Original subtitles

(phone ringing).

Operator (over phone): Hello. 911. Where is your emergency?

Woman (over phone): We're like on a hill.

We're over here off of waldenbut, I mean, inside our house is flooded.

Woman (over phone): The water is in my car.

Operator (over phone): You get out and go somewhere safe

And then I'll call your cell phone.

Operator (over phone): Can I help you?

Man (over phone): I'm trying to get to my house, 'cause it's flooded.

Woman (over phone): My mama house is flooding.

The water is rising inside here.

Operator (over phone): Okay.

Woman (over phone): She got kids in the house.

What, what is she supposed to do?

Man (over phone): I literally have water up to the top of the floorboards in my home.

Operator (over phone): Okay.

Man (over phone): I'm flooded out I'm guessing, I'm stuck on the walden.

Operator (over phone): Get out.

Man (over phone): This water is up to my knees.

Woman (over phone): I know, (inaudible) again, I gotta get outta the car.

Woman (over phone): Water's at the door right now.

Water's coming through the flues in my house.

Operator (over phone): Okay. We've got your call and we're gonna get

Someone to you as soon as we can.

(theme music plays).

(phone ringing).

Danny: I will never forget it.

A phone rang and they turned the lights on, and they said,

"everyone up. We have to go, and we have to go now."

David: We were told that we had five minutes to

Get ready, load everything up, and go to, towards beaumont.

Danny: If a phone rings in a environment like that, something has gone wrong.

John: When the bottom dropped out, it was big.

Narrator: Just after midnight on September 19th,

A team of elite rescue specialists from

Texas a&m task force 1 are scrambling.

Danny: It's 10 after 12 and we got the wake-up call to

Go to beaumont, texas as quickly as possible.

I mean, something's up.

Something's up in east texas.

Narrator: A tropical storm, imelda,

Has made landfall on the gulf coast,

But it's doing something no one expected.

Forecasts said it would move quickly north and dissipate.

Instead, it's staying put over east texas,

Inundating it with record breaking levels of rain.

Danny watkins and his team are one of six units being deployed to the

Disaster hot zone.

Danny: Beaumont it's in a flood prone area, and they're requesting as many resources

As they can get right now.

David: We have no clue what's going on.

All we know is that it's raining and it was just coming down hard,

And we had to get there.

Danny: Not quite sure what, what we're gonna see when we get there.

Narrator: With low lying land, and a coast lying on the gulf of mexico,

Where hurricanes build throughout the humid summer months,

Texas is particularly at risk of catastrophic flooding.

Reporter (over tv): After pounding south texas Wednesday afternoon,

Hurricane dolly has lost some...

Reporter (over tv): We have 160 mph wind.

Reporter (over tv): Underlined the warnings of the approach of hurricane carla.

Reporter (over tv): Hurricane humberto slammed into southeast texas early Thursday.

Reporter (over tv): Ike leaves no doubt this was a powerful hurricane.

Jim: In texas we're very good about respecting hurricanes.

People will go, "I need to evacuate."

Tropical rains, not so much.

You just don't know how bad it's gonna be.

It could be that it drops 10 inches of rain, and it's not a problem.

Or, it could be it drops 44 inches of rain in 24 hours,

Which is a significant problem.

Narrator: Tropical storm imelda's rapid rainfall has caught everyone unawares,

And in the beaumont area, 85 miles east of houston, that rain has nowhere to go.

The soil around beaumont is full of clay, which means it can't absorb water easily.

Instead of soaking into the ground, heavy rainfall runs off into local waterways, or

Collects on the surface, causing flash flooding.

Jim: So, when they said beaumont was flooding, we immediately took all the

Resources that we had and we moved 'em into the area.

Narrator: Over 100,000 residents are at risk here, many in small,

Rural communities, with limited resources to cope with the freak storm.

Danny: When we got to beaumont, we parked, got out

And started getting in dry suits, right away.

We were not there long.

Narrator: Highly trained and with specialist equipment, texas a&m task force 1 deploy

To disaster zones across america.

Stepping in when local emergency services become overwhelmed.

On the outskirts of beaumont, in the small town of fannett rescue efforts are in the

Hands of volunteer firefighter ashley kester.

Ashley: The calls at the very beginning were trickling in, two to three a minute.

I had time to write it down and process it to determine

Who and which truck I could send.

All of that, pretty much, went out the window.

Before I knew it, we had six or eight calls holding.

And it was at that point that my chief said, "I need you to take this over."

He departed to go and assist with rescue efforts.

(phone ringing).

The call volume, however, increased.

Man (over phone): Yes right now, it's riding up to knees.

Jerome: It was about 8:00 when I noticed the water was

Starting to come up out of the ditches.

About an hour later, and the water was about a foot and a half

Running across under my house.

10:30, 11:00, it started coming in my house.

Ashley: The water was rising and they wanted to get out.

Stephen: It was right up to the edge of our thresholds on the door, and I knew I had to

Make plans on getting out.

Jerome: I have a two-year-old daughter.

Her name's paisley. She is our world.

You know, I wasn't so much concerned with myself, but I wanted my daughter and my wife

And my mother out of the house.

Carolyn: That's the only grand baby I have, and I wanna make sure they're safe.

Ashley: Panic started to set in throughout the community.

(busy signal).

We didn't have what we needed to be able to rescue all of these people.

In fact, one of our pick-up trucks that we were using flooded out.

My chief was in it.

I was on the phone with him and he told me that the truck was floating.

Voice (over phone): Please hang up and try again.

Woman (over phone): So, someone is stuck in their car and they're about to drown.

Ashley: At that point, it got real.

(thunder).

Narrator: Danny's is one of two teams immediately sent to

Rescue the residents of hard-hit fannett.

Ashley: So, the texas task force arrived in the early morning hours,

And it was a sense of relief on my end,

Because we finally had somebody else who could help.

Greg: And I showed up, I was like, "hey, texas task force 1.

This is what equipment we have. This is our capabilities."

You know, "what do you need?"

Danny: She had a phone on each ear.

Greg: She was frazzled a little bit, but she was killing it.

Danny: She had pages and pages, and pages of peoples' names, phone numbers and

Addresses, and all it said beside it was "rescue, rescue, rescue".

Greg: Yeah, I knew to tell her, right off the bat,

"don't just give me the first one on the list.

You know, let's, let's triage this situation out.

We need to find out if they just need to be evacuated,

And they have a couple of feet of water in their house.

Or, is this a true rescue where, you know, the water's coming in, and it's come up

Above over a foot in an hour, who have infants in, or people who can't take care of

Themselves, or seniors.

Narrator: To reach the huge number of people needing rescue, the unit splits into

Two teams, each with one high profile vehicle, or hpv, and one rescue boat.

Team leader, greg qualls rides in one hpv.

Danny watkins is in the other.

Danny: The night we got deployed, it was myself, dave and john john.

Very focused, very team oriented, goal objective people.

Narrator: Danny once played for the philadelphia eagles.

He left behind a career in the nfl to serve as a firefighter, before joining the task force.

Danny: It's more rewarding to me to go out and be able to help people,

And make a direct impact.

Narrator: Danny, dave and john's first assignment of the triage 911 calls is lucy,

A grandmother who's stranded alone in her single story home,

Surrounded by rising floodwater.

David: Two miles down that route, we encountered water.

We had no clue as far as how much we're dealing with.

All we knew is that that road was not passable by a regular vehicle.

Narrator: Lucy's family can't get to her, and getting in her own car

Is out of the question.

Driving in a flood is dangerous.

Nearly two in three flood deaths in the us involve vehicles.

Just 6 inches of water causes most cars to stall and lose control.

2 feet of water will carry away even a 7,000 pound pick-up truck.

Jim: You can certainly drown in your vehicle, or if you get out,

You can be washed downstream.

Narrator: But, with rapidly rising water levels,

Staying at home isn't safe for lucy either.

Jim: You may be in your house and, now, you have 10 feet of water, and you're in a single

Story house, you have a good chance of drowning.

Danny: I can remember driving to do the first rescue,

Sitting in the back of the truck thinking,

"man, if it keeps raining, this will be really bad."

Narrator: In fannett, the task force team are on an emergency rescue.

Narrator: At risk lucy is trapped in her home in some of the worst flash floods ever to

Hit southeast texas.

The team have a specialist truck, and hpv, that can drive through water that would

Sweep away regular vehicles.

Greg: An hpv is a high profile vehicle.

We're able to ford water about 30 inches deep with those, with those vehicles.

Narrator: But if it strays off the road, the consequences could be deadly.

John: They're top heavy, and if I get off just a little bit and put the passenger side

Tires on dirt and it's saturated with water already, that truck's going over.

Man (over radio): Sorry, what was that?

John: I do not see a center.

Danny: There was so much water, and it was coming down so hard and so fast,

Couldn't see anything.

(thunder).

John: Operating in swift water at night is very dangerous.

Things can go from bad to worse really quick.

Man (over radio): That's good I'm hopping out now.

John: It got so bad, we had to put people walking in front of the truck to make sure the

Road was still there.

(thunder).

Danny: We're sounding, feeling where the edge of the road is and where the ditch is.

John: If y'all find a center, I'll just follow you.

Danny: Okay.

There's bar ditches on each side, potentially, the truck could sink into that and roll

Over with everyone inside, and those trucks,

There's no real way to get out of them quickly.

John: If we lose a truck, people aren't going home.

It was amazing the amount of wind, there were white caps.

Danny: At that point, they had started comparing imelda to harvey,

And I thought that was very alarming.

Narrator: Just two years previously, these very same communities in texas were

Devastated by category four, hurricane harvey, the wettest storm in us history.

Reporter: We have been praying for quite a while now for the eye to pass over to get some

Kind of a break through here with these absolutely unrelenting winds.

Reporter: You can see it for yourself, we're being hit by

A pretty significant band from harvey.

Narrator: Over the course of eight days, harvey dropped 60 inches of rain,

Causing catastrophic flooding and an estimated

$125 billion worth of damage.

It was the most lethal hurricane to hit texas in nearly a century,

Killing 89 people.

John: During harvey, we lost a truck in a pond.

They were following a road.

It was straight.

The road had a natural curve to it, went off to the side.

The driver of the truck continued forward and there was a pond.

You would've never been able to see it, the water,

You're just looking out at flat water everywhere.

Truck went in, and before the driver knew it, the cab was underwater.

You have to know that road's there.

Narrator: As the team battles to reach lucy, volunteer firefighter, ashley,

Is inundated with emergency calls.

Ashley: It's on its way.

As the night went on, it seemed the whole area of fannett, texas

Needed to be rescued.

Woman (over phone): Yeah, someone is stuck in their car and they're about to drown.

Operator (over phone): Okay, where are they at?

Man (over phone): I've got a woman who's hit some water on the road

And flooded out her vehicle.

Woman (over phone): The water is in my car, rising, rising quickly.

Man (over phone): We have a mama trapped in her house.

Ashley: I was using three different radios, my personal cell phone, multiple other

Cell phones, and weather radios.

(phone ringing).

People were in fear for their life.

All of these people needing help at once was quite a bit overwhelming.

Woman (over phone): My car is stuck.

The water is getting higher the longer I sit here.

Ashley: At one point, we had over 3,000 calls holding.

Narrator: Outside, the rising floodwaters are pushing the hpv to its limit.

John: It got to a point where we reached the 30 inches of water on the big truck.

Danny: Stop!

John: We cannot go any further.

John: Yes.

Danny: I have never seen electrical activity like that before, ever.

(thunder).

It was everywhere.

Narrator: A single bolt of lightning can deliver 300 million volts.

When it hits water, the electricity conducts across the surface.

Danny: The last place you wanna be is standing in water,

While lightning's striking all around you.

I can remember talking to john and dave about it, and it was a real concern.

John: We were in a very bad situation.

Danny was looking at me and wanting me to make the call to get back to dry land

And shelter, but we were so close to completing that rescue.

It's a very hard call to make.

Danny: The only option at that point was just to keep moving forward.

Narrator: The task force are braving lightning and fast moving floodwaters to rescue

Lucy, a grandmother who's trapped in her house.

The water is now so deep it's too dangerous for the specially designed hpv.

The only way danny and dave can reach lucy is to trek through waist deep floodwater.

Danny: You're trying to find storm drains, culverts, ditches, all underwater

Hazards that you can't see, and when you get pulled into those, it's a killer.

There was an incident in harvey where some water rescue specialists were actually

Sucked through a drainage system.

Thankfully, they got spit out the other side and nothing, nothing catastrophic happened.

But there's always that thought in the back of your mind.

Narrator: Floodwater can contain many biological hazards too.

Overflow from septic tanks, venomous snakes, even alligators.

Danny: I can remember stepping up onto her patio, three foot step,

But I was still up to my knees in water.

(knocking).

Lucy: No. Danny: You doing all right?

Lucy: I'm okay. Danny: What can we do for you?

Danny: Okay. Hey, I'm danny.

She opens the door and water just comes gushing in.

Everything is just floating in her living room.

All her couches, furniture.

You could see tupperware, magazines.

I mean, there was a tv remote.

David: The water was coming up pretty fast, so we knew that

We had to take her out pretty quick.

(laughs).

Danny: It, it's not first class, but we'll get you there.

Okay?

Lucy: Okay.

Danny: You feel horrible for her, because this is essentially her house

That's been destroyed.

Narrator: Lucy's house is surrounded by water, already almost four feet deep.

Narrator: Added to that, lucy can't swim.

Danny: I know she was quite concerned, 'cause she had gone from sitting in her living

Room, watching television, to having the water come up over her knees, to us showing up,

Now we're putting her in a boat and, essentially, in a storm.

Hop on. Hop on in.

Lucy: Okay.

Danny: Alright, we got all kinds of ropes.

We get into the boat. There's lightning everywhere.

The boat is bumping into things.

Just so many submerged obstacles that you just can't see.

There's a lot of things that can get you hung up.

David: If you get knocked off your feet, with moving water

You don't know what it's gonna do.

I mean, it could take you under.

It could just take you down the creek.

It could throw you up against a tree, and pin you up against it, and drown you.

Danny: Yeah.

Danny: I can remember kinda holding her hand and trying to smile, and it can be very

Stressful on a person.

(thunder).

David: Once we got her on the truck, they gave us a location for drop off at the church.

Narrator: On the outskirts of fannett, grace community church

Is still above the floodwater.

Mike: I don't know exactly what time it was when this truck showed up, but to know

That there was people coming from outside to help us, it really meant a lot.

Because, we weren't alone, we weren't having to do this by ourselves.

Narrator: Across fannett, residents are abandoning their homes, and those who can,

Begin to make their way to the emergency refuge.

Mike: As a church, we function as the only shelter in our community, should people need

To seek shelter from storms.

We have cots.

We have air mattresses, bedding that is stored.

So, I opened the doors and it just took off from there.

Lucy: No.

Mike: From that point, I knew that there were more on their way, and I knew I was,

I was in it for the long haul.

Danny: You're good.

Danny: Okay, so, lucy...

Narrator: Fannett is getting hit worse than anywhere else,

With over 30 inches of rain in just 12 hours.

But storm imelda is now dropping record breaking levels of rain

Across three counties.

Reporter (over tv): Tropical depression imelda is unloading over parts of southeast texas,

With heavy rain and flash flooding.

Reporter: A lot of people are probably still trapped in their homes,

Awaiting for a rescue,

Because I don't think anybody expected to be able to

Not get out of their homes when they went to bed last night.

Reporter: A daring rescue during tropical storm imelda

Was captured on body camera footage.

Reporter: Yeah, four people, including two children,

Were saved from their flooded vehicle.

You can see police officers forming a chain and, one by one, they pull both of those

Children to safety.

Jim: Jim yeager, texas task force 1.

Narrator: Back at the coordination center, deputy operations chief, jim yeager

Can see conditions worsening across the entire southeast texas area.

Jim: Do my personnel have enough resources?

Is there anything else that I can send them?

What do they need to be supported?

Narrator: He mobilizes extra resources to the worst hit communities.

Jim: We brought on ten more boats.

It gave me a total of 26 boats down in the area, and the surrounding counties.

The challenge, at that point, was there was no way to get

Those high profile vehicles into beaumont.

Narrator: The severe flooding around fannett means all roads

In and out of the town are now unpassable.

Nobody can get out, and backup can't get in.

Greg: I was like, "any chance of us getting additional assistance down here,

Where we have a lot of work to do?"

And, yeah, and I believe his answer was, "nope. You're on your own."

Narrator: With resources on the ground stretched to the limit,

Greg gets a message.

Greg: I got a text from ashley.

She said, "I need you to stop everything you're doing.

A young man's been hit by lightning."

Narrator: As storm imelda rages over fannett, volunteer firefighter, ashley kester,

Receives a call for urgent medical assistance.

Ashley: The call came in through the sheriff's office,

We have an individual who was struck by lightning.

The lightning struck the water and he was electrocuted.

Greg: And his dad found him below water, you know, pinned up against a fence, and so,

It's unknown downtime.

John: There was no way to get an ambulance to us.

We have no medical supplies with us.

There's no way we can help that situation.

Greg: We're doing active rescues right now, I can't stop here to go travel 15

Minutes away to pick up, you know, a person who's deceased already.

John: It was a very hard call.

Go do cpr on an unknown down, or go rescue people that we know we can get out,

That are in an emergent situation already.

It's, it's a hard call.

Greg: That was a horrible feeling.

John: It's rough. It's rough talking about it right now.

You try to help everybody.

There's some that you can't.

Ashley: The reality of what mother nature can actually do at that point set in.

(thunder).

Narrator: By 5:00 am, tropical storm imelda has already claimed lives,

And the floodwater in fannett is still rising.

But this isn't just the result of local rainfall,

Fannett lies in a network of bayous and creeks.

Normally, water flows south through them and out to sea.

But, imelda has brought so much rain that the bayous are overwhelmed,

Excess water is now funneling down

From the north and pooling in the low lying area near fannett.

Jerome and brooke reinders, and their two-year-old daughter,

Are directly in its path.

Jerome: The water come up three times as fast as what harvey did.

Brooke: We had three steps that led up to our porch, it like covered the bottom,

Then it covered the second one, then it covered the top one.

That was enough for us to get out, you know, especially with a baby.

Jerome: Paisley is two years old, pressing to be three,

And she's already been through two storms in her life.

You know, and it's devastated her, and that's, it's not cool.

I don't like it.

And after harvey come through, we lost everything.

Narrator: The reinders sunk all their savings into rebuilding their house after

Hurricane harvey.

Now, their home is flooding again.

Jerome: Brooke called my mother and said, you know, told her that we had water

Coming in the house, that we needed to come over there.

Brooke: They live in a mobile home, and so, they were

On higher ground than what we were.

Jerome: And my mom was like, yeah, y'all, sure, y'all come on.

The water was about three and a half foot deep.

It was up over my waist, and I had paisley on my shoulder.

Brooke: We, probably, should not have gone out, looking and seeing all the lightning.

Carolyn: It was scary watching 'em come through, lightning is striking and everything.

And you see your family's walking through that water, you don't know if lightning's

Gonna strike at 'em, and you're gonna see something happen to them.

Jerome: Her house was, probably, about three and a half foot off the ground.

As long as we was there, I knew we were all right, unless they started taking on water.

Narrator: But with nowhere to go, the water keeps rising and, soon,

It's pouring into carolyn's trailer.

Carolyn: The rain, it just kept on coming.

We kept on watching the water come up, and come up, and before I knew it,

It was coming through my air vents.

I just said, "come on, let's go. We gotta get outta here."

Narrator: Carolyn's mobile home is high off the ground,

But it's vulnerable to the deep, fast flowing water, funneling in from the

Surrounding areas.

John: The water was coming up rapidly, if there's enough current, it could actually

Take the house off the foundation.

Those are emergent situations.

We've gotta get those people out.

Narrator: Trapped in a mobile home, with a young child and a grandmother,

The reinders are now the team's top priority.

But there's a problem.

Danny: When we got to this rescue, the truck would not go down the road.

It couldn't.

Where the main road turned it was over 12 feet of water at this point.

We can't go forward. We can't go back.

Narrator: With the truck now stuck, their only option is to attempt to a boat rescue.

Danny: The difference between this rescue and the previous one was that the water had

Come up so much already that we could actually drive the boat up to their front door.

Carolyn: They come up to my front door, because there was no steps, they were gone.

The steps floated away.

Danny: The water had gotten so high, and was moving fast enough that, essentially, that

House could've floated away.

Who knows what would've happened at that point?

Carolyn: We were glad to see that boat.

I was and I don't like boats.

I mean, I'm scared to death of boats.

But I didn't wanna stay there.

I feel like I would've drowneded.

I wouldn't have made it.

It's not worth your life.

Brooke: We will all be eternally grateful for them in that little rubber raft.

Narrator: The reinders take refuge in pastor mike's church.

But, as dawn approaches, storm imelda is showing no signs of letting up.

Clayton: I'm here with chambers county sheriff, brian hawthorne.

Brian: Most people, like myself included, did not realize that this would stall

For as many hours as it has.

Clayton: So, what does the next 12 hours look like?

Brian: Well, until it quits raining, it's, it's gonna be a nightmare.

Danny: As the sun came up, you were able to really

Take hold of the severity of the situation.

And we're able to look around and go like,

"oh, holy smokes! This is, this is wild!"

Narrator: In daylight, the extent of storm imelda's impact becomes clear.

Reporter (over tv): We were definitely prepared for a storm, but what we weren't prepared for

Was for a storm to stall on top of us.

Reporter (over tv): So much water, the roof of this houston postal facility collapsed,

Injuring three people.

Reporter (over tv): One man died when he drove his van into eight feet of floodwater.

Eye witness: It was a good 20 minutes before they got him out and it was just beyond.

You know, he was underwater too long.

Narrator: In fannett, news comes in that a local alligator park has flooded,

And some of the reptiles are now loose in the water.

Gary: Everybody wants to know what's going on with the alligator situation,

I can't give you a report yet, guys.

Look! I'm in four foot of water.

This, right here, is my daughter's house.

Stephen: And we're not talking about just a few inches of water,

We're talking feet of water.

Narrator: Stephen gregory has been stranded in his house with four children all night,

Watching the waters rise.

Stephen: It was just like a real life horror show.

It wasn't out of the question that the water couldn't rise another two or three feet,

And we needed to get out as soon as we could.

Narrator: Stephen's is one of over 1,200 evacuations carried out

By the six task force units operating in beaumont.

Stephen: When we saw the boat come, I saw they were official.

There was a sense of relief just knowing that we were in good hands.

Narrator: Now, volunteers start to join the rescue effort, using their own boats

To collect stranded residents.

The evacuees are dropped off at the only dry land nearby,

An overpass on the edge of fannett.

Danny: We called it the lily pad.

People were getting brought to the lily pad from people's personal boats,

Personal water craft.

I saw jet skis. I saw air boats.

Greg: We set up a collection point at the edge of the bridge, and we started running

Our hpvs, making laps from there to the church.

Danny: And that was kind of the focus now, was just trying to get them off this lily pad,

'cause the water is still coming up at this point, I mean realistically,

There's nowhere for them to go.

John: It seemed like every time we went back, we filled the back of the truck.

Danny: We acquired a county dump truck.

When the truck was full, we would take them to the church.

It didn't stop.

Greg: And I think I put down well over 200 evacs for that day,

And that was just in our hpv alone.

Mike: We ended up, within the course of the night,

Over 300 people at the church.

And then, the next big task was gonna be, how am I going to feed people?

And so, we knew that that was gonna be a major issue.

Our neighbors are phenomenal.

They began showing up and began just grabbing anything from their freezers and their

Refrigerators, and just began cooking.

It's more than just a handful of people who flooded, this is an entire community.

And I knew, having already gone through this with hurricane harvey,

When you see people showing up with a bag...

(sobs).

With a trash bag of all that they have left,

It hits you.

(exhales).

Narrator: As the storm begins to die down, it emerges that some of those sheltering at

The church need medical attention.

A man with a heart condition is unwell.

But all roads in and out of fannett are still cut off.

Mike: They could not stay here.

They had to evacuated.

And we weren't gonna be able to put 'em on a truck.

The only way to get them out was by helicopter.

Narrator: Helicopter rescues are taking place across the state.

The worst of the storm is over, but casualty numbers are still rising.

Narrator: After 18 hours of continuous work rescuing the residents of fannett,

The team is finally able to take a break.

Danny: We got to a point where we were taking less and less people.

It would be one or two at a time, until there were no more.

No one had slept. No one had eaten.

You're dehydrated. You're hungry.

You're tired.

I can remember making that cot, putting dry clothes on, and...

I don't even think I finished pulling the blankets up all the way,

And I was drooling on myself.

(laughs).

Narrator: The following day, the task force check the worst affected areas to see if

Anyone still needs help.

Danny: The purpose of the welfare check is, essentially,

We wanna check on the people that decided to stay,

See if they had any needs, see if we needed to get them out.

And you're trying to explain to them that they're putting themselves in,

In grave danger, and, and that we might not have the opportunity to get back to them.

During harvey, doing those welfare checks,

That's when you start to see the number of fatalities.

And we're checking on vehicles to make sure there's no bodies in there.

John: And the other team went past a car, and there was

An individual still behind the wheel.

Chest deep in water, just sitting there frozen.

That individual was just terrified and to the point they could not move.

So, when we go past vehicles, we do check 'em.

Danny: Absolutely, it's in the back of your mind, what am I gonna see behind this door?

No, it's good.

So, remember I was telling you about that house when we were going by, and the television

Was like floating at the front window?

It's this one right in front of us.

I remember walking up to this house, and seeing the high water mark and,

And realizing, well, if anyone had decided to ride this storm out,

They wouldn't have been able to survive.

All right. How are you doing?

Man: I'm okay.

Danny: I saw it the other night.

You doing okay? All right.

This event caught a lotta people off guard.

'cause, after harvey, people felt that this would never happen again.

Were you here when harvey?

Man: Yeah, I was here when harvey was here.

I didn't stay for harvey.

Danny: Imelda took everyone by surprise at the severity of it.

Narrator: Deadly storm imelda affected communities in

13 counties across southeast texas.

Emergency shelters were set up in 18 locations.

Evacuee: Just starting over with what?

Because we don't have anything.

Narrator: Volunteers cross state lines to distribute fresh water and food.

91 roadways flooded.

Emergency responders rescued, or evacuated, over 2,000 families and individuals.

Woman: Pray for southeast texas, we're gonna need it.

This is not gonna be an easy fix.

We've got a lot of damage.

Narrator: The state of texas is used to big weather events,

But storm imelda is part of a new and growing trend in

Tropical cyclones, full of rain and slow moving.

Studies show that rising temperatures in the sea and atmosphere are fueling these

Storms producing extreme rainfall rates and slow speeds.

One of these new cyclones, hurricane dorian, devastated the bahamas also in 2019.

And just two years earlier, in southeast texas, harvey behaved the same way.

The damage these new, slow moving, storms cause can be catastrophic.

Mike: Two years ago, when hurricane harvey hit, the thought was,

"this was the 1,000 year flood. It's never gonna happen again.

We're never gonna go through that again."

Danny: But, the world we live in, things are changing.

Ashley: Events such as imelda and harvey seem to be becoming a norm.

At first we didn't think it was possible.

There's no way.

But we've had it happen twice now.

Danny: In fannett, there was more water dropped in a shorter window of time

During imelda than there was harvey.

Jim: The storm actually dumped a tremendous amount of rain, up to 44 inches in 24 hours.

It's an exceptional storm.

Brooke: Bathroom,

Water started coming in on this side first, and it pooled.

Um... We were actually in the middle of trying to adopt,

So this was a nursery with brand new

Things in it that we did not get to use.

That all flooded.

It's hard because with harvey we rebuilt.

We did it ourselves.

So, yeah, it's hard to see that much work just molded

And yuck and gonna be torn down.

Mike: I think the impact is significant, emotionally,

Financially, a long, long process.

There are some people who've moved out of the area.

They said they can't do this anymore.

After you flood two or three times, financially, they can't do that, and they,

They put their homes up for sale.

Or, they just walked away.

Brooke: We are renting another property, and we're just gonna

Buy in a different location,

So that we're not worried about flood any more.

Danny: If we hadn't been able to get to that community, I don't know what would've

Happened to a lot of people that we made contact with.

I don't know what their other options were.

Brooke: But the house and the cars and all those things that flooded...

Paisley: Want my headband?

Brooke: They don't mean anything at the end of the day,

Whenever it comes to your safety

And your child's safety, and things like that.

Greg: We definitely changed a few people's outcomes that night.

Danny: I think there would've been a lot more fatalities.

I truly believe that.

Brooke: And we all are still alive, which we are so thankful for.

God works in mysterious ways.

Captioned by cotter captioning services.