Hunt, Texas – Like others who were in homes or on vacation during the weekend of July 4 at the Guadalupe River in Texas, Christian Fell, 25, was shaken by thunder.
It was around 3 in the morning, just a couple of hours since Fell had gone to sleep alone in his grandmother’s house in the river in Hunt, Texas. The rest of his family stayed upstream in another house. Then came more noise, this time playing like a robbery, and got out of bed.
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“I get up and swing my feet on the side of the bed and I can feel water,” Fell said.
The river water that normally observed from the courtyard of the historic stone house that his grandfather built now was on his ankles and rapted quickly.
He soon learned that he was dragging trees and rubble those that crashed into the house, broke the patio, almost caught him inside and finally forced him to swim through a window and cling to a box of meters to survive.
In what a place said is a region considered the Texas jewel, where the river is known more as a place of play and relaxation, the communities are recovering from the mortal floods that have claimed the lives of dozens of people, including 15 children.
There had been warnings of sudden floods, but residents said those are not unusual in the area, which, as much of the State, had also been in a drought of years.
So he fell, like many others, went to sleep, something distrustful of the storm but waiting to wake up the barbecues, the smell of a wet trees and the family river that fish, walked and submerged for years.
On the other hand, for the morning, the morning of July 4 became a struggle for survival.
With the water climbing quickly, he walked from the bedroom to the living room, using the flashlight on his phone. He turned to see water that poured into the shattered patio. He tried the kitchen door, hoping to reach his truck.
“I could not go through the kitchen door because as soon as I opened it, all this water began to flood and it was approximately to the reach of the waist, probably about five minutes after I woke up,” said Fell, who measures 6 feet high.
He returned to the room and tried to climb to the air mattress where he had been sleeping, but he couldn’t. A door elsewhere in the house would not open. He tried to call 911 but was disconnected three times, he said. In a call, he said that the dispatcher told him to call again when the water was at the chin level.
“I had to pass underwater and swim through the broken window,” he said.
Once outside, he tried to get on the roof, but the gutter he grabbed to break. Instead, it fell to a box of meters mounted in the house, whose upper part is about 7 feet on the ground. He stopped in his narrow part for several hours, his hands dangerously near the electrical cables, until the water backed down.
A tree, a shed, a phone post and a porch
Matt Meagher, 39, and Erin Burges, were at home in the subdivision of Abejorros, on the other side of the street from the river. The house, which Burgess bought five years ago, is one of the closest to the river, the site of the quiet morning walks, until July 4.
They were also awakened by thunder. With his dog, Stella came out to see the rain, which was heavy, but not alarming. They returned to bed and reviewed Facebook to obtain weather warnings, but found no.
“I suddenly looked at him and said: ‘What is that sound?’ And he said: “It seems that it is raining in the house.”
That was around 4:30 am at 5:15 am, Burgess and his 19 -year -old son clung to a large tree in his front courtyard, enduring for an hour. The water had increased so high, Burgess of tiptoe to keep the head above it. They had tried to reach the roof, but were swept to the tree.
Meagher grabbed Stella and was fighting against the river’s current while preparing against a shed that was on the back of his truck.
But the truck began to move and Meagher was almost caught against him.
“So I released and then went to that phone down there,” he said, pointing to a post to several roads. He had barely released before the water hit a SUV in the same post. His stepson had shouted that the vehicle was heading towards his way.
“A car began to roll towards me, so I released him again and was about to be crushed twice,” he said.
The current took him by the block and pushed him against the wooden porch railing of a neighbor who was looking through a window with his flashlight. The neighbor attracted him to him already Stella, still in his arms, inside a safe place.
“I didn’t think I would ever see him again,” Burgess said. “I was whistling and I was screaming and then I didn’t hear him whistling.”
Burgess said he clung to a tree while praying for his neighborhood, and because the water “drops and stops running.”
Meagher and Burgess said almost everything at home was destroyed. They estimate that the water reached 8 feet. The mud and wastewater of the septic tank also filled the infiniti M37 2004, a car that Meagher, which builds Hot Rods, had customized with a $ 7,000 engine and $ 5,000 tires.
They had grabbed keys and flashlights, and little else, before the water broke through their door.
They did not know what, in any case, could be rescued. But they gathered at a neighbor’s house later that day with an unexpected survivor.
“When the water went back … we returned and found our cat [Kiki]”Burgess said.” Our cat was floating in my bed, alive. “
