NEW ORLEANS — Tasha Seeb, a former New Orleans resident who moved to Houston, put the call out for help of the Cajun Navy on Facebook Saturday night, and now she’s running a dispatch operation out of her Houston home.
“We were coming home after watching the fight on Saturday, and all of a sudden the streets began to flood,” said Seeb. “My husband and I had to swim home. When I finally got to dry lands I posted on Facebook, ‘We need the Cajun Navy, and we need y’all now! #ClearLakeHouston #help #CajunNavy”
The kind people of Louisiana responded. Now, Seeb and her neighbors are helping to put the Cajun Navy in touch with people who are stranded.
“We’ve gotten thousands of calls,” Seeb said. “When they call us we enter their information into the computer, which connects to a map and shows the first responders where they can grab these people.”
Seeb said that she’s even had a woman in labor, having contractions one minute apart, call her for help. They’ve had more than 12 boats head to Houston from Louisiana, and recently put a call out for airboats.
If you need rescuing from the life threatening floods please call 281-898-3016 and provide the following information:
-Contact name
-phone number
-location
-city
-what is the cross stress or landmark
-number of adults, children, and pets and carriers for pets.
To help support the Cajun Navy in their mission, donate to their cause here.
Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas Gulf Coast Friday night as a Category 4 storm. It quickly downgraded to a tropical storm, but it has been dumping record-level rainfall over Houston and Southeast Texas ever since.
There is no indication the water will stop rising anytime soon. Swollen rivers in east Texas aren’t expected to crest until later this week, but federal officials are already predicting Tropical Storm Harvey will drive 30,000 people into shelters and spur 450,000 victims to seek some sort of disaster assistance.
The average annual rainfall in Houston is 50 inches. The city has seen 25 inches of rain in two days. Another 25 could fall by Saturday.