>
Article snippet: HOUSTON — The rain had begun to fall again on Sunday afternoon when there was a roar over Interstate 610. A Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter was hovering overhead, a rescuer and a resident joined together by a harness and arms. The men touched down in an emptied traffic lane. They unhooked from each other. Seconds later, the rescuer and his helicopter were off again. And Robert Durbin, 33, was left to find his wife, Danielle, who had been airlifted in her pajamas minutes earlier. Shoeless, he ran through the parking lot that had sprung up on the interstate, searching, his eyes scanning the cars and vans. He soon found her in a television crew’s vehicle. They had been on the roof of their home since about 8 a.m., and they expected all of their possessions, except those in the attic, would be lost. “That was insane,” Mr. Durbin said of his family’s ordeal. The Durbins, whose first task after being reunited was to retrieve their daughters, who were at a relative’s house, were hardly alone in being plucked to safety. Houston Sunday was a study in desperate improvisation, streets and highways turned into rivers, boats and helicopters more useful than cars, and dramatic rescues taking place virtually everywhere one looked. The National Guard and a flotilla of private boat operators swarmed Houston in search of residents in distress, many of whom had been frantically calling the authorities for help all day long. Stranded residents mounted the backs of some ... Link to the full article to read more