beginning of the wettest cyclone in the “Monday, we couldn’t do anything. There office buildings and even in the city hall of history of USA. was water everywhere,” he recalls. Houston,“ Mike Zacharias recalls. Watching by the hour “I was watching the weather forecast by the hour. Until it hit us. And it hit us hard. We got more than 1 metre of rain… the rain just came pouring down on Houston, right until county officials were forced to make major releases out of two of the major dams in the city, causing a huge area to be flooded,” he explains. That was the night between Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th of August…the day after Houston was literally drowned in rainwater. But by Tuesday they made it to the office and for the next two weeks the team from Cougar Sales worked around the clock. 100 hours a week. Everybody gave a hand, people even came from the whole of the US just to give a helping hand to the city. “We all pulled at the same string. All our rentals were working non-stop. We replaced damaged motors, installed new packaged booster systems, sump pumps and controls in more than 55 buildings, including multifamily residential buildings, commercial “Hundreds of thousands were affected, many had to leave their homes and the city was shut down for a couple of weeks. But thanks to businesses, authorities and private people, we all got the city running again and returned to normal life,” says David McMillan. The total damage from Hurricane Harvey is estimated at $125 billion, making it the costliest natural disaster ever in the United States. 104 people lost their lives – 1 in Guyana and 103 in the US. 40 | 41
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