I live in Houston, TX. This is my story so far.
Saturday, August 26th we woke up and went to breakfast together, because we were off work at the same time, for the first time in a long time. At about 4:30 in the afternoon our power went out, the expected time of turn on was 4 AM. We decided instead of waiting it out in the heat Wed just go over to his parents house in Bellaire. We’d been through the memorial floods and their house hadn’t flooded in neatly 60 years.
We arrived and ate tacos together with his parents and his great-grandmother with dementia. We went to bed at about 10:30 pm. At about 4:15 am, my husband woke me up and said the water was getting really high. We went outside to investigate. It wasn’t as bad as it had been before but it was getting there. We waited it out and by 4:30 the water had rusen enough to flood my car and our garage.
By 6:30 Am water started entering the house. We got everything that we could get off the floors and removed all electrical plugs. We turned off all the breakers and started trying to save art, photographs, and animals. By 7:00 we had two inches in the house.
By 8:30 Richard’s great grandmother had woken up and we had about 6 inches in the house. It was rising fast. We had to start orchestrating a plan to get everyone and and everything we could get in that moment out. I remembered that we went to New Branfels a few weeks ago and we had four intertubes in my car. We had no vehicles and no electricity so we blew them up by mouth and started loading his elderly grandmother into the tubes to transport her to a relatives house a mile and a half away. We trekked and swam the bayou with her in toe hoping to get her some where safe. She had just been put.on hospice in June. She did not need to get sick.
By the time we returned to his parents house the water had crept up to a foot and one inch. We convinced his parents to leave and we started going up the road towards my best friends house and Richard’s mother’s mother’s house. We had four people and a dog. We made it two and a half miles in 2 and a half hours. After we’d bathed and got into dry clothes it finally hit us. We were lucky. We were alive. Everyone was safe and everyone was healthy. We’d lost a few things and it was traumatising but we’re together and that’s all that matters.
Richard’s parents will need to demolish their home and stay with us. My car is trashed. Our home got a little but of water damage. All in all, it went better than expected. Pictures to come soon.
