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Frequent Contributor
Posts: 112
Registered: ‎07-27-2015

Re: To Our Texas Friends in the Path of Harvey

I'm in Beaumont, TX and I just wanted to say thank you to everyone here for your kind words and good wishes. We got lucky in my neighborhood, our house is up on cement blocks, so that bought us some time, the water was about two feet from getting in our house, it was lapping at the bottom of the basin of the birdbath in our front yard, when the rain stopped. I have a photo but I wasn't sure if posting it here was allowed or if anyone would like to see. There's a lady down the street who hoards junk and she left everything out so all kinds of crazy things were floating around our yard and her big cooler got stuck in our ditch blocking the drain and I had to wade out and get it lose because we needed that water to drain, we were so scared it would get in the house and we would lose everything. Luckily the water had a few hours to drain away or soak in before the rains started again. From Tuesday morning at about 6am to Wednesday around 10am I had no sleep, I kept going out onto the front porch with the flash light to see how high it had risen, standing on the bottom step with the water lapping at my toes, around 3am I thought I saw a water moccasin swimming towards me and ran back in, but when daylight came I discovered it had been a lady's black thigh high stocking trimmed with lace, not a snake at all, six pairs of these washed up in our yard. When I knew the danger had passed I just crashed and slept until 7pm. My family has been here since the 1950s and it never flooded in our area before, but because the rains were so relentless, it was nightmare and I hope I never see anything like it again. So many people lost everything, we know how fortunate we are, we just hope things will get better soon, the city water supply has been lost and it's just awful. I'm kicking myself because I was too sick to go out and shop for food before the storm hit, I ordered some non-perishable food with two day delivery, based on the forecasts I really thought I had time, but the packages as luck would have it got held up in the system and we have no Fedex, UPS, or mail delivery, and no idea when they will resume, so regardless of how I feel I'm going to have to force myself to brave the lines and go out and get food soon, we're not out, just getting low, there are only a few stores open and they are only letting a handful of people in at  a time and lines are so long. It's just me and my elderly father and during the worst on Tuesday we thought we were going to lose our car, that water would ruin the transmission, and we don't have the money to buy a new one or for such an expensive repair, but then a neighbor came and moved it to higher ground and saved it for us. I was so overcome, I was not expecting such an act of kindness, that just remembering now brings tears to my eyes. It may sound silly, I know it's just a car, but...Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone here who has had the people of Texas in your thoughts and prayers.