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Sleeping In Cars, Walking Through Water, Texans Braved Harvey To Find Shelter

People gather around cots inside the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston as they take shelter from the flooding on Monday.
Marisa Peñaloza
/
NPR
People gather around cots inside the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston as they take shelter from the flooding on Monday.

Jacqueline Woodfork drove through the rain and slept on a highway before she finally found shelter from the floodwaters of Hurricane Harvey.

"I saw cars turning around because the rainfall was so heavy and because the exits were all flooded," says Woodfork, 29. Her car battery died on an elevated portion of Interstate 45 after she left her Houston apartment on Saturday.

A dead car battery left Jacqueline Woodfork stranded in her car on her way to Houston's convention center. "It was just a foreign concept to have to spend the night on the highway," she says. "I got a few cat naps."
Marisa Peñaloza / NPR
/
NPR
A dead car battery left Jacqueline Woodfork stranded in her car on her way to Houston's convention center. "It was just a foreign concept to have to spend the night on the highway," she says. "I got a few cat naps."

Spending the night on I-45 was a "foreign concept," she adds, but roadside assistance was not an option. She took cat naps inside her sedan until police officers arrived with jumper cables the next day. She eventually arrived at the George R. Brown Convention Center.

On Sunday, Woodfork was joined by 2,500 other evacuees stranded inside the makeshift shelter after Hurricane Harvey. The Texas Gulf Coast Red Cross expects that number to rise above 3,000 for Monday night, according to the group's spokesperson MaryJane Mudd.

Many have harrowing stories of escaping rising waters in a city largely swallowed by floodwaters.

Shawn Rosales and her two daughters walked through water up to their necks before they took refuge at the convention center on Sunday night.

"We saw a snake. We saw rodents in the water and frogs, so it was pretty tough," she says.

People sign up for volunteer positions according to expertise including administration, technology, language, medical, special needs and culinary experience.
Marisa Peñaloza / NPR
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NPR
People sign up for volunteer positions according to expertise including administration, technology, language, medical, special needs and culinary experience.

The Houston Fire Department helped them evacuate from the second floor of her apartment complex. Some of Rosales's neighbors fled into vacant units on the building's upper level with some of their furniture. But the water kept creeping up the stairs leading to the door of her second-floor apartment.

"That's how we knew that we were in trouble and that we needed to get out," she says.

Rosales says the ordeal is forcing her to rethink where she will live in the future.

"Living on the bayou there, this will be my third time dealing with catastrophic ... floods, so I think it's time to move," she says, adding that leaving Houston is "not off the table."

Andrea Rylander, a supervisor for food service at a local hospital, has hopes of rebuilding her home after the flooding.

"I've been in my house for 12 years, and this is the first time for me. It's crazy," says Rylander, who walked onto a highway through the rain with her son Jonathan until a bus picked them up.

"My mom is clearly emotional," says Jonathan, hugging his mom inside the convention center as her eyes become flushed with tears. "It's OK to be emotional. You just lost your home. You lost pretty much everything you worked for. Everything you strived for, you lost."

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Marisa Peñaloza is a senior producer on NPR's National Desk. Peñaloza's productions are among the signature pieces heard on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition and All Things Considered, as well as weekend shows. Her work has covered a wide array of topics — from breaking news to feature stories, as well as investigative reports.
Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) is a national correspondent for NPR reporting on the people, power and money behind the U.S. census.