For what seemed like an eternity, Megan Drye, her son and her parents clung to the roof of their family home as rain brought on by Hurricane Helene pelted Asheville and the water rose higher and higher around them.
Then suddenly the house collapsed, sending them all into the muddy, unforgiving water.
Drye was the only one who ultimately made it out alive.
The last thing she heard her son scream was, “Jesus, please save me!”
Days later, the heartbroken mother mourned her 7-year-old son Micah and her 73-year-old parents, Nora and Michael, and thanked God for his salvation.
“There is no way I could have survived without God and these prayers,” Drye, 39, said tearfully in an interview Monday.
The city of Asheville, in North Carolina’s western mountains, was particularly affected by Helene, which made landfall in Florida on September 26 as a Category 4 storm. The hurricane killed at least 240 people, most of them in North Carolina. At least 117 people died there, including 72 in Buncombe County, where Asheville is located.
Drye texted photos of the rising water to her two older sisters before the roof gave way. One of them, Jessica Turner, who lives in Texas, posted the images on Facebook and asked people to pray for her family.
“They gave me strength,” Drye said of those prayers. “And I really believe my parents and my son were there too and helped lift me up.”
Drye said the family spent three to four hours on the roof before ending up in the water. During that time, they watched as buildings around them fell apart, 18-wheelers floated by and a dumpster landed on their roof.
Drye was afraid they would be electrocuted by the many downed power lines. After the house collapsed, she lost sight of her son and mother. She was knocked into a tree, where she became stuck.
“I see my mother floating by and she screams, ‘Micah! Micah!’” Drye said. “They had also lost each other. I just see her floating past me, screaming. I can’t see my father anymore. I can’t see anything.”
All the while, she said, she leaned on her faith.
“Even while I was drowning, I was still praying, praying, praying,” she said.
As she struggled to stay above the water, Drye said, she was struck by debris coming from all sides. Finally, she grabbed onto another, more stable tree.
“I sat there for a second and a voice inside me, which I know was God, said, ‘You have to let go. You have to let go. You have to get to a point where someone else can see you, or you just have to let go,” Drye said.
She said she couldn’t see anywhere else where she could pause and catch her breath among the raging waters.
“There was nothing wrong,” she said. “There were no trees left. There were no more landings.”
But Drye let go. “I listened to that voice,” she said. “I listened to God and let go.”
She kicked off her shoes and pulled out a knapsack from her back – filled with important documents and her laptop – that was weighing her down. And Drye stopped fighting the water, no matter what the voice advised her to do, she said.
Drye was then pinned between two storage trailers for a few hours. She recalled seeing police in the area, who used a loudspeaker to communicate with her. They told her to hold on and that they were working to reach her – which they eventually did, but not before an 18-wheeler hit the two trailers, sending her back into the water. She got back up and around 5 p.m., Drye said, a national rescue team used a ladder to get her to safety.
“They later said it was their most difficult rescue,” she recalls.
She was taken to Mission Hospital in Asheville, where Drye said there was no running water or even a hospital gown to offer her. (She said she had to relieve herself in a portable toilet.) Still, she said everyone she encountered there, even the nurses and doctors who didn’t personally care for her, was extremely friendly.
Drye was completely alone at the time. Her sisters, Heather Kephart, 43, who lives in Minnesota, and Turner, 45, whose Facebook post went viral, were traveling to be with her.
A nurse offered Drye a change of clothes. A doctor lent Drye her cell phone so she could call her sister to let her know where she was. Other medical staff offered her a place to stay when she was released from the hospital. Drye was diagnosed with hypothermia, suffered a broken ankle and spent a full night in the hospital. She has bruises on and along her body from the debris that hit her while she was in the floodwaters.
And while she’s still in pain and deeply sad, she says she doesn’t hold a grudge against anyone.
“I have never been more proud of my son because he didn’t scream my name, he screamed ‘Jesus,’” she said.
When Micah was found, he had no mark on his body, Drye said, adding that she believed he and her parents are now “in perfect peace.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
