VOLUNTEER USES LARGE MILITARY TRUCK TO RESCUE HUNDREDS OF SURVIVORS
Houston man takes to flooded streets, escorting the stranded to safety
The stranger drove down Braesheather Drive in a military vehicle taller than Staci Beinart’s one- story house. He stopped at the curb, killed the engine and climbed down from the cab, which sits 5 feet in the air.
Beinart gasped for breath. She took two steps forward, smiled and wrapped the man in a hug. Then she introduced the stranger to her mother.
“Mom! This is the man who rescued us!” said Beinart, 40, before turning back to the man. “I’m sorry. What is your name?”
His name is Nick Sissa. And on Friday afternoon he was the returning hero of Meyerland, a neighborhood west of downtown Houston that saw severe flooding in Hurricane Harvey’s wake.
For two days this week, through blinding rain that threatened his own livelihood, Sissa drove his 21⁄ 2- ton military vehicle through the flooded streets of Houston. He rescued about 300 people, he said.
In the grand scheme of things, Sissa’s efforts may account for little.
Harvey flooded about 300 miles of the Houston metropolitan area, the nation’s fourth- largest city, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes. Rebuilding the city will take years.
To the people of Meyerland, however, Sissa’s big truck left a big impression.
“Oh my gosh. You saved my family! My grandchildren!” said Lisa Davidoff, 62, Beinart’s mother. “I am in debt to you.”
THIS TRUCK IS NO JOKE
When Sissa called his wife, Martha Mae, last year to say he’d purchased an enormous military vehicle, she didn’t believe him. She was pregnant with their first child. Surely now was not the time to purchase such a big toy.
“I didn’t think he’d actually do it,” said Martha Mae Sissa, 34. “I thought he was kidding.”
Nick Sissa is not a frivolous man. He has a serious job, managing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts at a chemical factory being built east of Houston.
He bought the truck at a military auction for $ 6,000. In a state famous for its love of trucks, Sissa owned the biggest truck in town. The truck even has local bragging rights — it was manufactured by the Stewart & Stevenson company in nearby Sealy, Texas.
But Sissa didn’t buy the truck to show off. In fact, he barely drove it. Instead, he parked it in front of his house in Houston’s Third Ward. He kept the tires inflated and the tank nearly full, ready.
“My mother- in- law hated this thing. Hated it!” said Sissa, 34, a native of Birmingham, Ala. “I just knew we’d need it for something.”
A MAN FINDS HIS CALLING
That something was Harvey. The hurricane flooded a rental house Sissa owns, and it came within inches of flooding the house where he lives. It shut down the construction project where he works, leaving his employment in limbo.
“My company goes project to project,” he said. “If your project stops, you don’t have a job.”
Some people would sit in their almost- flooded homes and worry about these things. Sissa filled the tank of his truck with 55 gallons of diesel and left home looking for people to save.
“The funny thing is that when he left, he didn’t know where he was going to go,” Martha Mae said. “He didn’t actually come home that night. All I got was a text that he was working with the fire department.”
One of the first families Sissa found had a preteen daughter with serious medical problems whose feeding tube had come loose in the hurricane. The family was standing outside in the rain a few blocks away from a hospital, but they couldn’t reach the emergency room because the hurricane had turned the nearby Buffalo Bayou into a raging river.
Sissa scooped up the family in his truck and drove them to the hospital’s front door.
Later he rescued two firefighters whose truck was stranded by water. He also rescued dozens of people from Westbury United Methodist Church in Meyerland. They had gone there seeking safety, only to watch the water creep inside the church walls. Sissa picked them up and drove them to a grocery store, where buses took them to shelters.
Sissa’s truck can submerge into water up to 9 feet, he said. Through the deepest water, he always felt the tires planted firmly on the ground.
“This thing is so heavy, I never felt it move,” he said.
During Harvey, police officers and national guardsmen assigned a radio call sign to every vehicle allowed to roam the streets.
“The officer in charge of Meyerland named the truck ‘’ Bama 1,’ ” Sissa said, after his Alabama roots. “I was kind of proud of that.”
Sissa left after a few days, his rescue work replaced by the National Guard. On Friday he drove back to Meyerland.
Beinart and her family recognized the truck immediately.
“You are so nice! And so handsome! I need a photo with you,” Davidoff said. “I’m going to friend you on Facebook.”
“My mother- in- law hated this thing. Hated it! I just knew we’d need it for something.” Nick Sissa, 34, of the huge military vehicle he keeps parked in front of his Houston home