I Just Can't Die Like This

A wall of water five feet high cascaded around the corner as Alexis tried to escape her waterfront home in her pickup truck.  The water struck the truck launching it off the ground, and it began to actually float toward the lagoon.  Alexis felt helpless and cried, “I’m done!  Oh, please, please, God, please not today.”  It all happened so quickly.  Alexis pled, “Dear God, I don’t want to end like this!”  And then she heard a “boom” as the truck struck something underneath the swiftly rushing water.  Alexis was not sure if she hit a piling or debris, but she floored the gas pedal and something caught.   She had traction.   The truck propelled forward back towards safety, but the danger was not over.

Alexis recalled her morning leading up to this moment.  Alexis and Jim had been packing up some things to leave, but they had no idea of the serious, imminent danger they were in.  “It came up so fast,” recalled Alexis.  “I looked out the back door, and the water was coming up to the back door.  I ran to the front, and I saw the water coming around the corner to the front door.  I said, ‘We got to get out now!’   I was so upset.  I was screaming, barking orders like a maniac.   Jim said, ‘Will you cool?’  I replied, ‘No, we gotta leave now.  We’ve got seconds.’  I just had this fear.” 

Alexis knew they should have left sooner.  She had not been able to motivate anyone to move fast enough until now.  She called her daughter Angela who lived only blocks away insisting, “Angie, now, get out now.”  “She listened to me.  She never listens to me.  She heard the horror in my voice.”  Alexis ordered, “Meet me on the corner.”  Now there was no time to even grab anything, not even papers. “I just grabbed the cats,” recalled Alexis.  “I had two cats.  I threw them in the truck.  It was pouring rain, and the cats were screaming.  It didn’t matter.  I didn’t have time to grab anything.  I had no clothing, no shoes, nothing.  All the bags that I did pack the night before, I couldn’t get them.  If I had waited, I think, one more minute, I don’t think I’d be sitting here.  I had to go.  Why I chose to go right then, I don’t know, but I had to go.  It was a nightmare.  I can still see the wall of water.”

Jim had left first trying to find the road in his pickup.  Angela had just driven around the corner through flooded streets with her one year old daughter Alexandra and her two cats, as she witnessed her mother Alexis approaching in her pickup truck to meet them and flee the storm.   Angela watched in fear as she became part of the nightmare.  Alexis used her cell phone to instruct Angela to pull her small car behind her mother’s truck sticking close to the bumper so that the “V” of water formed by the truck would forge a path through the water for Angela.  Alexis did not take her foot off the gas.  “I rammed it, and she’s right behind me the whole way.  It’s like I’m pushing the water with my vehicle so she could get out.  When we looked behind us, it all closed in.  Angela was horrified, the look on her face, she was scared to death.”

“You couldn’t see the road, so you didn’t know where the heck you were going.  I was just going by dead reckoning.  That was so bad,” expressed Alexis.  “You know what it looked like?  You couldn’t see the road, and you’re sitting there in the vehicle.  All you could see were halves of houses.  It looked, as far as your eye could see, like I was sitting in the middle of the ocean. …I looked around as I’m driving through this thinking and praying the whole time.”

“He heard me that day.  I was screaming, ‘God, please, I can’t die like this.  I just can’t die like this.’  And I thought of my daughter and granddaughter.  If I had to save one, I can only save one.  Which one do I choose?  This is what is going through my head.”

“It was so fast, so quick.  You didn’t have time to think, respond, save yourself.  It’s over,” Alexis related through her tears. … “Just praying the whole time. … Make the best of it.  So scary.”

Alexis is an excellent swimmer, but her daughter cannot swim and Alexandra is only one year’s old and could not possibly save herself.  With the strong, flowing current, it is doubtful that Alexis would even have a chance to save herself if the truck could not break free to safety.  The cats were in a roofed carrier in the back of the truck.  Alexis could hear them screaming.  She knew they would not have a chance either if anything happened to her.

There was nobody on the road, and the roads were closed.  They had to drive around barricades to escape.  There is only one road in and there was a long way to go to reach safety.   They did escape. 

The house was battered from boats ramming into it as vessels were carried along by the current.  Windows were broken, and the yard was strewn with debris. All the furniture on the first floor was destroyed by salt water that had flooded their home. The drywall, insulation, and flooring had to be torn out.  The second floor on Jim’s and Alexis’ house survived, but the house was then robbed the following Saturday.  Someone put a ladder up to the house and entered through an upstairs window.  They tore everything apart upstairs, emptying drawers, destroying property, and throwing things around.  The robber found and stole the money that had been in the house to pay for replacing drywall.  “It puts the topping on the cake,” assessed Alexis.

Alexis shared that some people who stayed had died.  Some were electrocuted, others drowned, and one had a heart attack.   Down the street from her, two homes burned to the ground.  Vehicles that remained were destroyed.  One of Angela’s neighbors had her house pushed off its foundation.  When the woman’s 25 year old daughter came to help her mother the following day, the daughter died of a heart attack.  Alexis regretfully shared, “What a sweet lady the mother and daughter were.  The mother is beside herself.  What can I do?  I can’t do anything.  I can’t even help myself.”

Jim and Alexis were so pleased with the TouchGlobal team who came to help them.  They were amazed at all that was accomplished.  Her street was filled with volunteers from Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana who went house to house and tore out drywall and soggy insulation, pulled up floors, and carried furniture and belongings to the street.  They shared hope, prayer, and concern with the homeowners and their families.  There is much to be done yet.  Alexis summed things up, “We live in America.  We’re not at war.  Things are so great, and then we are faced with a catastrophe.  You’re not used to stuff like this.  You’re running for your life.  It’s just overwhelming and so terrifying that words cannot describe it. …  It looks like we were bombed. … I lived through this whole darn thing.  That’s all I can say.”

There are many homeowners in need of help from the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.  For information on how you can respond to these needs, go to www.efca.org/hurricane-Sandy .

 

 by Laura-Jean Watson