Once I saw a break in the weather I decided to try and drive home. The roads were okay, a little water but nothing that would even get your ankles wet. I then pulled onto a close street on the way home and looked ahead and could see cars ahead stalled out and some had water up to their car windows. I decided to stop and wait. Texas floods fast but it also clears fast. It just kept raining and raining and raining. My car was on a completely dry spot and to get anywhere I would have to pull through waters.
I finally decided to pull into the nearby drugstore and wait it out a bit longer there. I walked inside to get Reese some baby food since we had been waiting for the waters to recede for over 3 hours by now.
It was nearing 6 p.m. and conditions on the road were only getting worse and it was continuing to rain. I finally decided that I would have to either spend the night in my car or try and walk home. I decided to abandon my car and walk home, Reese in arms. At some points on the sidewalk the water was up to my thighs but for the most part it was just calf deep. I walked some on front yards of people's homes and businesses. I arrived at a nearby apartment complex where stranded people were also waiting it out. Looking ahead the water looked deep and a group of girls stopped to tell me that they had already tried to walk it and was up to their chest and very slippery. I was going to go through the wooded, where it was mostly dry but would have been a bit harder to walk through. A man about my age stopped me and said he was driving a bunch of people home in his HUGE truck and would I like a ride. His truck was huge. The seats were at my eye level and needed a push from the driver to get in. Imagine the grave digger with an extended cab and bed. I was so thankful. My arms were already hurting from carrying Reese that little bit and I was maybe a quarter of the way home.
So..... This post is thanking the good man who actually lives in Georgia, he was here working Hurricane Ike relief. He had made several trips through the water taxi-ing people who were stranded. In this day where you can't leave your car unlocked in your own driveway, and have to constantly be looking over your back for people trying to grab your purse, it gives me hope that there are still very good people around. I am sure this young man wanted nothing more than to go home and get into dry clothes but instead put his needs aside for the needs of others. Everyone seemed to be helping people out, I had to borrow cell phones to check in with Randy, my phone was dead (great timing).
I am sitting here, watching on the news the aftermath of yesterday's floods, and am even more thankful than yesterday (if that is even possible). Cars were carried off with passengers, people were swept away by the currents when trying to walk, and hundreds of people just in the local area were forced to spend the night in cars or nearby businesses. Local residents say it hasn't been this bad since Alison in 2001, which means it was even worse than Ike last September. Some areas received 1.5 inches in 12 minutes. The flood stage for the nearby creek is 5.0 feet, yesterday it was at 9.5 feet. Over 10 inches fell within the day, which is more than most places receive within a year.
These aren't my pictures but a few I stole from the web just to show you the amounts of flooding.
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