In the South Beltline and Gills Creek area of Columbia, many homes were extensively damaged by 2015’s historic “thousand-year flood.” Rachel Larratt, a survivor turned volunteer from that area, reflects on the water rising in her own home, as well as the deflated spirits of other survivors who continued to struggle to recover after the disaster.
In 2016, Larratt reflected on the impact the flood had on her family. This interview was originally produced for Narrative by Olivia Aldridge.
Rachel Larratt: It was about 2 or 3 in the morning. (I) was talking to a friend who had gotten woken up in the middle of the night. I said, “Well, I'm going to bed.” And she said, “Go check the basement one more time.” (I) go downstairs, and there's three or four inches of water across the entire thing. And then, all of a sudden, (the) crawl space broke open and the window well broke open. And it was three or four feet of water that I was standing in the middle of. So, I got my dog and my kid, took her and got her to a friend's house, and then came back, because I noticed some neighbors were sort of milling around. And I turned that corner, and there's water that's 10, 20 feet deep. All of your neighbors’ houses are completely submerged, where you just see the little point of their roof. The power never went out in our house, and we couldn't get downstairs to shut it off. So, I just decided that I was going to just stay there and I can help in my neighborhood. And then, I think the first night, that I was like, “Okay, haven't slept.” It's kind of scary to be sleeping when you know you're sitting over seven feet of water that’s just gonna keep coming. So, I just was helping my neighbors and just stayed there until my boyfriend finally came back and was like, “We can't stay here. You're nuts. This is so dangerous.” And I was just like, “Well, I don't want to leave. Something bad's gonna happen if I'm not here to prevent it.” Almost like I could be a human shield and just stop the water from coming in. I'm a little delusional I think, you know, “One person can make a difference!” But not against water. So, I'm trying to just help other people because, it’s sort of helping myself by helping other people, because I feel like I can kind of cope a little bit better. I was reading an article a couple months ago about how people who grew up kind of rough, tend to be able to cope better than people who, you know, didn't have to face obstacles earlier in life. You know, we grew up pretty poor, and going from like, living in a campground, or when your parents are like, “Hey, we're going to go on this road trip. You know, it'll be a fun thing.” And then you realize, you know, as you get older, like, “Oh, we didn't have a house to live in. So that's why we went car camping for the summer.” My mom was pretty creative in trying to hide that sort of stuff from us. But you still, eventually, you know, when you're gonna go and pick flowers and weeds and stuff for a couple bucks an hour as a 13-year-old so that you can help put food on the table…it's different than the way my daughter's growing up now. But I still…I just feel like some of the things I've been through…help. So, sitting there and going, “Okay, we lost everything we own. What do we do now?” For some reason, I'm pretty good at it. And I don't usually get overwhelmed by, like, the forest. I can just start picking out each tree and just going through until it's all taken care of. But I see a lot of people that are exhausted because they're paying their mortgage on a property they can't live in. They're renting a place, they are paying bills. You know, nobody budgets for that. You don't budget to have to run two households, because, why would you? Even people who had flood insurance, it's not enough to replace what you spent your whole life building. I think in the beginning, you know, people want to help and they want to be there for you, but then they also get exhausted. I mean, this is a marathon or an ultramarathon. It's not over in a year, it's not over in two years, it's over in 10 years.
