An elderly West Omaha, Nebraska, couple shared the moments they nearly drowned when water burst into their basement.
Wednesday night, the couple was in the basement when they said water rushed through a window. The 80-year-olds were gripping onto each other, trying to hold on as they swam through the flood. The only thing stronger than the current was their will to live.
“It was like a Colorado River rapid,” Ken Jones said.
Caught in the current were Ken and Sharon Jones.
“I’ve got a black eye, and my hip is sore, like I was in a fight overnight,” Ken Jones said.
Around midnight Wednesday, Ken Jones got a notification about water in his basement.
While he scoped out the issue in the furnace room, his wife came to check on him when the water burst through the window.
“I thought we were going to drown,” he said.
Furniture and beloved belongings were pushed into piles. The slick mud was still wet two days later.
They said the water rose five feet that night.
“We couldn’t stand up,” Ken Jones said. “As I was going under, I said, ‘Help! We’ve got to help — got to help each other!’”
As they were thrown across the room with the furniture, Ken fought to hold on to his wife but lost his grip.
“The one thought on my mind: I’ve got to find her,” Ken Jones said.
Eventually, they found the stairs and had to walk halfway up the flight to get out of the water, which he described as “a true blessing.”
Sharon Jones said she never had a doubt that they would make it out alive.
“I knew we were going to make it,” she said. “If anything, I could pull him out if I needed to, but I knew we were not going to die.”
They called the local fire department. They said crews arrived within 10 minutes and checked on them and all the neighbors along the street.
“They had to park out on 132nd Street because they couldn’t get into this street because the street was flooded,” Ken Jones said.
He said an assessment estimated there were $15,000 to $25,000 in damages, just to restore, not to rebuild.
Ken Jones said their insurance will not help cover any of the cost, but neighbors like Mary Yearling stepped up to help.
“We’re hoping that if we pull together and try to clean things up, that we can make it a little bit easier for them to deal with this catastrophe,” Yearling, the neighborhood’s property manager, said.
Yearling arranged to have a dumpster brought to the Jones’ home so they could get rid of unrecoverable items.
“We’re going to try to see if we can find some of those things, and hopefully she’ll be able to salvage some of them,” Yearling said. “We’re here until it gets done.”
Yearling said around a dozen people have reached out to help and five neighbors have been helping since day one.
“We never have any problem with people stepping up and helping like we’ve had this last couple of days,” Yearling said.
Although the Jones’ basement is completely destroyed, what matters most to them is they’re alive.
“They’re just things,” Ken Jones said. “We’ve got our life.”
