Struggling for things to write about, so I'll tell someone else's story.
Texas got some ridiculous rain last Thursday and Friday and my newly rediscovered friend Felicia was caught in the mess. We went to Scurry-Rosser High School together, when I first moved to Texas in 1989 (she also knows Jodi) and we lost touch about 12 years ago, she found Jodi on myspace and through Jodi found me!
She currently is working/living in Austin, but owns a home in Denton. She was coming up to Denton (which is just north of Dallas) on Thursday evening to get some weekend things taken care of at her house. I left work early on Thursday, as there was a huge storm coming our way, and I didn't want the dog or myself caught in it. When I got home, I instantly turned into a 65 year old man, as I turned on TWC (The Weather Channel) and proceeded to watch for the next 45 minutes. About 10pm, after it had gone over me, I texted Felicia, and I realized she told me she was driving up, and was hoping she decided not to. She drove...
The drive from Austin to Dallas is about 3 hours (200 miles), it's on a major highway and is usually just fine. Not this night. Felicia said they were dead stopped on the highway near Hillsboro (about 70 miles from Dallas) for at least an hour, then the traffic finally started moving. She noticed that everyone was getting into one lane, so she followed. She didn't get far. The water was up over the highway, and her low to the ground Saturn couldn't handle it. It stalled out and then the water began to pour in. Mind you, she has her cat in a cat crate and her dog Sergio (Georgie's boyfriend, they make out) in the car with her, along with her laptop and other things.
She said that big ole trucks with their lift kits were cruising on by, while her arms were flailing outside of the car and she screamed for help. Finally some dude in a truck stops and says, "well what do you want me to do?" Are you kidding me??? God, people are so DENSE in the south, I swear! Actually, people are dense everywhere, don't need to get the hate comments going again about the south! So she gets into the back of his truck (yeah, guess he was THAT big of a jerk and didn't want her all wet in his cab) and he drives her to a hotel, so she can get someone to come and get her.
Crazy! When you hear about flash flooding, that's EXACTLY what happens. It's just unusual that it happened on a major highway like that, usually it happens in neighborhoods and such, the highways SHOULD be designed to have enough drainage to stop this sort of nightmare.
But everyone survived (except the car) as you can imagine, the animals were a bit traumatized, but nothing a little time won't heal. Felicia is fine, although I doubt she'll make that trip again when it's raining!
Let this be a lesson to you all!
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2 comments:
Gulley wesher, dat's whut you got yerselfs dere.
Everyone knows the Pacific Northwest gets a lot of rain since it rains pretty much from October to July but what they don't know is Dallas gets more inches of rain than Portland and Dallas has 325 sunny days a year.
Yup, gulley wersher.
I know, drives me nuts when people "ewwwwwwwww" Portland and the PNW for the rain factor. They don't realize that no one up there actually uses umbrellas...they NEVER believe me.
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