At 9:30 a.m., a thunderous clap sounded out and the house shook. Junior Maebeth Potter, half awake, thought it was just a wave of thunder from the sky. She rolled over and almost fell back asleep. That was when she heard her brother yelling.
She went to open her bedroom door when she first saw the tree. The family’s 200-year-old tree was lying horizontally through the family’s dining room, her brother’s room and slightly in her own room. Above her bed, the tree rested on the air conditioning unit, ductwork and vents, which is all that kept it from hitting her while she slept.
“I saw a tree and I stood there for a second, like shocked,” Potter said. “And my mom was like, ‘Leave!’ And then I just started crying because I was like, what is happening right now?”
The Potters were not new to natural disasters. Their house flooded during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Ever since, they had a plan in place for emergencies. When Hurricane Beryl hit on July 8, the family put their plan in action. Maebeth gathered the pets, her older brother Craig grabbed the “oh no” box, and her parents, Jennifer and Bryan Parks, collected other essentials from around the house.
“I did not expect that I would be coordinating my own disaster,” Jennifer Parks said. “I couldn’t gather all of our stuff, put it into two vehicles and then we went to leave. I’m not sure where we thought we were going, but there were trees down everywhere, and we couldn’t get out of our neighborhood.”
When they saw they were unable to leave their street, they went across the street to their neighbor’s house.
Just as they were settled, generator hooked up, WiFi going and morning coffee brewing, a tree fell through the back of the house.
They then stayed with another neighbor until the sun came out and they were able to go home to assess the damage done to their home. They packed up everything else that they could.
When the tree hit Potter’s house, it damaged the air conditioning unit and an important structural pillar on the house. The roof was split in half by the tree. Throughout the rest of the storm, rain caused notable water damage as well.
“My kids are resilient,” Parks said. “[Mae]’s just handled it really, really well. She’s had a great support system. Her theater friends have just loved on her and taken such good care of her. And me too. They call me Mama J, and they make me so happy every single time that I talk to any of them.”
Potter’s friends came to pick her up from her house after the storm passed. When they pulled up to her house, they saw the tree and all the damage it did.
“It made me really emotional because that’s my friend’s house,” senior Harper Toth said. “I’ve been there a lot, like we call it our party house. My whole friend group has spent a lot of time there. So even though it’s not my house, seeing the house that you have made so many memories in – I care so much about Mae and Mrs. Parks, and I know that family so well – that seeing their house like that made me emotional.”
Potter already had a lot of her stuff packed up because she was planning to move into her brother’s room after he went to college. Unfortunately, several of the boxes that contained awards, photos, sentimental keepsakes and her Taylor Swift vinyls were crushed by the tree.
“I just miss my actual house and also losing some of my most important belongings that were irreplaceable to me, so some of that has been really hard,” Potter said.
The family packed up the rest of their belongings that weren’t damaged by the tree or the rain, and took most of it to a storage unit until they can move back home.
They took their essentials to a hotel in Kingwood, where they stayed for more than a month. They moved into a rental house near Kingwood Park on Aug. 28.
The repairs to their one-story home in Woodland Hills are well underway. The roof, electrical and air conditioner have been replaced or repaired. Work on the windows and rest of the supports are in the works, and then they will start on the walls and floors. It is anticipated that the family will be back in their home by Christmas.
“It’s been so chaotic,” Potter said. “Every day there’s a new thing about it, because we’re going through the process of rebuilding. So like, every day there’s either like an update about our rental or an update about our actual house. We have to pick wall colors or floors or roofing, and then there seems to be a new challenge with it every day.”
While dealing with the struggles from Beryl, Potter is focusing on her classes and the production and sound of theater’s upcoming play “The Drowning Girls,” which opens this week.
“It’s a traumatizing thing, so we’re all dealing with the emotions of it,” Potter said. “And so it’s definitely been hard, but I think coming to school actually makes it easier because I get to see my friends and stuff, and it’s an escape. And I know I have support from all the people that are close to me.”
