Help Restore Our Lives After the Flood

We are so lucky to have found these amazing friendships with three other families. We have spent a week every summer for the last 9 years together at David’s family’s ancestral home in Ingram, TX. Unfortunately, this year we experienced, first hand, the torrential flooding that hasn’t happened in the last 100 years.

David and I awoke to some water on the floor in our bedroom and within minutes, it was to our knees and in less than 10 minutes, over 5 feet inside the house. Our friends woke to higher water and had to swim and dodge debris to make it to the building we were in because it was the only place with a second story. All 9 of our children, ages 12-16, were in a back house and we could not get to them for hours. They stood on kitchen counters and air mattresses with water rising 6 feet inside that house. It was a helpless 2 hours when we couldn’t get to the kids, only able to communicate with them through occasional phone connections. The kids were amazing, comforting each other and singing together while surrounded by filthy flood waters and floating furniture.

A local friend came and got us several hours later when the flood waters started to recede. She and her husband brought us towels and water and lent us a vehicle to we could get back to Austin. We are extremely lucky to be alive. Between us, we lost 5 vehicles, with 2 families losing their only forms of transportation. We escaped with basically only the clothes on our backs. We lost all electronics, clothes, medications, luggage, the list goes on. That’s just our personal items. We can’t even begin to fathom the amount of family history lost from this ancestral place.

We are trying to regain some of what we lost through insurance. That won’t come close to covering everything or helping us recover psychologically from the disaster. Any help that anyone can give will be greatly appreciated. Any funds collected will be split between these families.