“There were so many things, I couldn’t think of one thing. I think I was in a dream it wouldn’t happen,” he said, sitting at a place called the Klein Multi-Purpose Center, a vast beige school building north of Houston that had become a shelter for more than 300 displaced people. Now the cellphone he saved rang.

“Yep,” he said to his stepson in California, who was asking about what was lost to the water. “Lot of tchotchkes your mom had. Yep. That cubby of stuff she had that was all feathery? Yeah. . . .”

Across the shelter, people who had arrived wet and dripping were taking such inventories. Someone brought a Bible. Many brought insurance papers in plastic bags, cellphones and toothbrushes. A young woman who had been on a secret rendezvous with her boyfriend when the hurricane hit arrived with flip-flops and perfume in a purse wrapped in two garbage bags. Another woman had thought about bringing her diamond bracelet but took it off at the last moment, deciding, “It’s just a bunch of rocks someone said had value.” She put her dog in a cooler and floated her out into the water toward a rescue boat.