On this edition of Narrative, we mark the 10th anniversary of the historic “thousand-year” flood of October 2015, when relentless rainfall devastated communities across South Carolina.
A year after the flood, Columbia resident Beki Gettys and her eleven-year-old son Eli sat down to talk about the morning they awoke to flood waters overtaking their neighborhood.
They spoke with StoryCorps, a national initiative to record and collect stories of everyday people. This excerpt was selected and produced by Linda Nunez.
TRANSCRIPT:
Eli Gettys: How did you feel during the flood?
Beki Gettys: When I just woke up, I looked out the window and I saw the water was already, like, halfway up daddy's car. And that made me feel scared and confused. I was confused at first because, you know, when we went to sleep that night, I didn't think that the rain was that hard.
Eli Gettys: Yeah.
Beki Gettys: So, when I saw it, I was scared, and I ran to find where you and daddy were because, you guys had woken up earlier, right?
Eli Gettys: Yeah. The power went out and, Hugh started crying because he didn't know where anything was, and that woke me up and I couldn't go back to sleep. So, Hugh went back to sleep, because daddy came in the room to tell Hugh that it was okay.
Beki Gettys: Yeah, that was the middle of the night, right when the power went out.
Eli Gettys: And so, I got out of bed and I went over to the window because daddy said, ‘There's something I want to show you.’ When I looked out the window, I thought it had snowed because it was just…the water was pure white. And then when I saw a beach ball float past, I got really scared.
Beki Gettys: What were you thinking that morning?
Eli Gettys: I just felt really scared, and I didn't know if we were going to be able to get out of our house that day.
Beki Gettys: That was what I was thinking, too, because the water was rushing so fast, when I saw it out the front door, and I saw it in the street, that was our way out, right?
Eli Gettys: Yeah.
Beki Gettys: And I was thinking that Hugh didn't know how to swim that well.
Eli Gettys: Yeah.
Beki Gettys: You're a pretty strong swimmer, and daddy and I are pretty strong, but even with that current, it was probably going to be really hard to get out.
Eli Gettys: Yeah.
Beki Gettys: I remember I called 911, and it just rang and rang and rang, and nobody answered.
Eli Gettys es: Because everybody was calling 911.
Beki Gettys: Mm-hm. And I finally got through, and the man on the phone said, ‘Ma'am, I know where you are and we know what's happening, and I don't have anybody I can send to help you right now.’
Eli Gettys: Yeah.
Beki Gettys: And that made me scared. But then, do you remember what we saw?
Eli Gettys: A boat.
Beki Gettys: Yes, a boat. I've never been so happy to see a boat before.
Eli Gettys: And we yelled at it, didn't hear us. Came back, yelled at it, didn't hear us.
Beki Gettys: Do you remember I was standing out on the front porch, like, jumping up and down and waving and yelling?
Eli Gettys: Yeah.
Beki Gettys: I wanted to make sure that boat saw us, that we were still there.
Eli Gettys: And it was our next-next-door neighbor's boat who was just driving around getting people.
Beki Gettys: That's pretty amazing, wasn't it?
Eli Gettys: Yeah.
Beki Gettys: That somebody came and put their boat in just to go save people.
Eli Gettys: Yeah.
Beki Gettys: And they saved everybody on the street.
Eli Gettys: Yeah.
Beki Gettys: I realized when we were on the boat, and we were riding it down the street…I realized how lucky we were.
Eli Gettys: Yeah.
Beki Gettys: Even though it didn't feel like we were really lucky that morning, I realized we were really lucky when we took the boat down the street.
Eli Gettys: Yeah.
