Rescue crews bring welcome salvation to the desperate
DICKINSON — Jody Garcia checked in with dispatch first thing Monday.
There were 176 rescue calls holding on the second day of flooding in this deluged subdivision south of League City, parts of which had turned into a patchwork of canals, thanks to more than 25 inches of rain.
The volunteer firefighter in San Leon grew up in this neighborhood, and for him the rampage of Hurricane Harvey was personal. His first rescue Sunday was his cousin, who was stuck in an attic with her small child.
To get to her, Garcia employed the ingenuity so many other Texans have during this disaster and enlisted the help of a stranger he found on the side of the road. Richard Robinson had a boat. Garcia had a truck. Together, they rescued more than a hundred people on Sunday alone. Entire families were lifted into Robinson’s small, gray dinghy.
Such rescues — at least 8,000 of them at last count — have become the norm since the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey reached the Houston area Saturday. In neighborhood after neighborhood, first responders in high-tech water craft and volunteers in a motley flotilla of jon boats, kayaks, canoes and virtually anything that floats have waded into the flood to help those trapped in the floods.
Some wouldn’t leave
On Monday, the second day of Garcia’s mission in Dickinson, there were still plenty of people to be found. His first call was on Nevada Street, where water just hours before had gushed through like a river.
“Fire Department,” Garcia yelled, pounding on the door of a house. “Anyone there?”
Elizabeth Ovendorff opened the door. The 71-year-old had been stuck inside for so long she didn’t even know what day it was. Her cellphone died a day ago, and she had lost all power. When water coursed through the house rising past her knees, she climbed onto her bed with her dog, Bailey.
“I recommend and advise you to get out of here,” Garcia said. “More rain is coming.”
Ovendorff demurred. She didn’t want to leave Bailey, and she didn’t want to take him to a shelter.
“He doesn’t get along real well with other dogs,” she worried.
Garcia pressed. The water had receded some, but it was certain to rise again as the tropical storm hovered over the area, hammering drainage systems that were already saturated.
“People deciding to stay makes it harder for everyone,” the firefighter said.
Ovendorff said she understood. She thanked him but wasn’t going anywhere.
Garcia noted her address and promised to check back later.
The dispatcher sent him to Cedar Drive, where more than 10 feet of water covered parts of the road, leaving only the tops of some vehicles showing. Garcia checked out an apartment complex, but no one was inside. Gusts of wind had broken a window. Children’s books and toddler clothes floated in the water.
Garcia climbed back into the dinghy with Robinson, who is 62 and works at Southwest Airlines.
“I was high and dry, and I saw that everybody else had a way worse situation than me,” Robinson said. “I felt like I could contribute.”
The two navigated carefully though the high water, but no one was home.
The dispatcher radioed: Could they go to 406 Deats Road? The call had been holding since yesterday, and there were apparently several people inside. The street was the epicenter of flooding in Dickinson, itself one of the worst-hit areas in one of the nation’s worst-ever storms. Much of it was passable only by boat.
‘Awesome to see’
Like Garcia and Robinson, dozens of volunteers had gathered here Monday, bringing their boats, kayaks, Jet Skis and canoes. One rescue group traveled from Fort Worth. The Cajun Navy, a grassroots group of leisure boat owners, arrived from Louisiana.
“Everyone is doing what they can,” Garcia said. “It’s awesome to see.”
They chugged past David Shapp and his girlfriend, Brooke Koppenberger, who stood in their garage on what had become practically an island.
“No one had any idea what was coming,” Shapp said, surveying the wreckage of what he could see of Deats Road. The water had lapped up his driveway, reaching 2 feet high in the garage. Desperate neighbors at one point took refuge here after they tried to evacuate, but water rushed into their car.
“It was really surprising how long it took before boats started coming down,” Shapp said.
But once they did Sunday morning, the 27-yearold engineer had already decided to stay. He figured they had made it through the worst. Surely the water couldn’t get any higher than it already had?
A few houses down, neighbors on lower ground had long since abandoned their homes.
“Five adults, three children and two dogs,” someone had scrawled in huge letters over the front of a house. On another, they had written “Safe.”
Some who had left might have been among the roughly 160 Dickinson evacuees who arrived at Galveston’s Scholes International Airport Monday afternoon to have the Texas Air National Guard airlift them to safer spots in North Texas.
As they waited, 6-yearold Paisley Golden hugged her doll and wrapped her arms around her sister. Just hours earlier, she had no idea if her family had made it out, or even if they were still alive.
“I thought my mom was dead,” she said.
The rain had come as Paisley was visiting her babysitter, filling the street suddenly with shoulder-deep water. Her family was nowhere in sight. She only found them again a day later in this group of evacuees in Galveston.
‘One big river’
John Curry sat quietly to the side. He had barely slept since his barking dogs woke him up at around 2 a.m. Sunday.
“I stepped off my bed and found my foot was immersed in water,” he said. “My whole carpet was starting to float.”
As the waters rose — to his ankles, his knees, his chest — Curry found higher ground at the home of a cousin. But he couldn’t leave behind his two 60-pound mutts who were the reason he was alive at all.
So he put them in a foam ice chest and ferried them to safety one at a time. Together, they waited. It wasn’t until rescuers picked them up 12 hours later that the scope of the area’s damage sunk in.
“The whole place was just one big river,” he said. “We saw people with tents strapped on top of their houses. They were the ones who wouldn’t leave.” Curry didn’t fault them. “We don’t give up,” he said of the area’s residents. “We love where we are.”
On Deats Road, several residents were stubbornly waiting it out, even after the city ordered mandatory evacuations late Monday afternoon.
For Debbie Barlow, it wasn’t being difficult, or even reckless. The 46-yearold and her husband live in a three-story elevated home. During the worst so far, water reached the first floor. If more came, they could go to the top level. And they have a dog, four cats and four chickens.
“We don’t feel like we’re invincible,” she said. “We just feel like we’ll be OK.”
The city’s orders had intensified the afternoon’s rescue efforts. The rain began to fall again, elevating the urgency.
Garcia had meanwhile teamed up with Barry Gailey, a 44-year-old safety worker from League City who had a raised truck. Garcia and Robinson ferried people to Gailey, who trucked them through deep water to higher land.
“It’s just going so much faster now that we’re teamed up,” Garcia said.
By late Monday, they had almost finished combing through an apartment complex at the end of Deats Road. One of their last rescues were four construction workers from Honduras who had been stuck inside since Saturday.
But who knew how many others were still there?