Flood of 2016 - One Year Later

I recall how upset my mother was.... My parents flooded in the "flood of a lifetime" 1983 flood. Afterwards, they built their house 4' off the ground. Then took water again last year.

Troy and the boys from alligator hunters driving their air boat up to my parents house around Lake Martin wanting to know if they needed anything.

My dad calling me to call the red-cross to bring him ice for his cocktails.

My mother claiming she was going to ride it out with my dad until the next day when she realized she had to use a 5 gallon bucket on the back porch to go to the bathroom.

I remember the smells....

Tuna salad that fell out the fridge at my rental property.

Freezer full of deer and fish at my house.

The neighborhood about a week after.

Yea I don't wanna do that again.

mack jr #1 and one of my nephews carried 2 old ladies out of their house (1 in a wheel chair another with a walker) and brought them to our house. they stayed till BRFD floated up to my front door to get them a few hours later. they had 2' of water. our house stayed dry with 7/8" of an inch to spare.
also, everyone in the neighborhood knowing i'm a house builder was asking me how to de-construct their house. i was happy to help but i did have one doofus yank out his cooktop before disconnecting the gas.
with 3 family members flooded and plenty friends flooded it was 2 weeks of constantly being filthy and wore slap out.
i up to 6 dogs in backyard at one time, none of them mine. one of my neighbors borrowed my knee board to float her cats out.
also rescued a buddies mother-in-law with an inertube because her bad knees wouldn't have made it walking through the flood water.

It is truly astounding the amount of people that took on water to how few deaths and injuries there were.

i got married on the day of the flood...........in vegas.

I only have three photos on my phone from that day, and one is of the guy's right-angled ankle on the bow of my boat. His family is all in the photo, so I won't post that here.

This one was the very short side of the line right when we got off the interstate:



This was the intersection of 431 and 931 where we launched.

I remember starting to load sandbags for random people the Friday evening. I stopped for a break and looked around to see our community come together to help each other. I became better friends with my neighbors that whole weekend. My family and I helped sandbag 5 houses in those 3 days, none of them ours, and in the end only 1 made it. There were so many doing the same things as us, brought back hope in the face of pending disaster.

I was in my shop at 5 am one morning working on getting my generator running when I heard a woman screaming my name from my back porch. It was a neighbor holding her 1 year old daughter in panic because the water came up a few feet in an matter of a couple hours. We ran to her house, gathered a crew as best we could only to have water enter the house as we were throwing down sandbags... she sat weeping holding her girl...

I got out by boat near the peak of the crest and noticed a few boats near our local church. I soon joined in on helping them retrieve coffins that were floating away. Had to tie a few to trees and mailboxes.

I remeber an airboat crossing my front yard and sitting there with my young son telling him this is something he will remember for a lifetime, he mentioned it to me the other day...


There was a knock at my door and it was a neighborhood kid asking to bring my little boat down the street. A Demco Electric guy who had not seen his family for days wanted someone to take him around our community by boat so that he could isolate houses that were still underwater. He stood up in my little bateau with perfect balance opening circuits with a 20 foot stick. They turned our power back on later that day after it had been off for 4 days.

Spiders.. lots of spiders.. infections on open wounds for a few weeks...

A picture of serinity one night, my little bateau was tied to the crape myrtle lined on my driveway and the moon was reflecting off the water in my front yard...

How uterlly thankful I am to this day that my family was safe and my house was dry...

quote:

---

bluemoons

---

Thanks to you, everyone with you, and everyone else like you, that showed up and helped where they could. Was pure awesomeness!

We started getting a little concerned on Friday the 12th. The water was standing moreso than normal in my hood but that afternoon/evening the rain seeemd to slack and the water started to drain. My wife woke up around 0630 on the 13th then came back to the bedroom and told me it looked like the water had drained. I woke up about 30 minutes later and my whole yard was covered in water. I told my wife we need to pack up would we could, load the kids in my truck and try to leave. We spend about 15 minutes loading 2 suit cases and getting some basic stuff needed for my twins who were turning 2 the next day. We made it out of my hood in my truck and when we got down to highway 16 we relized it was already to high to make it by truck so we turned around and barely made it back to my house. Within about 10 minutes of being back in the house the water started coming in. We started calling people we knew and one friend was able to get a boat and started headed or way from pride, but he was unsure if he'd be able to get to us. After being back home for 45 minutes of so the water had gotten about 8-10 inches in the house. I was mainly concerned since I had my littles ones in the house. About that time I looked out my window and saw some guys pushing a bateau down the street. I flagged them down and they told us to hop in. Me, the wife and the 2 kids got in along with our suitcases. We went to two other houses and got 2 elderly couples. We pushed the boat out of the back of the neighborhood which took out further north in highway 16 where the water had gotten very deep yet. We got out of the boat once the water got shallow enough and carried the kids and suit cases north in highway 16. A young black couple in a truck picked us up and brought us down towards magnolia bridge rd where there was a crossfit gym that was opened. We hung out there for probably 2-3 hours until our friends in the boat were able to get to us. The picked us up ad brought us to 16 and cockerham where they had launched the boat. Once we were safely in the truck we had to figure out how to get out of LP. We finally figured out port Vincent hadn't flooded yet so we drove though there and were able to get into BR that way. We went to my parents house intially and got the kids cleaned up. I started seeing in social media friends who had grown up with me in my parents neighborhood saying their parents houses were starting to flood in the back part of the neighborhood. We decided to leave while we could so my brother drove us to a family members house off bluebonnet where we ended up living for the next five months.