SMU community members share flood stories

This is the sixth in a series of stories of SMU faculty and staff who have suffered serious damage because of recent flooding. We hope that these stories bring to light how many people, in how many areas, were deeply affected. Please continue to keep everyone who is fighting to put their lives back together in your prayers.

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Renee Knutson’s home in Sunny Acres is pictured on the far left. You can see her double garage doors.








Knutson estimates they got 5 feet of water on the bottom floor of their split-level home.










Renee Knutson
Director of career services
and study abroad

Renee Knutson’s 9-year-old son Bryan wasn’t home when water swept through his Sunny Acres neighborhood Aug. 18-19. But his young eyes have seen — up close — the mass destruction the flood left behind. Thunderstorms now take on a whole new meaning.

“He’s still scared,” Knutson said. “Every time it rains, he thinks it’s going to flood.”
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And, quite simply, Bryan misses a lot of his favorite things. Each time he can’t locate something, Knutson said he checks to see if it’s merely missing, or if it was destroyed.

“He keeps asking where such and such is,” she said. “Now he doesn’t want us to tell him anymore what was lost.”

“Stuff” has special meaning to a 9-year-old.

Many of Renee’s things — also destroyed in the flood — held special sentimental meaning as well … the home movies of her mom, who passed away 7 years ago, interacting with her son; items her mom had made for her; her son’s artwork and papers from school; her Christmas ornaments; her parents’ love letters; and her wedding dress, just four months old.

This isn’t exactly the honeymoon Renee and her husband Brian had planned. Lots of people have said to us, ‘What a way to start out a marriage,’ ” Renee said. “We were looking forward to things slowing down. When we were planning for the wedding, things were crazy.”

At the time of the flood, Knutson had just moved several boxes of her and Bryan’s belongings into the basement of the split-level home in Sunny Acres. The closing of her previous home (which stayed dry) was just a week away.

Knutson never got to unpack. The water level reached 5 feet in their basement.

But she is thankful her family is safe and that they still have a house to call home. She recalls how quickly water levels rose in the middle of the night.

At 5 a.m., Brian woke up after hearing neighbors outside yelling back and forth. He noticed that water was building up around their home.

“He said, ‘Renee, you need to come look at this,’ ” she said. The two went to the basement of their split-level home to survey the damage. Initially, she said, there were just a couple of puddles of water and they began pulling items upstairs.

But the situation quickly escalated.

“Within five minutes, water started pouring in, and the door between the garage and the house busted in (from the pressure),” she said.

The two felt safe on their second floor. There was no way, they thought, the water level could reach that height. Then again, she said, the water rose very fast, and they had no idea how high it would eventually get.

They turned down the first rescue boat, directing it to other neighbors first. When it was their turn, Renee and Brian were evacuated to the Red Cross shelter at SMU.

Renee laughs when she says she was so comforted to see Dr. Jeffrey Highland, a familiar friendly face in a crisis. They stayed with friends that evening and were able to go back in to begin cleanup the following day.

“When we first came back, everything was all toppled over and laying all over the place in a couple of inches of mud. It’s amazing what ended up where,” she said. Items from one room were relocated to a whole different section of the house.

It took several weeks to sort out and wash what they could save; scrape the mud out; remove the carpeting, insulation and sheetrock; and wash and bleach everything. The door that broke was finally replaced two weeks ago.

“It’s going to be a long time before things are back to normal,” she said.

Renee and Brian hope to get their stairs, landing and insulation installed before winter. The two did not live in a flood plain and did not have flood insurance. FEMA gave them $5,000 to help with damages.

“At least we’re safe. We’re alive,” she said. “It could have been a lot worse. We’re very fortunate we didn’t lose everything. A lot of people lost everything, which is something I almost feel guilty about.”

Renee said she is amazed by the support they’ve seen from SMU, from Bryan’s school (Bluffview Montessori) and from their church (Saint Mary’s.) Many friends and family members have come to lend a hand. And all the help has made it all a little easier. She says, “I don’t know how I could have done it alone.”