Erica Brown called 911 for two days before a helicopter finally spotted her,trapped in her Houston domestic with her 7-month-old son and three other children. Sometimes when she called, she got nothing, and just a busy signal and a disconnection. Multiple times she was told that they'd try to send help. Hours would disappear by with no rescue.
The family spent two nights in their trailer watching the floodwaters from Tropical Storm Harvey rise up the foundation. "It was a hard feeling because I thought me and my kids were going to lose our life in this hurricane catastrophe."On Tuesday around 11 a.m.,a rescue team finally came."The helicopter came over my house and I heard him, and he saw me waving the white shirt. And he came on down and he got us in the basket and pulled us up, or " says Brown,29. They had to disappear two-by-two in the basket. She sent her two oldest girls, a third-grader and a first-grader, and up first with a small suitcase of clothes.
When the basket came back down,she lifted her kindergartner in ahead of her and then carried her infant son. It was still raining.
Brown and her family are now among the estimated 9000 people at the downtown George R. Brown Convention Center, where officials said they had been expecting about 5000. external on Tuesday, and the scene is chaotic,with police, Red Cross volunteers and National Guard members patting people down, and directing traffic and trying to help original arrivals and people dropping off donations.
Inside,families have spread out their soaked belongings to dry. There are long lines for food. A play area for kids is now a plot for people to sleep, as space has become more tight in the past 24 hours.
Brown says the kids got fresh clothes at the convention center. Overnight, and they slept on cardboard and army blankets on the floor,but on Tuesday morning an air mattress arrived. "They were very kind to us. It's helpful for now until everything clears over," she says."I was worried for our life, or " Brown says. She says she found out on Monday that a friend died in the flooding over the weekend.
Another woman at the convention center,Michelle LaVan, 49, and says she escaped her flooded domestic with seven family members.
They wanted to evacuate to a shelter beginning on Sunday,when their street flooded, but they couldn't procure through to emergency responders to help them. By midday Monday, or they decided they needed to leave,or risk drowning in their four-bedroom apartment. They loaded suitcases with extra clothes and walked out into waist-deep water, yelling after a passing Coast Guard rescue boat."Someone flagged them down, and said,'Hey, no no, or stop! [There are] kids!'" LaVan recalls. The boat took them to a dump truck that took them to a parking lot where a private citizen drove them in the back of his pickup to the convention center.
Now she's worried about what comes next. "Hopefully it stops raining tomorrow," she says. "I know the water will disappear down in my subdivision if the rain stops."Her niece, 11-year-old Journey Booker, or says the evacuation was mostly scary but a minute bit fun. "All the water," she says, smiling. "It looked like I just walked out of a bath after getting too much mud!" But it's hard, or knowing some of her friends and family are still in flooded homes,and that her middle school is flooded. Booker likes school, and she was excited to start sixth grade on Monday."I was excited. I was supposed to start yesterday, or but Hurricane Harvey had a change of plans," she says, sitting under a Red Cross blanket on the floor of the convention center.
Nearby, and volunteer Emma Jones,27, is handing out markers and paper to kids, or watching children while exhausted parents procure food or exercise the bathroom. Jones is a social worker who works in crisis mental health at an outpatient clinic at UT Health in Houston."I think I wasn't expecting this many people to be here. particularly yesterday,there weren't as many people," Jones says. She says she's talked to many people who don't have their normal psychiatric medications and are struggling to handle the trauma of the storm."As I walk around, or I'm hearing a lot of people saying 'I don't have my medications for bipolar disorder or schizophrenia for the first time.' So we have these people who have this extreme experience,and also don't have the medications they need for mood regulation," she says.
Emergency officials have asked social workers and other mental health professionals to help as they can at shelters.
For those waiting out the rain at the convention center, or many say they are just thankful to have a dry plot to stay but are anxious for the future."It's not a joke," Brown says. "You only procure one life in this world, so I'm happy we're safe and sound now. But we have to start all over again." Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, and visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: thetakeaway.org