— We’ll go out the door right here.
Lord, I’m gonna get to go home.
Thank you, Jesus.
Yeah, wait a minute—
don’t put that in there yet.
Okay, this is what we’re facing:
we’re going back to our destroyed area.
I never thought I’d have to experience nothing like this in life.
Guess there’s a first time for everything.
We called 9-1-1, they left us on hold for hours.
It got to one point, I wanted to just get my family out.
I was willing to stay behind.
And try to save what I could.
But my wife wouldn’t leave unless I left,
so I had to leave to get her out.
All of this was totally underwater just a few days ago.
Everything here, this is my neighborhood.
This is what we swam out of.
My home, see what’s left.
As you can see, the water line is from here.
We’re gonna have to find us a place to stay for at least about…
maybe six months.
— I’m just a little bit overwhelmed,
but I’m still grateful just to be here to tell the story.
I’ve never been through nothing like this before.
— We crawled through the window to the back of the truck,
waiting for rescue that we never did get.
We wound up leaving about seven o’clock that evening,
when we realized we had to swim out.
— How are both of you feeling right now?
— We’re, you know, heartbroken.
It’s sad, but it’s just a rebuilding process now.
We never expected it.
I mean, we go through it…
and Houston is a strong city.
We’re known for helping each other out and building ourselves back up.
— What do you think the next steps are?
— Replacing everything, rebuilding, getting back up on our feet.
— Do you have any sense of how much you’ve lost?
— That’s materialistic.
We’re not really worried about that.
It’s just the process, the work process, after the fact,
that’s going to be more excruciating than anything.
— Do you know where you’re going to sleep tonight?
— Oh, yeah.
We’re going to my daughter’s house.
— When you walked through your front door just a few moments ago,
what was running through your mind?
— It just doesn’t look like our home.
I just couldn’t believe it.
You know, seeing stuff like that,
I would’ve never imagined that it would happened to us, but…
just seeing everything is…
it’s overwhelming.
— I come out and I see my neighbors,
everybody’s alright—
hey, that’s a plus for me.
Be careful for snakes.
I’d rather be here than to be where I was.
Now I can get some things,
start on some things that need to be done,
to try to get everything back to normal.
Through it all, we’ll make it.
Like I said, take it one day at a time from here.