HUNT, Texas — Like others who were in homes or vacationing over the July 4 weekend at Texas’ Guadalupe River, Christian Fell, 25, was jolted awake by the crack of thunder.
It was about 3 a.m., just a couple hours since Fell had gone to sleep alone in his grandmother’s home on the river in Hunt, Texas. The rest of his family was staying upriver at another house. Then came more noise — this time sounding like a break-in — and he got out of bed.
“I get up and I swing my feet over the side of the bed and I can feel water,” Fell said.
The river water that he’d normally watch from the patio of the historic stone home his grandfather built was now over his ankles — and rising fast.
He would soon learn it was dragging trees and debris that slammed against the house, tore up the patio, nearly trapped him inside and ultimately forced him to swim through a window and cling to a meter box to survive.
In what one local said is a region considered the jewel of Texas, where the river is known more as a place of play and relaxation, communities are reeling from deadly flooding that has claimed the lives of dozens of people, including 15 children.
There had been flash flood warnings, but residents said those are not unusual in the area, which, like much of the state, had also been in a yearslong drought.
So Fell, like many others, went to sleep, some wary of the storm but expecting to wake to barbecues, the smell of a wet trees and the familiar river they fished, waded and plunged into for years.
Instead, for Fell, the early-morning hours of July 4 became a fight for survival.
With the water rising fast, he walked from the bedroom to the living room, using the flashlight on his phone. He turned to see water pouring into the wrecked patio. He tried the kitchen door, hoping to reach his truck.
“I couldn’t leave through the kitchen door because as soon as I opened it, all this water started flooding in and it was about waist-high at this point, probably about five minutes after I woke up,” said Fell, who is 6 feet tall.
He returned to the bedroom and tried to climb onto the air mattress he had been sleeping on, but couldn’t. A door on another side of the house wouldn’t open. He tried calling 911 but was disconnected three times, he said. On one call, he said the dispatcher told him to call back when the water was at chin level.
“I had to go underwater and swim through the broken window,” he said.
Once outside, he tried to climb to the roof, but the gutter he grabbed on to snapped off. Fell instead clung to a meter box mounted on the house, the top of which is about 7 feet above the ground. He stood on its narrow top for several hours, his hands dangerously close to electrical wires, until the water receded.
A tree, a shed, a telephone pole and a porch
Matt Meagher, 39, and Erin Burgess, were at home in the Bumble Bee subdivision, across the street from the river. The home, which Burgess bought five years ago, is one of the closest to the river, the site of peaceful morning walks, until July 4.
They were also awakened by thunder. With their dog, Stella, they stepped outside to watch the rain, which was heavy, but not alarming. They returned to bed and checked Facebook for weather warnings, but didn’t find any.
“All of a sudden I looked at him and said, ‘What is that sound?’ and he said, ‘It sounds like it’s raining in the house.’ We looked down and water was coming through the walls,” Burgess said.
That was about 4:30 a.m. By 5:15 a.m., Burgess and her 19-year-old son were clinging to a large tree in their front yard, holding on for an hour. The water had risen so high, Burgess tiptoed to keep her head above it. They had tried to get onto the roof but were swept toward the tree instead.
Meagher grabbed Stella and was fighting the river’s current while bracing against a shed that was on the back of his pickup truck.
But the truck started to move and Meagher was nearly pinned up against it.
“So I let go and then I went to that telephone down there,” he said, pointing to a pole several feet up the road. He’d barely let go before water slammed an SUV into the same pole. His stepson had yelled that the vehicle was headed his way.
“A car started rolling towards me, so I let go again and I was about to get crushed twice,” he said.
The current carried him up the block and shoved him up against the wooden porch railing of a neighbor who was looking through a window with his flashlight. The neighbor pulled him and Stella — still in his arms — inside to safety.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to see him again,” Burgess said. “He was whistling and I was yelling and then I no longer heard him whistling.”
Burgess said she clung to a tree as she prayed for her neighborhood, and for the water to “go down and stop rushing.”
Meagher and Burgess said nearly everything in their home was destroyed. They estimate the water reached 8 feet. Mud and sewage from the septic tank also filled the 2004 Infiniti M37 — a car that Meagher, who builds hot rods, had customized with a $7,000 engine and $5,000 rims.
They had grabbed keys and flashlights — and little else — before the water broke through their door.
They didn’t know what, if anything, could be salvaged. But they reunited at a neighbor’s home later that day with one unexpected survivor.
“When the water receded … we came back in and found our cat [Kiki],” Burgess said. “Our cat was floating on my bed, alive.”
