It is now just after seven in the evening and I'm writing this by candlelight. I keep trying to write but my mind is spinning and I am easily distracted. I know I have to write this down now before I block it out for good... So I'll tell the story:
Only a matter of minutes passed between amazement at our lawn being flooded and the awful realization that something was terribly wrong. The water was rising and fast. We were running back and forth between the kids in the hallway and the sidelights of the front door. In the time that it would take to walk from our hiding place to the door (a matter of perhaps 15 feet) - the water would have risen another 6 or 7 inches. When it reached the top of the porch steps we started moving the kids upstairs. Dave and I were running to grab towels and blankets and stuff under the doors -- hoping to keep some of the water from seeping in too far and ruining the floors.
And that's when it started rising even faster. I was busy finding a place upstairs to tie the dog's leash while Dave ran downstairs to get the pet crate packed with mother cat and kittens from the kitchen. My mother stayed upstairs with the kids and listened intently to the radio - she started telling everyone to pray. By the time we had finished moving the animals and went down for a return trip to gather food and drinks from our supply stock, waves were crashing against our front door and the water had begun to pour in from around the back doors and bubble up through the foundation. We nervously retreated upstairs as we watched the blankets we had placed at the doors float past the staircase -- so much for stopping the seepage. The sound was unbelievable -- like a dozen bath taps open full force and running downstairs. We huddled everyone in the hallway upstairs as far from the windows as possible and then ran frantically from window to window watching what was happening. I had brought my camera. As I snapped pictures from one of the bedroom windows I thought to myself, "No one is ever going to see this. I'm not getting out of this alive."
From my vantage point I could see Dave's truck rocking in the waves. Each new wave would pass higher and higher until finally the truck was gone -- completely submerged. The water was moving fast -- and from the front windows I watched a dining room table pass down the street somewhere near 45 mph. That was a bad sign, I thought -- hopefully someone just happened to have a dining room table sitting in their front yard before the storm and it floated off. Yes, that's it. But the next sight was more terrifying: A boat - a yellow paddle-boat.. the kind they rent out at lake resorts or the beach was coming down Gallery Street. Three young men - no more than teenagers were aboard and trying desperately to steer with what looked like fence boards while they hung on for dear life. I called to Dave who lept down the stairs and crashed through the water to the front door, but by the time he got there the boat was gone... far at the end of the street and disappearing fast. The young man in the back fell off twice as they passed. And then I began to cry.
The water and its contents was actually coming from two directions: from the South and from the East. It would converge and swell and swirl at the corner of our house just in the street and then flow even more quickly west. With each passing minute the debris grew thicker: long sections of wooden fence, awnings, half-intact roofs, lumber of all manner, clothing, and sometimes small animals like rabbits and squirrels clinging to each as they moved down the street. The baby was crying and I moved into the hallway to give her a bottle. As I sat on the floor with my back to the interior hallway wall I could feel the entire house vibrating from wind and water -- and then it started to sway. It was swaying just as a good-sized boat will gently rock in the waves.. a subtle movement but enough to be unsettling. Just then, a hysterical man announced on the radio that we were not at the most intense part of the storm yet. He said we had about four more hours to go. The three of us looked at one another and audibly moaned -- we couldn't make it another four hours. The water was still rising and the house would not continue to stand against it.
We had a queen-sized air mattress leaning on the stairs. And we had two child sized life jackets. What could we do with them? I tried the life jackets on each of the boys -- no luck.. much too small. So then I tried it on Yvonne. It fit. She didn't like it all. There was silence for a moment. We all stared at her and started crying. I took the jacket off for her and she was happy again. I kept trying to work it out in my head -- I could try to carry Emily, but I am not a good swimmer. Dave might be able to get the boys onto the air mattress, but what if they fell off? Maybe if Yvonne wore the life jacket, my mother could manage to hang on to her and they could find safety somehow. Our puppy - I'd take his leash and collar off so he would have a chance of swimming it out without getting caught on debris. Oh and the kitties would never make it. I could open the cage and maybe the mother cat could climb somewhere and cling just as I had seen the other animals doing in the street, but her babies did not even have their eyes open yet and would surely drown.
There was a sound outside - it sounded like a tugboat to me. Looking out the windows we couldn't see anything but it was still out there.. a slow and mournful horn slightly drowned out by the wind, but it sounded nearby. It took several minutes to realize it was coming from somewhere inside the house. Dave waded through the waves downstairs and called to us that it was my Durango in the garage. The water had reached halfway up the car doors inside the garage now and it was obviously shorting out.
"Call 911," I suddenly said to Dave. He grabbed the cell phone and dialed. No answer. The phone said it was on emergency service so we realized it would log our location if we could get through. We took turns dialing - over and over... Sometimes it would ring.. sometimes there would be silence.. but there was never an answer.
We began to pray. We prayed aloud and we prayed fervently. Every one of us. I could barely think of the words and found myself depending on Dave to help me remember. We prayed for thirty minutes like this - sweating and crying and pacing. Then I heard Dave's voice say, "The water is going down."
We ran to the windows - and it was. Much faster than it had come in it was disappearing. It is strange to describe how such an enormous volume of water can all just drain away in a matter of minutes but that's what it was doing. But as it ran out it was taking even more debris with it and among the debris I could see clothing again - but this clothing was not like what I had seen when the water was coming in. This was clothing - half submerged and half full of air... Like what would happen if you jumped into a pool with a jacket on. I told my mother I didn't want to look too closely or I would realize it was not just clothing.
Minutes. That's all it took before we could see the lawn again. My mother sloshed downstairs to the kitchen. She said she felt like she had to do something. So she started sweeping the water out. Dave went down to join her after a few minutes and I stayed upstairs with everyone else. The wind had not stopped and I suppose it was the first time I thought about the wind in quite some time. There was a banging and crashing sound up above us with each new gust... and it was growing louder. Soon, we could hear the wind howling in the attic space just above us. Fearing that now that the wind had gotten inside it would begin to take the roof off above us - I called Dave and we moved the kids down to the stairs - the only dry spot we could find.
There were people walking around outside now. Some were pulling wagons full of stuff and others were carrying children and pets. They looked as dazed as we felt and I wondered at them for walking around out there while the winds were still dangerous. We busied ourselves trying to push the water out for I don't know how long.. and then we ventured outside ourselves.
You wouldn't know what happened. Not looking outside - you wouldn't know. The streets are cleaner than they were before the storm as the water washed everything out with it. There are shingles and some siding scattered about and a handful of houses have some minor roof damage. Okay, so it looks like we had a hurricane... but it looks like we had a normal hurricane. This was not normal. The radio said earlier that the storm missed New Orleans and they were spared the doomsday scenario yet again -- so apparently this thing turned toward us at the last minute. I'm not sure what happened - but whatever it was it shouldn't have happened. Our house looks fine from the outside. Our trees are bent and slightly uprooted but there is no roof damage from the front. We're missing a swath of shingles just at the peak on the west side of the house and most of the siding on the south side. There is a hole in the blue board there -- which is apparently where the wind I heard was getting in - but other than that, no significant damage. If only that's all there was.
We're tired now. We haven't eaten and we don't want to. Our feet are wet and the house stinks terribly but we have no dry towels and we discovered there's no running water to rinse off with. We tried to make some calls from the cell phone this afternoon. I got a signal long enough to call my sister in Birmingham, Alabama - she and her family had evacuated from Gulfport. She was in a panic - she heard she lost part of her roof and all of her beautiful garden. Dave was able to call his parents and let them know we're alive. The connections were so bad it was hard to talk - so we couldn't really describe what just happened to anyone... But they'll all find out soon enough I guess.
Now we have to figure out where to sleep. We are afraid to go upstairs because we aren't sure what happened to the roof. Besides that it is even hotter up there than it is down here. At least downstairs we can get some air circulating through the house when we open the doors and the windows. And I wouldn't want the boys going upstairs with the windows open anyway -- it's a long fall. We have the sofa and our bed at least... They're both wet but the tops are dry enough and I think we can get the boys to sleep on the air mattress on the floor. At least the baby beds were spared.
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