HEROES of HARVEY
Couple brought neighbors to their high-and-dry house.
Rivka Colen and Pascal Zinn woke up with a start in the middle of the night. Rain boomed onto the rooftop of their Meyerland home. Two men were huddled outside on their front steps. Who were they, and why were they outside their home at 4 a.m.?
The family surveyed the situation. Two-year-old Mila was awake, and curious. The bayou, they now saw, had swallowed up their street. Their two cars, inside their ground-floor garage, were flooded, but their home — elevated 5 feet, the only such home on the block — was, thankfully, above the rising waterline.
They opened the door. The two unexpected visitors, carrying their distressed dog, were their neighbors whose home had flooded and were forced to wade over to the only high ground they could find — Colen and Zinn’s front steps.
Thus began a long day of rescuing the rest of the flooded neighborhood of the bayou-adjacent Braesvalley Drive. In the darkness of the early hours of Aug. 27 and through the rain delivered by Hurricane Harvey, Zinn waded through grimy black water that rose to his chest. He banged on doors and told people inside to grab their essential medications and get moving.
He found a woman in her late 80s on top of her bed, confused, water all around her. He carried her in his arms and, slowly, crossed the street that was now a river.
A total of 16 neighbors were rescued.
“Everyone was doing something for each other,” Colen said.
The couple, who both work in the Texas Medical Center in jobs related to neuroscience, oversaw their makeshift shelter efficiently. They acted on instinct, knowing they didn’t have time for emotion. But Zinn was touched by the accidental bonds his neighbors formed with one another while huddled around the television.
“Everyone lost so much,” he said. “They all had something in common.”
Couple brought Meyerland neighbors to their high-and-dry house