3 Tennessee flood survivors seek rescuers who saved their lives
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Raging waters trapped the family of three against their SUV in the driveway outside their flooded house.
Lightning cracked and thunder boomed as Cayce Vaughn frantically waved a flashlight, desperately hoping to attract attention from someone who could save them. His wife, Kelly, hugged their 3-year-old boy strapped to her chest.
All three yelled for help. Even little Ollie.
The water crept higher and raced faster and faster about 2 a.m. Sunday outside their ranch home in the Crieve Hall neighborhood in southwest Nashville.
Kelly Vaughn looked up and started screaming: “Dear Lord, please help us! We need help right now!”
Help arrived 10 minutes later.
A few hours earlier, Kelly Vaughn, a nurse at St. Thomas West hospital, went to sleep after feeling fairly sure the family avoided the tornadoes forecasters had predicted.
Thunder claps drew her husband, a service director for a truck repair company, into the kitchen around 11:45 p.m. Water typically puddled in their yard when it rained, but out the back window, he saw water covering half their backyard.
When Cayce Vaughn saw some neighbors able to walk through floodwaters to higher ground, he decided to do the same.
The couple loaded backpacks with cellphones, keys, birth certificates and other documents before starting down their driveway.
They estimated the water was more than 3 feet high.
Then another wall of water crashed down their street.
Kelly Vaughn started to lose her footing. Panic set in.
With one hand, Cayce Vaughn grabbed the rear windshield wiper of the family’s Nissan Armada SUV — and his grip started slipping. With the other, he grabbed his wife’s backpack, yanking her and their son to the side of the SUV.
“I knew if I let go, me and my wife and child are dead,” Cayce Vaughn said. “I was absolutely terrified.”
He managed to hold on long enough to get himself and his family in the same spot.
That’s when Kelly Vaughn screamed out her prayers asking for help.
They were answered by strangers in a Chevy Silverado minutes later.
An average size man in a red helmet, red shorts and a white shirt shouted from the truck bed: “Do you need help?”
That man, seemingly unaffected by the water’s strong pull, grabbed a rope tied to the truck and walked through the rising water to the Vaughns.
The three adults used the rope to pull themselves through the water into the truck.
Along the way, the man calmly and repeatedly told Kelly Vaughn to relax, that she was going to be OK.
When they were all safely on higher ground, Kelly Vaughn, 37, began to cry. Her rescuer told her: “God sent me.” She cried even harder as she told the man, “I literally just prayed for you.”
The Vaughns said they hope to find their rescuers.
“I’d like to write them a letter, send them some food. I don’t know,” Kelly Vaughn said. “How do you thank someone who saved your life? Nothing is grand enough.”