Ike victims recall 8-mile slog to higher ground

updated 5:58 p.m. ET Sept. 15, 2008

SAN ANTONIO - For four hours the two roommates trudged through crashing waves and deadly currents to escape their island community. He, clinging to a neighbor's small boy. She, helping an elderly couple. Four hours for this caravan of the desperate to go just four miles. And that was before the eye of Hurricane Ike had even reached the shore.

Only then, believing they faced almost certain death, did Robert Greenleaf and Thelma Stewart take a Sharpie and write their names and Social Security numbers on their arms. Then they waited, and waited — taking shelter in a friend's brick home on higher ground.

When a Blackhawk helicopter finally flew them to safety, they saw their waterfront Eden completely submerged. They now live in a warehouse-turned-shelter in San Antonio. They wear donated clothes, branded as evacuees by white wrist bands.

Heroic, some of their fellow storm survivors have called them. But they prefer another word: blessed.

"We did what we had to do, the best we could," Greenleaf said, "to save our lives, and others."

Nearly 2,000 rescued
The rescued. They have become the story behind the storm that battered the Texas coast these past days. By Monday, nearly 2,000 people had been saved from flooded streets and demolished homes in a Herculean search and rescue effort done by air, boat and on foot.

Hundreds arrived, two full days after Hurricane Ike struck, at the Port San Antonio shelter, including at least eight packed buses from hard-hit Galveston Island. On Sunday night, exhausted evacuees emerged and piled into a line for processing. Some rolled suitcases or hoisted backpacks. Others carried only trash bags or pillowcases stuffed with belongings.

A woman in a wheelchair, her eyes tired and vacant, cradled only a small, green suitcase in her lap.

Many of these didn't have to be "rescued" in the sense that most might imagine. They weren't plucked from rooftops by a helicopter or whisked away in an airboat. They had decided to ride out the storm. Then, they realized the damage was worse than they expected. They started running out of food and water, heard that the electricity could be out for a month.

So when authorities came Sunday morning to tell them they could leave by bus, they did.

"It's not really the hurricane that messes with you. It's the aftermath," said Shad Landry, who was waiting to register. "I guess this is better."

Ruben Perez, another Galveston evacuee, lamented that the devastation was simply too much. "There was nothing to stay for," he said.

Gilchrist flooded early
Not everyone, though, stayed behind by choice or even necessity; not all had to be saved because of a bad decision. Greenleaf, 59, and Stewart, 30, had planned to leave before the storm. But Ike unleashed its fury much sooner than even forecasters thought. Some, like these two friends, simply found themselves stuck.

The pickup truck was packed and ready to go, filled with water and Gatorade, a charcoal grill, Stewart's important papers — the title to her truck and her mobile home — in a watertight bag. She and Greenleaf had planned to leave first thing Friday from the tiny community of Gilchrist on Bolivar Peninsula, bounded by the Gulf of Mexico on one side, Galveston Bay on the other.

Smiley N. Pool / AFP-Getty Images A single home was left along this beach in Gilchrist, Texas.

Then at 3 a.m. Friday, Stewart woke with a start. She stepped outside of her mobile home, and water was up to her knees.

She and Greenleaf started banging on neighbors' doors at the RV park where they lived. Only one man answered, and Stewart was insistent: "We have to go! Now!"

The three hopped in her truck and headed onto Highway 87 out of town. But the water was rising inches in just minutes. Soon enough, the pickup stalled. They and some others who were also trying to flee piled into the bed of a bigger truck, but after only a few more miles, a wave knocked the truck sideways. They had no choice but to wade through the murky waters toward safety.

There were 12 or 13 of them in all, a neighbor, the manager of the local tavern, a husband and wife with their toddler son and young daughter, a couple in their 70s or 80s. Greenleaf hoisted the young boy into his arms.

"Grab whatever you've got to," he told the crying child. "Just don't let go."

Stewart stayed by the older folks, and they all set out beneath the moonlight.

Gilchrist was about eight miles southwest of a part of the peninsula known as High Island, because it's on higher ground.

They still had four miles to go.

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