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Article snippet: HOUSTON — It was a hard choice, but in the end it was no choice at all. A small rescue boat had come up the driveway, offering help. Carl Ellis was with his frail, 73-year-old mother, Wilma Jean. The boat had room for one. The water was already up to Mr. Ellis’s knees, so there was no time to wait for rescuers with more room. His mother would have to go alone. Using the back of a pickup truck as a gangplank, Mr. Ellis helped his mother into the boat, her belongings trussed up in garbage bags. There were no life jackets, but it was a short trip and the rescuers promised to come right back for him. He never saw them — or his mother — again. Any catastrophic weather event has its measurable aspects: inches of rain, speed of wind, cubic yards of debris. Others are incalculable: waterlogged photos, frayed communities, the invisible moorings of permanence and safety swept away. But perhaps the worst things are the unknowable, forever lost in the confusion, mysteries like what happened to Ms. Ellis, who was rescued not once, but twice, and who nonetheless became a casualty of the storm. At the time her son believed she was being ferried to higher ground, she was found floating face down in the floodwater. In what became one of the day’s elegiac moments, Ms. Ellis was resuscitated by a group of civilian boaters from Louisiana, part of an informal organization known as the Cajun Navy. That moment was hailed on national television and social media as an example of heroism ... Link to the full article to read more