As they worked to deliver life-saving information, their own offices flooded.
They had a job to do.
“It was a lot of water gushing in, and the water line outside the doors was even higher. You could see where it would be ending up eventually, ” recalled Doug Deloney.
He knew he was surrounded by growing pool of flood water. He had to prepare for the inevitable moment when the deluge of murky liquid would break through the front lobby door of his office.
Deloney did the same thing he does every day at work: he pressed “go live” in the Facebook app on his cell phone.
“I was just in shock, so I kept the Facebook Live going as long as I could, ” he said.
Deloney’s job is to keep the public informed. He’s lived in Texas his entire life. He’s never seen any storm damage quite like this.
As the water levels rose, he heard shouting. It was his boss alerting the staff to evacuate immediately. The second floor shelter would not be enough of a sanctuary from Hurricane Harvey. Soon, the building would fill with about five feet of water.
“My desk went entirely underwater, and I was thinking, ‘Wait, what did I leave in my desk? What was there?’ But the one thing I left was the photo of my wife. I felt bad about that, ” he remembered as his voice cracked as his eyes began to pool with a different sort of flood.
“I’ ve got my wife now so that’s what matters. It’s been stressful.”
Deloney is a Digital Reporter at KHOU-TV in Houston.
Within eight hours, Deloney and his coworkers were back on the air from a temporary workplace set up at the University of Houston. The station broadcast for almost 140 hours from that moment, as their own workplace sat water logged.
“The story is not about us, especially that day, ” Deloney warned.
That’s the motto of a journalist: “It’s not about us.”
KHOU is our sister station in Houston. When we asked these journalists to speak about their personal experiences, their first response was, “This story isn’t about me.” However, the damage from this storm is so vast, the story is about everyone.
“We’re flooding too. We evacuated too. We’re sharing this story right alongside our viewers, ” explained Grace White.
White works with Deloney as a reporter at KHOU, but Grace is Houstonian first.
“It was my dream to work in Houston. Houston was my finish line, and here I am watching this happen to my city, ” she said.
White left her infant son with his father and drove her car to work on Sunday. That vehicle is a total loss, but her family is safe. She checks in between live shots from flood zones.
“I give him a quick hug, and I’ m like, ‘I have to get the script in for 10.’ It sound horrible, but that little glimmer just gives me what I need, ” White explained.
White was holding another mother’s child when she realized the severity of the damage from Harvey.
“I was doing boat rescues, and somebody handed me a child. Since I’ m a young mom, my son is about to be two, when that baby was handed to me I lost it. The child was wrapped in a towel just screaming. When I saw that child’s face, I saw my son, ” White recalled.
KHOU anchor Rekha Muddaraj is living the same headlines she reads on air. She woke up to the loud popping sound of her downstairs floorboards springing up as water pushed in through the foundation. She and her husband and their two daughters rode in a rescue boast to safety.
Then she went on the air.
“Our reporter is out there talking about how the National Guard is there. I’m getting text messages from neighbors and then looking up and seeing them on the boat. And it’s just sad, because we are a member of this community. We are affected by it too, ” Muddaraj said.
Her neighborhood is still underwater.
“It’s surreal in a lot of ways, and it’s just our new normal. And I think we’re going to be ok. We’re going to be OK, ” she said.
© 2017 WXIA-TV
