the Big Apple.
"We've gone all over the world with our product," Waters said. "And here we are, back in our hometown, helping people protect themselves from the next flood."