Katy-area family recounts escaping central Texas flood waters: 'It seemed like a lifetime'

KATY, Texas (KTRK) -- From sleeping to survival mode, that was the reality for a Katy-area family in central Texas.

"They knocked on all of our doors, said it was time to go. We immediately could hear the water rushing - you could see it, and it was up to where we had been sitting in rocking chairs the night before," flood survivor, Nanci McFarland, said.

Nanci McFarland and Cristen McCarroll said their annual family trip to Hunt quickly turned into a terrifying experience when they heard knocking on their doors at 3 a.m. on July 4, adding they only had time to get up and go.

"We just stayed in our cars in the middle of the road until we realized the current was moving under our vehicles, and at that point we had to abandon our vehicles and run towards the hill to try and get as high as we could," McFarland said.

Both recount the moments they realized just how rapidly the water was rising.

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"When we got out, I would say it was shin deep, and then in a couple of minutes - waist. It seemed like a lifetime, but in a couple of minutes, that water had gone up from our knees to our thighs to the waist on some of our kids," survivor McCarroll said.

They said once they ditched their cars, their lives flashed before their eyes.

"That we weren't going to make it," McFarland said.

Later, they made it to a point where they waited out the storm on rocks and debris, and today, they say they are grateful to be alive.

"We are going to put our kids on top of those pillars, and we're going to hold on to them. Because if the water comes so high and we can't make it to the hill, then at least the kids will be high enough. We thought the pillars were high enough that they would be OK and we would try to hold on, but we made it," McFarland said.

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