On Thursday morning, 17-year-old Chloe Adams woke up with a nightmare. Strong water was pouring out of the bathroom drains, bubbling through the kitchen tiles and quickly surrounding her house.
Chloe, who lives with her grandfather in Whitesburg, Kentucky, was alone with none other than her trusted companion, Sandy, the dog she has had since she was a child.
“There was water as far as I could see,” she told the CNN in a message. “I had a full-blown panic attack.”
But she was determined to get out safely and take her dog with her.
At least 25 people died in the heavy rains and flooding in eastern Kentucky and hundreds more lost everything they had, Governor Andy Beshear said Friday.
Chloe’s grandparents were in a house a few feet away, separated from their granddaughter by the turbulent waters. They yelled at her, asking Chloe to stay inside until help arrived. But with little cell service and a 911 call center that, likely overworked, wasn’t responding to her calls, Chloe said she realized she needed to get out to survive.
“My first thought was that we needed to swim to my uncle’s house,” where the rest of her family were taking shelter, she said.
“I put Sandy in the water momentarily to see if she could swim.”
After trying on other furniture, Chloe placed her dog inside a plastic drawer in her closet to keep it dry – and then placed the drawer on a sofa cushion to keep it afloat.
“I finally had a plan that I believed… that could work,” she said. “I knew the dangers of trying to swim in deep, moving water, but I felt I had no choice.”
She swam through the cold waters, pushing Sandy’s pillow in front of her, until she reached the narrow roof of a nearby warehouse; the only part of the structure not yet submerged.
There, the two sat for more than five hours before Chloe’s cousin rescued the teenager and her dog with the help of a kayak. Nearby, Chloe’s family, sheltered on the second floor of her uncle’s house, kept watch and chatted with her while they waited for help.
When the teenager returned to her grandmother’s house, she broke down, “from the relief of knowing that Sandy and I survived the flood,” she said.
“My heart goes out to all the other people who have lost and suffered much more than I have in this terrible devastation,” Chloe added.
In a Facebook post after the rescue, Terry Adams, the teenager’s father, called his daughter “brave”.
“We lost everything today,” he wrote. “Everything except what matters most.”
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
