Westview Forest AGAIN Delivers EXCEPTIONAL Service After Hurricane Beryl
As every Houstonian knows, Hurricane Beryl came to Houston in the early morning hours of July 8, 2024, and tragically killed 13 people. Beryl also knocked out power to over 2.2 million customers of which half a million are still without power as I write this one week later, on July 15.
Thankfully, nobody living at Westview Forest was hurt and nobody suffered any property damage as a result of the hurricane, and none of our 350 apartments flooded. And the best news—because we are so close to Memorial Herman Hospital, Westview Forest’s power usually comes back very quickly, and indeed, power came back that Monday night.
In this article, I (the property supervisor) want to describe how our staff responded to this hurricane, to give readers an idea of the kind of service we provide here at Westview Forest Apartments.
Amazingly, although the 60-miles-per-hour winds caused lots of branches to land on the driveways and parking areas, no trees were knocked down and no buildings or roofs were damaged. This is due to the fact that when the buildings were re-roofed a few years ago, the buildings (and especially the roofs) were built to FAR HIGHER strength standards than those required by Houston’s Building Code. For example, extra wood members were nailed all around the buildings to support the super-strong commercial gutters that were installed. In addition, the roofs were decked with 5/8″ plywood that is TWICE as strong as the 7/16″ plywood that is almost always used for roof decking.
In addition to our super-strong buildings, our staff performed incredibly, FAR BETTER than any apartment complex that I know of. Although the property was still without power that Monday, the office was open and FULLY operational that day, running on generator. Our residents were amazed to find out we were open, and many residents came by to charge their electronics and take care of whatever business they had with the office.
Of course, due to the repaving that we did some years back, the tremendous amount of rain (almost a foot of rain) that fell that Sunday and Monday didn’t cause ANY flooding at Westview Forest–all that water flowed down our specially-designed driveways to Westview Drive and Conrad Sauer Road.
Also on that Mon, even as it was still raining, our staff worked extremely hard and cleared up the tree branches that were strewn all over the property. Incredibly, by the next day–within 24 hours of the storm ending on Monday afternoon—Westview Forest was totally clean and essentially 100% back to normal–as if the hurricane never happened.
I want to thank our excellent staff for their incredible efforts under tough conditions and I will bet that NO OTHER property in Houston was able to recover fully from the storm within 24 hours of the storm ending. The reason we could recover so quickly is because we have lots of staff, and our staff is superb, plus we have an extensive inventory of heavy equipment available to us (such as our backhoe, high-reach forklift, Bobcats, huge dually truck with 32′ trailer, etc) and other equipment (generator, chainsaws, etc) that no other apartment property has.
I might add that our staff performed equally brilliantly with the May 16, 2024, derecho storm, during which again nobody was hurt or suffered property damage, and after which the property was back to normal within 24 hours of the storm ending.
Despite our incredible service—demonstrated under the difficult conditions of both the May 16 storm and Hurricane Beryl–our rents are far BELOW the average rents in Houston, even though we offer amenities that NOBODY else has–such as our guardhouse which is staffed 24/7/365, no dog weight or breed limits, half-price electric, etc.
If you know of someone who wants to live at a property that provides the BEST service possible, have them call 713-467-1719. Amanda, Andrea and Christina will be happy to assist you in any way that they can!
Jack Yetiv
Property Supervisor,
Spring Branch Apt Mgt, LLC
