If there’s any theme that unites Harvey before, during and after, it’s uncertainty. We asked listeners about their most uncertain moments during the storm. This one certainly stood out.
Katherine Moore Henderson served in the Texas National Guard until 2015. She lives in Spring , Texas, just north of Houston, with her husband and two young daughters.
“I know for certain that my most uncertain moment came Sunday evening [after Hurricane Harvey struck.] And my husband and I had been out and about helping folks move everything,” Moore Henderson says.
She left on her own to do another pass through the area, driving a big truck and carrying a kayak.
” It’s dusk and the shadows are kind of strange, and it’s really hard to see,” Moore Henderson says. “And when I glanced down, a woman… she was standing on the railing of the front porch. And she had her left arm wrapped around the column of her front porch, and the water was still at her ankles.”
Moore Henderson said the woman got down from the railing and came toward her, carrying a baby.
“I tied myself to the truck and got down in the water and just tried to meet her halfway.” she says. “And I thought, any second, that baby’s going to slip out of her arm, and we’re never going to find it.”
The woman held the baby out to Moore Henderson, who put the child inside her life vest.
“The mom hung onto the back of my life vest while I used the rope that was on my waist to kind of tug us back toward the truck,” she says.
Moore Henderson says she and the woman she rescued never exchanged names.
“I just think that’s a pretty neat testament to the way people trust and take care of each other when we need to,” she says.
Written by Shelly Brisbin.