Man plays ‘Go Fish’ in house
PATIENTS AT a Houston-area nursing home were airlifted to safety Sunday after being trapped by Harvey’s floodwaters.
A haunting image from inside the flooded facility — La Vita Bella in Dickinson, Galveston County — shows women clinging to their belongings as the murky water rose above the arms of their chairs and walkers.
Trudy Lampson, who owns the nursing home, sent flood photos to her daughter and sonin-law, Kim and Timothy McIntosh, in Florida.
Timothy shared the images on Twitter.
“Need help asap emergency services please,” he wrote.
Some Twitter users suspected the image was fake — but the couple said the photo is 100% real. A second image shows the water level rising in a corner of the room.
About 20 people stay at the facility, and many use wheelchairs and oxygen tanks.
Lampson was told Saturday not to evacuate ahead of the deadly storm, since the facility has never flooded before, her daughter said.
“It’s never even flooded past the sidewalk,” Kim McIntosh told the Daily News. “No one asked her to evacuate, but she has evacuation plans to leave.”
The facility has a personal connection for Lampson — her mother was once a patient there.
“She loves (the patients) like her family,” Kim McIntosh said of her mother. “It’s her whole life.”
Hours following Timothy McIntosh’s Twitter post, the Galveston County Office of Emergency Management confirmed that the situation at La Vita Bella was resolved — and that all the patients were safe.
The residents were airlifted to safety, Office of Emergency Management coordinator David Popoff confirmed to the Galveston County Daily News.
The news was a relief for Timothy and Kim McIntosh.
“RESCUED!! Thank you to the National Guard & the Galveston City Emergency crew for our rescue,” Timothy McIntosh wrote. THIS FISH swam into the wrong home. A shirtless man was captured on video diving after a fish and catching it with his bare hands in a Houston home flooded by Hurricane Harvey. “Why go out looking for food when the food is coming to our living room?” wrote Viviana Saldana, who posted the video to Facebook on Saturday. The man can be seen bellyflopping around the flooded living room until he grabs the fish by its tail. “Houstonians fishing INSIDE their home – near I-45 and Monroe,” an ABC13 reporter wrote on Twitter. Harvey struck Texas as a Category 4 hurricane Friday night but made its way through Sunday as a tropical storm. The National Weather Service said parts of Houston and areas west of the city could receive a Texas record of 50 inches of rain.Elizabeth three children and mother to the George R. Brown Convention Center on Sunday afternoon.
“I’ve lost everything,” she added. “I don’t know how my family will recover from this. I’m just going to pray. That’s all I can do.”
Joseph Wilcox and his family were rescued by Coast Guard members in a boat at around 4 p.m. Sunday.
“We had no lights,” he said hours later, surrounded by his grandchildren. “We had no power. It was getting really hot in the house.”
Julie Cook, who lives in a second-floor apartment, had to be airlifted to safety.
“We couldn’t get out,” she said. “We were shocked by how close the water was to our bedroom window.”
The American Red Cross expects 1,500 people to pack the shelter — which was filled with cots and medical supplies — with many likely to be stuck there for days.
“There’s going to be long hours ahead,” said Red Cross spokesman Lloyd Zial.