HUNT, Texas (KXAN) Courtney Garrison and her daughter Stella woke up to “a bunch of crazy noise,” and noticed the floodwaters had reached the second story of their Texas home.
“We climbed out of the bathroom window,” Courtney Garrison said.
Garrison can’t pinpoint the exact timing she and Stella were in the dark and in survival mode. They stood on the roof in the rain, just feet away from the flood’s waves crashing into the house.
“Emotionally terrified. We could feel all of the water, we were sitting up there just watching stuff come out underneath us and go by,” Garrison said. “Once we felt it start moving I was like… at what point do we jump?”
They were scared, but they weren’t alone.
“There’s a local cop that lives up the road here, and he sat down here and talked to us on the speaker, saying ‘I see y’all. Nobody can get to you, but I see you,'” Garrison said.
As water levels receded, a neighbor was able to get a ladder up to the roof, and the mother-daughter duo got down to safety.
Garrison shared video she took from her roof during the flood.
They’re both OK – physically. But once they got to dry land, they began to learn about the death toll and the amount of people unaccounted for.
“She had a lot of friends who were at Camp Mystic,” Garrison said, pointing to Stella. “She watched some of her friends go.”
In the days following, they’re holding each other a bit tighter.
“While we lost everything, we are still here, and that’s all that matters,” Garrison said. “We have so many people rallying around us, it’s incredible.”
