A Texas family clung to life on their roof, capturing the terrifying flooding in photos and video

Jane Towler was up precocious successful a tiny compartment on the Guadalupe River arsenic thunder boomed done a thrashing rain. It was 4 a.m. and h2o was pooling connected the floor. Suddenly, her telephone rang. It was her person from a adjacent cabin.

“Jane, we’re f—ed!” Brian Keeper said frantically. “The water’s successful my house! Get out!”

Towler's gramps bought the spot successful Texas Hill Country successful the 1930s, and she's lived done galore floods successful her 70 years, losing a canoe oregon chairs present and there. But past Friday was different.

The stream would swell 26 feet (nearly 8 meters) successful 45 minutes and laic discarded to homes and buildings, expanse distant cars and trucks, and assertion the lives of much than 100 people, including galore summertime campers.

Towler didn't cognize however atrocious things would get, but the fearfulness successful Keeper's dependable kicked her into formation mode.

Pulling shoes onto bare feet, she ran successful her pajamas toward the adjacent location wherever her son, Alden Towler, and household person Shabd Simon-Alexander were sleeping, on with Simon-Alexander's toddler daughter.

Towler, her lad and Simon-Alexander chronicled their harrowing endurance successful respective videos and hundreds of photos shared with The Associated Press.

Realizing the concern was worsening

When her lad awoke to Simon-Alexander's hopeless screams, the h2o was already ankle deep.

“Who bash we tell? We person to archer someone," Simon-Alexander said successful 1 of the videos.

“Everything successful our gait has floated away,” Jane Towler said arsenic her video captured the muddy h2o rising successful the kitchen. Simon-Alexander's girl was quiet, strapped to her mother's chest.

“Okay, I privation america to beryllium prepared to spell up successful the attic,” Jane Towler said.

Alden Towler got engaged stacking belongings connected a furniture successful different country to support them dry. But Simon-Alexander pointed retired the futility.

“When your ma got here, determination was nary h2o connected the ground,” she said.

With the h2o present astatine his knees and him inactive successful conscionable underwear, Alden Towler shifted priorities and grabbed a vessel of h2o and peanuts.

“What if we spell up hill?" helium asked.

“We cant get out! The full country is flooded! OK, bash you privation to spell see? I don't privation you to get flash flooded away, Alden!” his parent said arsenic she opened the hatch to the attic.

As the fridge toppled implicit with a splash, their narrowing options crystalized.

“What bash we bash to beryllium safe? Go connected the roof?” asked Jane Towler.

“I conjecture we spell connected the roof,” her lad replied.

A ascent into darkness

Simon-Alexander consoled her daughter. Five days earlier, they celebrated the girl's archetypal day with pancakes, balloons and a canoe ride.

Now, Simon-Alexander stood with her baby, the h2o up to her thighs. Looking back, she said astatine that constituent she was definite they would drown, either wherever they were oregon successful the attic. But successful the video, she calmed her girl successful a gentle voice, telling her, “Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot, baby."

Then darkness.

“Oh my god!” said Simon-Alexander.

“The energy went out?” said Jane Towler. “That's good.” No electrocution.

At 4:16 a.m. and with the furnishings floating, Jane Towler called 911 from atop the room counter.

“You person to assistance us," Simon-Alexander pleaded into the speaker-phone. "We are going to die.”

The dispatcher, calm and kind, couldn't committedness rescue anytime soon, but urged them to get arsenic acold distant from the h2o arsenic they could, and enactment alive. They past pulled themselves into the attic.

Through the hatch, they watched h2o silently emergence successful the room below. Then they heard the eerie clinking of plates and glasses arsenic it swirled astir the cabinets and neared the ceiling.

Glimpsing the destruction

Alden recovered a vent to the roof, punched it out, and they yet climbed through. Water licked the roofline. Screams pierced the thunder arsenic radical called for each different crossed the valley. Car horns blared nonstop and vehicles floated past them, lit by lightning. The stream smelled of sewage.

Huddled connected the roof, Simon-Alexander sang to her daughter. It was a opus from Mexico called “La Caña” that she'd sung done pregnancy.

There was a boom, and past a drawn retired splintering sound that carried done the cacophony. The location quivered.

Their neighbor's house, buoyed by the swollen river, appeared to person smashed into the compartment Jane Towler had been staying successful and torn it from its foundation. It past slammed into the location they were huddled connected and a histrion betwixt the 2 structures earlier coming to a stop.

Alden thought of loved ones — his ex-girlfriend of 8 years, her begetter — similar flipping done last prayers.

Simon-Alexander sang different tune.

They were preparing to walk days connected the roof, conserving their water, peanuts and the flashlight's battery, switching it connected lone each truthful often to cheque the stream level.

It had dropped 4 inches (10 centimeters). Then later, a ft (30 centimeters).

Making it to safety

The prima began to emergence astatine astir 6:30 a.m., illuminating the transformed satellite astir them. They shouted to cars that were driving connected the roadworthy up the hill, and were yet helped disconnected the extortion and driven to a religion wherever others were gathering.

"That's truly wherever the existent fearfulness begins,” said Alden Towler, who is certified arsenic a wilderness archetypal responder.

With their aesculapian grooming — Jane Towler is simply a retired labour and transportation caregiver — they helped 2 doctors thin to the injured.

Alden Tower helped a 5-year-old lad whose shin was divided unfastened to the bone.

“We spent the nighttime successful a tree!” helium recalls the lad saying.

The boy's 3-year-old sister was inactive missing. So was his father, 2 of his grandparents and his aunt. The aunt arrived hours later, missing fingertips aft a location crashed into the histrion she was clinging to.

To the Towlers and Simon-Alexander, the country was a premix of fearfulness and generosity. A antheral asked Alden Towler if helium had his wallet, which helium didn't, and the antheral handed him $300.

Five days later, Alden Towler's dependable inactive cracked with emotion erstwhile helium described successful the assemblage the “unstoppable thrust to assistance people."