An official resident of Houston, Texas, Cole Hranicky attends Texas Tech University across the state in Lubbock. As student at Houston’s Memorial High School, Cole Hranicky assisted in city rescue endeavors after Hurricane Harvey. Hitting the greater Houston area in August of 2017, Hurricane Harvey absolutely devastated the suburban neighborhood of Memorial. Young Mr. Hranicky participated in efforts to give Fire Station 49 access to areas of the neighborhood that were underwater. The neighborhood magazine Swoon Memorial collected numerous pictures and stories of Memorialites helping other Memorialites in the wake of Harvey’s impact. A Category 4 hurricane when it struck Texas, Harvey caused roughly $125 billion in damage within the United States. The hurricane’s effect on the Memorial neighborhood was particularly terrible due to a desperate decision by the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE). ACE officials chose to avoid citywide flooding by opening spillways to deliberately flood Memorial and other neighborhoods directly east of western Houston’s reservoir dams.
