It just looked like a bit of drizzle when they went to bed but the trickles of rain over their Texas home turned out to be the start of a nightmare for Jennifer and Jack Hudson, 61. The couple, who live in the flood-ravaged town of Ingram, told the Daily Mail that they thought nothing of the storms circling Hill Country - until they woke in the early hours of Independence Day to find floodwater surging through their single-story home. 'It was about quarter to five in the morning and for some reason I got woken up,' a distraught Jennifer said in an exclusive interview.
'I heard a noise, and we were trying to connect the dots when the water started. The water was up.' That water was the Guadelupe River bursting its banks and causing deadly flooding that has so far claimed the lives of 80 people, 28 of them children. The couple live less than 100ft from its brackish brown waters, but their house sits on top of a small bank and has never previously been flooded.
But all that changed in the early hours of Friday morning - sparking a terrifying ordeal that saw the pair submerged in flood water that came up to their shoulders for over an hour as they struggled to hold on to their porch while being battered with strong currents. 'Some people are saying there weren't emergency alerts ,' Jennifer said. 'There were. But Jack's phone was in the living room, and my phone was on silent, so it wasn't loud enough to wake you up.'
The power had gone out leaving them in pitch darkness while the flood waters were rising so rapidly, their home was flooded with four feet of water in less than four minutes. 'I grabbed a tote bag, and I ran to the back office and got our birth certificates and passports,' said a tearful Jennifer. 'It's dark, I can't see anything, but I could feel those, so I grabbed them, then our phones and chargers, money and our medicine.
'By that time, the water was so high, we couldn't open a door to get out. So, we had to go through a window. 'Everything in our house was floating, and the water was coming at what felt like 100 miles an hour towards where we were. 'It was crash, bang, boom, refrigerators, big armoires, everything. And it was all happening in the dark.'
Once outside, the couple realized their predicament was even worse than they had realized with the surging currents threatening to tow them and their dogs Georgie and Zumi out into the flood. Jennifer said she tried to climb onto the roof with miniature mongrel Zumi but proved too petite at 5ft 2' to make the climb. Meanwhile Jack was trapped at ground level with the much bigger Alsatian-cross Georgie who was too heavy to hoist into the air.
Instead, the pair climbed onto the low wall surrounding their porch and clung on for over an hour even as the flood water rose to nine feet and surged around them. Jennifer said: 'It's dark and you're frantic. And you do the funniest things when you're in a panic like that. 'We didn't know we were gonna only have four minutes in the house, but we knew we had to get out of the house.
'But I was thinking, I gotta have on a bra. I got on a bra. And I got on my tennis shoes, but I forgot my glasses. 'I didn't even realize I didn’t have glasses on until after it the waters subsided, and we went back into the house.' By the time the water went down, both Jack and Jennifer were battered and bruised thanks to the surging current that had tossed them around like ragdolls.
'When we were in it was so scary,' Jennifer told the Daily Mail. 'We're standing on the wall. We're in water up to the tops of our shoulders. 'I'm thinking, OK, it's gonna go up, up, up, and we're about to die. I was hoping not. 'It was our 31st anniversary to so I just told him 'Happy Anniversary' and hoped for the best.' She added: 'Thank God we got out when we did, because we probably would have been trapped by all the furniture.'
When they finally did manage to get off their perch, it was to a scene of devastation: a home filled with foul-smelling mud, a garden scattered with dying fish and most of their possessions swept away. Some of their neighbors died while others saw their homes trashed and their cars destroyed. Jack, a furniture maker, also lost most of the lumber - which was worth $10,000 - stacked outside his home workshop as well as most of the tools needed to make the garden chairs he specializes in - a devastating financial blow that he says will mean he will now need to work well into his 80s.
The pair, who are currently living in a cabin lent to them by friends, say the kindness of the local community is helping them get through the dark time - with neighbors and friends descending to help them clear the mud from their home and salvage what possessions they can. They are also providing a steady stream of food and drink, as well as letting the couple do their laundry at their homes.
'I'm taking my mother's advice, which is so wise,' Jennifer said. 'It is "it's your turn to receive and when people say, what can I do to help, if you don't know, say you don't know, but if they offer something, say yes." 'People have been so generous and I'm so grateful. We're lucky to be alive.'