CENTER POINT, Texas – They escaped floodwaters, saved their animals, witnessed rescues and helped make heartbreaking recoveries.
“A nightmare. It was crazy,” Center Point resident Angela Simons said. “Pretty rough waiting for everybody to be found, just the destruction. I actually survived Hurricane Harvey in 2017, and this definitely reminded me a lot of that.”
“This is a different kind of beast,” said Mike Richards who had experience with the floods of 1987.
Both Richards and Simons have both seen things that will remain in their memories.
“I don’t really know what the emotion is,” Richards said. “I keep coming back to just a broken heart. It’s affected a lot of people in a lot of ways.”
Richards has land in Center Point along on the Guadalupe River where his daughter lives.
“She called (and) said, ‘Come over,’ — that there was a man that was laying down there by the house,” Richards said. “I got all my friends and family down here and we started finding people.”
Meanwhile, Richards’ cabin was torn up and swept away during the flood.
“It’s five or six pieces up and down the river,” Richards said. “I just finished and it took me three years to finish.”
Simons lives down the street, across the road from the river. Her landlord and friend lives along on the river where they saw things they never thought they would.
“An actual girl out here stranded in the tree in front of his house that they had to call the water rescue for,” Simons said. “She was just clinging to a big ol’ cypress tree out there in the middle, screaming. They got her. It was hours, but they got her down.”
Somehow, some of their animals survived the flood.
Simons has eight chickens who all survived as floodwaters rose in their coop.
“The water was all the way up here inside the chicken coop, but they had got up in there and everybody was good,” Simons said, showing the two levels of the coop.
Then there’s Mohawk, Richards’ 500-pound hog.
“His pen was crushed like a can. He swam to the fence and then he swam over the fence and we saw him walking down Sutherland Road,” Richards said, laughing. “He was mad. Yeah, but he was alive. Nothing a few powdered donuts can’t fix.”
As they find some measure of joy in those silver linings, their pain is being healed by kindness.
“There’s been a lot of people here helping water, food, cleanup,” Simons said.
Richards is still in awe about the volunteers who have come to help him on his own land.
“One day, we had 150 down here,” Richards said. “I mean the kindness everybody was showing was just incredible.”
Richards plans to build a memorial on his land for the flood victims who were found there.
The entire event and aftermath have allowed him to see through what he said has been a lot of division.
“The most important thing is, we’re all in the family of man, and it shouldn’t take a disaster for people to care about each other,” Richards said.
The community — though still reeling — also remains hopeful.
“We will recover,” Simons said. “It might take some time, but we’ll fully recover.”
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