Seven adults, two babies, and two dogs managed to escape rising waters in their Hunt, Texas, home by punching a hole through their loft. Eighty-three-year-old Penny Deupree and her family show CNN how they survived.

Hunt

A family of nine, including two babies and two dogs, survived a sudden flood in Hunt, Texas, by escaping through a makeshift hole in their home's loft. The ordeal began when 83-year-old Penny Deupree noticed flooding in the early hours and quickly gathered her family to safety in the sleeping loft. As water levels rose rapidly, the adults broke through the loft ceiling to create an escape route, passing the babies to safety in the dark with only a baby monitor light for guidance.

Although the flood destroyed most of their possessions, all family members emerged without injury. The family also managed to recover sentimental items, including ashes of a loved one and memorabilia related to their ancestor, author Frances Hodgson Burnett. Despite the devastation, the family expressed gratitude for their survival and the support they found in each other.

Family of nine who survived floods returns to destroyed home

It's hell. It's whatever, but we're alive. God was with us every second, provided what we needed. An incredible story of survival for this hunt Texas matriarch and her family. Right there's the escape hatch. Right there, the escape hatch. So you all squeezed through that tunnel? I was the hardest one to squeeze. That was the problem. I couldn't die it fast enough to get up there. But you got out. 83-year-old Penny Dupree was the first to wake up, and since something was wrong in the early morning hours of July 4th. I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I went to the bathroom, I flushed it, and it goes again. You know, we're having plumbing problems. So I laid down for a few minutes, and I went, you know, it's rained a lot. I think maybe I better check the front of the house. That's when I, it was just flooding already. Her daughter, Carrie Wilt, who lives two miles down the road, explains how all nine people staying at the house managed to escape. So they gathered everybody up into the sleeping loft. This is where the grandkids slept, right? And they all got up to there, and you can see as you pan around that where the water level was. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Each one of them had a buoy, and were just hitting it and trying to get out. Who was holding the babies? Their parents. So they had a whole system in getting them to safety. Oh my god. Wow, this is insane. I can't believe they survived. It's a miracle. It's not insane. It's a miracle. So just imagine they're up here, seven adults, two babies, two dogs, and the water is rising so quickly. They're trapped, and the only way to get out was somehow to burst through. And so they just grabbed something, and the three men were trying to create this, and all they had in the pitch black was a baby monitor light. Most of their possessions are gone, but they're left with the most important thing. We have nine lives. We have everybody's safe, everybody's healthy, not barely a scratch on anybody. And a connection to their family history, while a little battered and bruised, is another story to tell. My great-great-grandmother is Frances Hodgson Burnett. She's the author of The Secret Garden, Little L'Art Blanc Boy, A Little Princess, and 50 other books. And my mother was the keeper of, you know, kind of her stuff. So we, she remained actually hanging here throughout. She got waterlogged, of course, but she's okay. A lot of laughter was had in this house, right? You are exactly right. And plenty of laughter still to come. That's my dad. Yeah, we found him. He's in there. We found his ashes. Oh my gosh. Should we move the Dr. Peppers off of him? Give him some dignity here? He would somehow find that amusing, I think. Oh yeah. Even if it's sitting around in a circle by the rubble, because they're still on this side of earth and together. You must have thought at one point, though, you were going to die. No, I didn't. No, because that's not an option. Yeah. Right? Is it?

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