A Haltom City family is home for the holidays, 16 months after floods sent a neighborhood packing.
A roll in the grass is somewhat of a luxury for Buddy and Shadow. The two dogs and the entire Caraway family were displaced after a series of storms flooded Big Fossil Creek.
"Within an hour, a huge portion of our yard was gone, and by morning, another huge portion," said Layla Caraway.
Eventually, the yard was all but gone and so were Caraways' hopes of ever returning home.
"It's a very emotional thing to lose your home in some way," said Caraway.
The city initially told her and nearly a dozen other neighbors there was nothing it could do. But eventually, the city agreed to build a massive, $1.5 million retaining wall after discovering sewer, water and power lines ran underneath the houses.
"I would watch and come by on a regular basis, and I was just thinking, 'Please don't knock our house down. We've come this far,'" said Caraway.
Her family moved back on Halloween and is settling in, just in time for the holidays.
"It's surreal," said Caraway. "Sometimes it's hard to step across that line, because that used to be just air."
Now that the retaining wall is built, the biggest problem is keeping people from walking along the top of it, the city said.
