A Texas family took DailyMail.com inside their storm-ravaged home, a sight now facing thousands of survivors in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.
Laura Wright, 31, and her partner, Adam New, 36, picked through their water-logged furniture on Saturday afternoon and dragged mattresses, heaps of soaked clothes and bedding to the roadside for collection.
Even finding the smallest mementos that had survived the currents that swamped their single-story house in the coastal city of Port Arthur, caused brief moments of celebration.
Laura Wright, 31, and her partner, Adam New, 36, picked through their water-logged furniture on Saturday afternoon and dragged mattresses, heaps of soaked clothes and bedding to the roadside for collection
Storm debris littered the three-bed, two-bath home and the sodden carpets squelched with toxic flood water and raw sewage from the overflowing toilets.
The couple share the home with his son Lando, 10 and her daughter Juniper. The home was flooded by Hurricane Harvey and they are tossing all their damaged property and moving to Colorado
Storm debris littered the three-bed, two-bath home and the sodden carpets squelched with toxic flood water and raw sewage from the overflowing toilets. The couple worked for hours to clear some rooms in pitch-darkness after they had to shut off the power.
‘There is so much to do I can’t even think straight,’ Laura said. ‘We are going to need to do this over a matter of days.’
Like 80 per cent of Texans left with storm-damaged homes, Laura and Adam have no insurance to cover them. More than 30,000 people are in evacuation shelters across Texas and 100,000 homes have been ruined. At least 44 people are dead but the death toll is likely to rise as the clean-up continues and more bodies are found.
Storm surges swamped Port Arthur and the surrounding area of East Texas earlier in the week after Hurricane Harvey rounded on the Lone Star State for a second time, making landfall as a tropical storm, bringing ferocious winds and torrential rains.
Juniper’s Frozen scooter among the littered floor of the family’s home. The children’s toys were thrashed throughout the house
Nothing in the home was spared as electronics and music equipment was destroyed by the storm’s winds and rains
A skirt soaked in grime and water lays next to a damp notebook full of now ruined drawings and sketches
Laura said: ‘A historian in this area has pictures of every flood since around 1906 and said it never floods in this part of Port Arthur as all the pumps are on this side of town. The pumps failed.’
The couple escaped the rising waters with their two children, Lando, ten and six-year-old Juniper, in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Laura tries to keep a optimistic grin on her face as she cleans the debris
Adam had posted a desperate message on Facebook at 2am, which read: ‘So, Laura, the kids and I are in Port Arthur with nearly waist high water in our house. If anyone is out rescuing, we could use some rescuing.’
They had watched the waters gushing through their garden and covered porch, and as the night wore on, decided it was no longer safe to stay.
‘My original plan was to go into the attic,’ Laura said but they had no way of getting out of it. Instead they hoisted their four cats up there with food and water in the hope they would survive.
The family waded through the strong current, with Laura carrying her daughter on her back. First they tried to take shelter across the street where people had broken into a bank on higher ground to get out of the storm.
There was very little space so they made their way to a Dairy Queen restaurant next door where people were huddled under the awning. The couple stood on a picnic table with their dog, Marla, and hoisted their children onto an abandoned truck parked next to them.
‘Someone came by on a jet-ski and rescued the other people with us,’ Laura said. ‘But they said they couldn’t return for us and the kids.’
The couple said that their children showed amazing courage throughout the terrifying ordeal.
‘Junie’s young enough that she accepted it when I told her we were going to be okay. Lando is a little older and was able to process more of what was going on,’ the mom said.
Like 80 per cent of Texans left with storm-damaged homes, Laura and Adam have no insurance to cover them
More than 30,000 people are in evacuation shelters across Texas and 100,000 homes have been ruined. At least 44 people are dead but the death toll is likely to rise as the clean-up continues and more bodies are found
The couple said that their children showed amazing courage throughout the terrifying ordeal. ‘Junie’s young enough that she accepted it when I told her we were going to be okay. Lando is a little older and was able to process more of what was going on,’ the mom said
The family and their dog were rescued four hours later by the Cajun Navy – an unofficial, organized group of outdoorsmen – who sprang into action with their boats from the bayous of Louisiana when Harvey hit. The family were dropped off at a shelter in the Lamar State College Gymnasium in Port Arthur
The family and their dog were rescued four hours later by the Cajun Navy – an unofficial, organized group of outdoorsmen – who sprang into action with their boats from the bayous of Louisiana when Harvey hit. The family were dropped off at a shelter in the Lamar State College Gymnasium in Port Arthur.
Laura’s mother, Meg Gardner, 55, who was at the home helping with the clear-out, became emotional when she spoke of her gratitude to them.
‘God bless the Cajun Navy,’ Meg said. ‘I am forever in their debt. I will donate to any fundraising they do for the rest of my life. They are volunteers and they saved my grandchildren.’
Laura’s mother, Meg Gardner, 55, (right) who was at the home helping with the clear-out, became emotional when she spoke of her gratitude to them. ‘God bless the Cajun Navy,’ Meg said. ‘I am forever in their debt. I will donate to any fundraising they do for the rest of my life. They are volunteers and they saved my grandchildren’
Magnets on the fridge have mostly fallen to the lower part of the compartment but a few pieces of paper and pictures
Laura packs photos and mementos in another box for safekeeping to take to the storage unit
The family had been planning to move to Trinidad, Colorado in the fall, where Adam had secured a new job working at Main Street Tattoo Parlor in the town. Adam and Laura, who currently works at a restaurant, are now planning to make the move sooner
She pointed out a cedar chest that was warped by floodwater and being thrown out.
‘I’ve had that since I was 17,’ the grandmother said. ‘But in the end, it’s just stuff. I saw my granddaughter today for the first time since this happened and you realize that nothing else matters.’
She also believes that Lando and Juniper, who goes by Junie, will be more resilient after what happened. ‘The kids got to see their parents making good decisions and they came through it. It can be dark and stormy but the daylight comes.’
Adam holds a card from Laura and Juniper that says ‘With all the love, thank you for everything’
Laura looks over a bamboo plant to see if she can save it and take it with them
Inside Juniper’s room drawers are ajar and toys are scattered all over the floor
Meg, who works for the Resource Alliance, a non-profit organization, had left her RV home in Silsbee last Saturday, fearing she may become stranded if the surrounding roads flooded. She has been staying with a friend in Beaumont.
Adam and Laura, both wearing trusted Doc Marten boots to protect their feet from the toxicity and bacteria in the water, sifted through piles of damaged books, clothes and their children’s artwork and notepads to find what could be saved
‘My friend David is so wonderful, he just opened his home to everybody,’ she said. ‘Luckily, I have a home to go back to. A lot of people are a lot worse off.’
Adam and Laura, both wearing trusted Doc Marten boots to protect their feet from the toxicity and bacteria in the water, sifted through piles of damaged books, clothes and their children’s artwork and notepads to find what could be saved. Small plastic toys, of pink horses and wrestling figures, were pocketed to be disinfected.
Some treasured possessions had managed to be stored above the water on higher shelves, counter tops and the fireplace.
Laura hugged close to her one photo after she discovered that it had survived.
‘This is of my husband Daniel, he passed away four years ago,’ she said. Daniel Wright, 24, was killed in a car accident in California when his daughter was a year old.
Small plastic toys, of pink horses and wrestling figures, were pocketed to be disinfected
Some treasured possessions had managed to be stored above the water on higher shelves, counter tops and the fireplace
The door leading into the house and the outer wall has a mark showing how high the water rose during the storm
‘Right before we left the house, I saw this sitting on the second shelf and I thought, what if the water does come up that high? Let’s just pick that up.’
The photograph had suffered no damage and Laura had also managed to save a photobook of her daughter’s trip to visit her aunt and cousins on her father’s side of the family.
The 31-year-old also clutched a pair of scissors when she discovered they were not washed away. They had been used to cut her daughter’s umbilical cord.
A box of belongings the family was able to salvage and more than likely will be going to the storage unit that they have
The family sifts through their remaining belongings to determine what to keep and what to scrap
Dirt and debris scattered along the backyard deck show how nothing on the property was safe during the storm
Adam was also relieved to discover that a precious toy had survived unscathed – a doll of the character, Lando Calrissian, from the Star Wars franchise, whom his son, from a previous relationship, is named after. He said: ‘When my boy was still in utero, I bought the only two toys of Lando Calrissian I could find. You don’t see too many.
‘I was going to give them to him when he got older but he found one of them not too long ago. I forgot about this one but the other one was flooded. When we came back here, he was like “My Lando toy, my Lando toy, it’s ruined”.
‘I told him I was sorry, but we were probably going to lose everything. So when we went in there salvaging stuff, I found this one and it was in a box up high and dry. He doesn’t know it yet but he’s still got a Lando.’
The couple, who had spent three years in the rented home, were also grateful to have saved some vinyl records, most of their children’s books and a painting Laura had been working on with a friend. Anything they managed to salvage, they planned to put in a storage unit.
The couple, who had spent three years in the rented home, were also grateful to have saved some vinyl records, most of their children’s books and a painting Laura had been working on with a friend
Anything they managed to salvage, they planned to put in a storage unit
Another prized possession which made it was a 4ft pink and purple unicorn that six-year-old Junie got from her grandfather.
‘She’s going to be so happy when she sees that the unicorn from her pop-pop survived,’ said Meg, who had strapped the stuffed animal to the top of her car. ‘She had taken to sleeping on that thing.’
Junie was spending the day with the couple’s friend, Lorena, who they were staying with in the aftermath of the storm, while Lando was with his grandfather.
Lorena is Laura’s friend from their roller derby team, the Spindletop Roller Girls in Beaumont, and Adam acts as a referee in the sport.
‘Laura’s team name is Keel Hauler, she’s known for going miles and miles around – she’s a superstar,’ Adam said. Her trophies survived on top of the fireplace.
Sadly, they are still missing one member of the family – a sandy-colored male cat called Linus who hasn’t been seen since the storm. The family’s three other cats – Jinx, Ruger and Mercury – were all accounted for
Posters and things high up weren’t at risk for destruction, leaving a lot of special memories still available to the family
Laura carries a drum set and table out to the front to be put in the pile of debris they won’t be putting in storage
The couple said the team had been helping each other out, passing around lists of necessities on Facebook, and that they were also receiving support from a Vermont team, Twin State Derby, who had beaten the Spindletop girls in a tournament a few months ago.
For the next few weeks, the couple planned to stay in Lafayette, Louisiana, a two-hour drive along the Gulf coast, where Adam, who is a tattoo artist, can work.
For the next few weeks, the couple planned to stay in Lafayette, Louisiana, a two-hour drive along the Gulf coast, where Adam, who is a tattoo artist, can work
‘We just got word from FEMA today that they will put us in a hotel until the 26th,’ Adam said.
The family had been planning to move to Trinidad, Colorado in the fall, where Adam had secured a new job working at Main Street Tattoo Parlor in the town. Adam and Laura, who currently works at a restaurant, are now planning to make the move sooner.
Sadly, they are still missing one member of the family – a sandy-colored male cat called Linus who hasn’t been seen since the storm. The family’s three other cats – Jinx, Ruger and Mercury – were all accounted for.
Laura said: ‘We keep checking the attic in case Linus is hiding but I don’t think so.
‘He’s a wanderer that’s why we keep hoping that he’ll come back. Or he’ll find someone else to take care of him.’
The mother and daughter surveyed the damage to boxes stored in the garage as the afternoon wore on.
Meg said: ‘That white chest holds family pictures of people from decades ago, so far back I have never even met them. We have to get into that but it looks like they might be okay.
‘It upsets me, as some of these things were my mother’s and my grandmother’s.’
However the family count themselves among the lucky ones as they hear stories from neighbors and friends.
Meg moved to Texas around seven years ago from Philadelphia. ‘I feel like this week I really became a Texan,’ she said. ‘You don’t go through something like this with people and not become part of what they are.
‘Beauty has a way of rising out of the ugly. You just look around at the volunteers and it’s amazing. We’ll never be the same after this but I think everyone will have been changed in a good way.’
The family count themselves among the lucky ones as they hear stories from neighbors and friends