crying won't help you, praying won't do you no good

fair warning...this is long.

timeline:

Thursday Aug. 24^th – prepare for the hurricane

Friday Aug. 25^th – rain off and on with wind and gusts

Saturday Aug. 26^th - light rain off and on during the day

Sunday Aug. 27^th – light rain off and on during the day

Monday Aug.28^th – heavy rain and high wind all day and into the night

Tuesday Aug. 29^th – clear sky by sunset

Wednesday Aug. 30^th

The Colorado River crested at about 5 AM at an historic 50 1/2' but the day dawned with a clear blue sky. Our grandson who had been staying with us while he worked on his truck getting it street legal asked if he could take our truck to Houston to help with rescue and clean up efforts and so he did and my sister and I went to look at the river about 10 AM.

Riverside Park completely underwater as well as Elm St. that runs along the park, and the next block towards town.

Around noon our neighborhood lost power and word on the street was that it was a shut off by the power company rather than damage to lines somewhere but it came back on around 3 PM. By that time we were watching as our neighborhood started taking on water.

There are 6 streets in our neighborhood and our house is on the most southern street. About the time we lost power one of the neighbors told us the most northern street, Engbrock, was flooded and the water was coming our way. By the time it was halfway to us and people were packing up and leaving, the neighborhood was already surrounded by water we didn't think we would be able to get out in the car and didn't know where we could go even if we could have. My sister's house in town was surrounded by water though with about 12” before it flooded her. I moved the car over the shop which is on higher ground than our house and hoped for the best. At some point after the water started coming into the neighborhood we learned that Peach Creek and Boughman's Slough, into which the Colorado River drains into during flood stage, banks failed or were just overpowered by 50.5' of water and a wall of water engulfed the Peach Creek neighborhood flooding houses up to the roof line and then moved on into Peach Acres, our neighborhood.

I'm standing on the corner of our street and the road on the east end looking north. Our shop is on the northeast corner and our house is across the street from the shop.

The west end of our street (that's Richmond Rd. at the end where we were dropped off a little further up later) was underwater while we were still dry but the ditch completely full.

By about 4 PM, the water had circled around from the west and the field behind us was filling fast coming at us from the south and from the north. 

Water was just starting to come in the house. If I had had any sense AT ALL, I would have closed the garage door.

By 4:30 PM we had 5” in the part of the house on a slab. I waded through the knee/thigh deep water in the yard and street to check on the car which was sitting in about 3” of water. Tripped on debris I couldn't see on my way back and lost my prescription glasses that I had tucked in my shirt front because sometimes I can see better without them. Luckily I still had a pair of readers from before I got my glasses.

I made sandbags with wet towels in plastic bags and put them against the door into the lower part of the house and also against the front door but we knew we had to get out as the water was still rising and was now even deeper in the lower part of house. I went back out to get the canoe and paddles when the water was about 3” from coming in the upper house but Marc was afraid the strong current would sweep us away so about 6 PM he called the sheriff's department for a water rescue as we could hear the airboats somewhere in the neighborhood. “OK”, they said, “we'll put you on the list” so we packed up some clothes, dog and cat food, the cat in her carrier and the dog on her leash and waited.

About an hour later the sun set and it was almost full dark when we heard an airboat with a light shining our direction and Marc shined our flashlight back through the dining room window (we had lost power again around 5:30) and the airboat came right up to our front door where the water was about an inch from coming in under the door. These two men, an ex-Marine and his helper, got us into the boat and then went back to the other end of the street to pick up our neighbors and their two young granddaughters and dropped us off on a high spot surrounded by water on the road at the end of our street that takes you into town where there were already a bunch of people, telling us that there were other rescuers in high water trucks ferrying people from this spot to the shelter and in fact, a loaded truck was just then leaving for the shelter, while he went out to rescue more people in our neighborhood.

While all this was happening we learned that the official rescue operation stopped at dark and this man and other private citizens were out in their own boats rescuing the people the official authorities had abandoned til the next morning. I wish I had gotten this man's name. He was so angry that the official operations quit at dark and that the game warden even tried to prevent him from going out. He was having none of it.

Anyway, eventually he was satisfied that he had found as many as he could and loaded up his boat and headed into town. So 23 of us including old people and very young children were stranded on this spot of dry ground surrounded by water that we didn't know if it had stopped rising or not. Us and mosquitoes and about a million fire ants. Someone had parked their SUV and left it on this high spot so I put the cat carrier on the hood and climbed up with the dog and one of my friend's grandgirls but everyone else was standing in the road.

And we waited and we waited and we waited and no one came back for us. We had been there about an hour and a half when we finally saw lights approaching from the north and from town in the south and they basically arrived at the same time. The lights from the north was a National Guard troop carrier that is stationed in Katy (about 60 miles away). They had received a call that they were needed to rescue some people, took them about two minutes to get on the road but an hour to get to us. The lights from the south, from town, was our same rescuer, even more pissed. He had learned that they were not coming back for us and so he returned to cram us all in his truck and boat to get us to a shelter. “This ex-Marine is not leaving anyone behind”, he told us.

So the National Guards helped all 23 of us along with our dogs, of which there were many, and a few cats and all our baggage into the troop carrier and drove us through water to dry land on one of the main roads in town, the road to Boling. It was an eerie drive as there was water in every direction as far as we could see. When we got to dry land, they stopped and conferred with someone about where to take us. The one and only shelter, the Catholic Church, was already full and they were refusing to take animals anyway. The city had tried to open the junior high school and the civic center but both had taken on water. Fortunately, a new shelter, the American Legion Hall, had just opened and were accepting animals and they took us there. 

We were dropped off and they went out to continue to bring people in and that is where we spent Wednesday night.  Wish I had thought to grab a couple of pillows and a blanket.  It was a long sleepless night.

The way this shelter opened was totally a citizen effort. The husband and wife, who own the building that the American Legion rents, had flooding in their house and they got out with their two young grandchildren and their disabled son and their dogs and went to the official shelter at the Catholic Church who turned them away because they weren't accepting animals and this couple refused to abandon their dogs. They knew the American Legion Hall was dry and so since they own the building they went there and opened it up to people and their pets and then throughout the night continued to accept people and animals and got with the city and the Red Cross to become an official shelter. During the night, they called everyone they knew that was dry and could get there to bring whatever food they could and they cooked it there to feed the 70 some odd people that were eventually brought in until the Red Cross could get there the next morning and take over, which they did just about the time we were leaving.

Next: another rescue of sorts