A 77-year-old father in Texas was saved from a potentially fatal flood by his resourceful son-in-law, just as the rising water threatened to engulf his bed.
Sist Charles found himself trapped in his San Angelo home when floodwaters began to surge. His daughter, Rachel Sanchez, expressed frustration that 911 didn’t respond to their calls for help. “I was crying, I was sad,” she said, reflecting on the decades spent in their home without such an incident occurring.
At around 4 a.m., alarming flood warnings were issued for residents near Carr County due to a sudden increase in the Guadalupe River’s levels. The floodwaters had already flooded the road, pushing a vehicle into Sanchez’s yard.
“It looked like a river,” Sanchez recalled. The water quickly poured into their home, rising to thigh height.
Sanchez scrambled to unplug electrical cords to prevent a possible electrocution of her family. Yet soon after, it became clear they needed to evacuate. “I have a father in hospice, and I was more focused on him. He can’t walk. It’s really hard to move him. I couldn’t lift him,” she explained. Charles suffers from dementia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, complicating matters further. Her husband is also disabled, having recently undergone ankle surgery, leaving them all quite helpless.
Despite repeated calls to 911, Sanchez was informed that rescuers couldn’t reach them due to flooding. Eventually, the calls stopped going through.
As the water rose and reached the bottom of Charles’s mattress, her son-in-law, Robert, arrived with a friend, Gilbert. They took a kayak to reach the house. “They went through the alley. My daughter was at the end, crying, ‘Mom, we’re coming. Grandpa’s fine.’ I was crying too,” Sanchez noted.
With Robert’s assistance, Charles was lifted and transported to an ambulance about six hours after the flood began.
Charles is currently in stable condition and under care at a local hospital. When asked what might have happened without their timely intervention, Sanchez stated plainly, “He would have drowned.”
Sanchez’s husband and daughter are staying with them as they await a safe return home. While the floodwaters recede, she plans to visit their house, though uncertainty looms about the extent of the damage.
The devastation compounds their challenges, especially since Sanchez’s family has faced calamities before. “It’s just sad. Two years ago, my daughter lost everything in a fire,” she reflected. “Now we have this. It’s crazy.”
