ocess. as you re talking to all these people how many people actually have flood insurance? reporter: you know it s tough for folks here. there s about 1400 structures in houston that have been impacted. all those are people. people that are now in their homes with a lot of water damage. i want to show you the power of the water and the surge specifically. this is what made this particular storm so dangerous. take a look right over here. this is all debris from a bayou that s about 200 feet from where i m standing. you can see the surge coming through, pushing through those cars and into homes. i talked to the owner of this particular house. she tells me it was about 2:00 in the morning. the water started rising. her family started jumping on the counters of her kitchen to stay dry. they have two dogs. they put the dogs on top of the dinner table in order to keep the dogs dry. i want to show you here the water levels.
told him that we needed to get up and get out now because the water was rising. all the water from the blanco river, i guess was pouring into the san marcos river, which was going to rub right through martindale. so it was going to hit us. so we did. we just got up got dressed, got our dogs and we got in our vehicles and we left. paula, how fast was the water coming in? well i know i checked from that time until 7:30 around 7:30 people started posting pictures. 7:30 8:00 8:30 in the morning. our house, our yard was already completely covered. there s a vehicle in our yard that doesn t work right now. it was already covering the tires of that vehicle. so it was high at that point. ms. rodriguez, it s chad myers. let me just talk to you about the rain and how it came in and maybe even people that didn t
reporter: and, you know, brooke they ve been here for almost 70 years. it was built in the 40s. they say the water has never gotten in the cabins. to imagine it completely sweep away the entire front row of cabins and get about four feet high in the second row, it s just scary to say the least. but their hopes are high. they say they re going to salvage what they can. they may not be able to rebuild the cabins that were lost but they still have part of the campground that they ll be able to use. they re all in very good spirits today. our hearts are with all of them. jennifer gray thank you so much. chad myers is with me here in new york which is wonderful. thank you for stopping by. i think that woman hit it. they re called flash floods for a reason but for people who have never, thank goodness been stuck in them can you please explain to me how in one instant you re driving along a road it s fine and then boom water. what jennifer was in was hill country. hill country of texas
night to the sister of a family who were in this home. the home went down the quick-moving water, hit something, the home separated. dad was okay the rest of the family wasn t. i want you to join me in this next conversation if you will. we re hearing all these different stories and other small towns devastated by the flash floods. martindale about seven miles from san marcos one of the harder hit areas. people also say their homes suffered a tremendous amount of damage. on the phone with me now is paula rodriguez, who lives in martindale. paula, thank you so much for taking the time to jump on the phone with me. i have chad myers with me as well one of our cnn meteorologists. can you just i know you were asleep when all of this was happening. tell me what happened that night. basically, yes, i was asleep. around 4:15 my older son came into my room and said one of my sons who resided in san marcos had access to the news and called him repeatedly and just
river where people come but not today. it came up to about 44 feet. look at all of these slabs. these cabins. people were staying in these cabins friday and saturday night until they were swept away. now they re all the way on the other side of the street. they re just tangled, all on each other. crews have been out here cleaning up the mess. you can look at this cabin behind me. you can see the water mark. these are elevated even higher. and look at this. the water marks here three, four feet inside of these cabins. if all of this isn t scary enough they couldn t see a thing. you kept hearing the trees crack and the trees hitting against the cabins and stuff. that had to be haunting. you couldn t see it. it was at night. scary. that s what i think panicked the people more. they didn t know. and this water is just coming up so fast.