1. Houston-area doctor Stephen Kimmel left his own flooded home and waded and canoed through the floodwaters with help from volunteer firefighters to get to a hospital to perform an emergency surgery on a 16-year-old boy. Kimmel reached the hospital after walking the last mile in waist-high water. The patient and his mother said that they didn’t even realize at first that Kimmel was the doctor because he had just arrived at the hospital and wasn’t wearing medical attire. CNN interviewed both Kimmel and the patient the day after the surgery. Read more
Hero doctor canoes through flood to perform emergency surgery: “I thought if I can do it I certainly should” https://t.co/jmZgLFANFI
— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) August 31, 2017
2. A volunteer from Texas City told CNN’s Ed Lavandera that he had come to Houston with his boat to “save some lives.” The man said that he had already received eight calls for rescue, and that after he went to get those eight, he was going to go back out to save some more. Read more
A boater tells @edlavaCNN that he’s going to “try to save some lives” as flooding spawned from #HurricaneHarvey pummels Texas pic.twitter.com/sDTT843CFq
— Doug Criss (@CNNDoug) August 28, 2017
3. Aaron Mitchell walked 12 miles in the middle of the night from Aransas Pass to Rockport looking for his father after they were separated by the storm during the weekend of Harvey’s landfall. Using a satellite phone, Aaron was able to contact his father after not being able to reach him for days due to a lack of cell service in the area. The father and son were reunited soon afterwards in Austin. Read more
4. When a photo of several elderly women in a flooded nursing home in Dickinson, sitting on couches and in wheelchairs in chest deep in water, went viral, people began to call for their rescue. The next day, the women and about 20 other residents were confirmed to be safely evacuated from the nursing home. Read more
5. Houston KHOU reporter Brandi Smith flagged down rescuers while on air to alert them of a man stuck in the cab of a semi-truck on a flooded highway. Broadcasting live from near a flooded Houston highway, Smith ran and waved to get the attention of two sheriff’s deputies who were passing by. On their way somewhere else, the deputies stopped to rescue the stranded driver, punching out the window of his truck with a crowbar and pulling him to safety. After the rescue, Smith asked the man a couple questions and gave him a hug. Read more
Incredible, watch as @BrandiKHOU flags down a rescue boat on-air, saving this truck driver’s life https://t.co/EVvNbdt13k pic.twitter.com/3mYi9McniB
— Hayley Jones (@meetmissjoness) August 27, 2017
6. Jim McIngvale, known as “Mattress Mack,” opened his two Houston-area furniture stores to flood evacuees, providing an impromptu place for hundreds of people to sleep as well as giving out free meals. McIngvale also sent trucks out into the flooded streets to look for people who still needed help evacuating their homes. Read more
7. In another viral photo from Harvey’s wrath on the Houston area, Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Johnson carried two young children – one in each arm – through knee-deep water and heavy rain to rescue them from their flooded home in Cypress. Johnson and his colleagues were going door-to-door, checking for people needing help leaving their flooded homes. Johnson carried the two kids to safety while the parents quickly gathered some valuables to take with them.
8. A father of five young children evacuated his family from their flooded Houston-area home after receiving a mandatory evacuation order. He and his wife tried to determine the best evacuation route in the middle of the storm via Twitter before leaving in the early hours of the morning. They were forced to drive on the wrong side of the highway and take a circuitous route to avoid floodwaters. He discussed keeping his kids calm while navigating through flooded streets. The family eventually made it safely to Waco and then to Dallas. Read more
9 .A elderly Houston couple called in to order Chick-fil-A for breakfast every morning. When Harvey struck and flooded their home, they called their local restaurant to order “two grilled chicken burritos with extra egg and a boat.” The restaurant was closed due to the flooding but a manager happened to be there checking on everything and answered the phone call. The manager proceeded to call another manager, whose husband owned a boat and a jet ski. He gathered some friends and went to rescue the couple from their home, driving them right out their front door on the jet ski. Read more
10. A group of people in Houston formed a human chain to rescue an elderly man who was stuck in his car. Dozens of drivers stopped their cars along I-10 to link arms and pull the man to safety from his sinking car. The man was later taken to a hospital where he was reunited with his son. Read more