00:00I was grabbing one at a time and I was like, okay, here, here's one.
00:05And then he would carry them over their head.
00:07One by one, Ashley Towns plucked her pets from rising floodwaters.
00:12She had a brand new home, an American dream, with a life built around family and friends.
00:18And then the water came.
00:20I literally have no words.
00:22For Ashley and her husband, Trevor Towns, an ordinary Monday morning became a race against time.
00:28Their boats are coming over to visit us.
00:31Goat Creek and Bevard County, Florida, swelled beyond its banks, sending a torrent of floodwaters into their Grant Valkyria home.
00:38And I'm to here, here, here, to here.
00:42And he has me and we're literally swimming out.
00:46With children to protect and five dogs to rescue, every minute mattered.
00:50As you watch the radar, it looked like it kept, it was going away.
00:54And so it was like another band would come through and it's like, all right, this should be the last
00:58one.
00:59We should be okay.
01:00But the water kept rising.
01:02What, is that a crowd?
01:03Now the height of the flash flood, this boat sat on that roof for about four days, eight feet above
01:09the ground.
01:10The waters have finally receded enough.
01:12It now is in the driveway.
01:14The town's family was far from alone.
01:16There's all my poles.
01:17In Brevard County, more than 2,000 homes were damaged after parts of the county received two feet of rain
01:24in just two days.
01:26Water came in the windows, came through the walls, behind the paint, the paint was bubbling.
01:31Just two days until Florida's dry season, parts of the state were already underwater.
01:38From helicopter rescues in Brevard County, to more than 15 inches of rain in just 12 hours in Palm Beach
01:46County, to a state of emergency in St. Lucie County.
01:50I'm already losing my mind.
01:52So far, federal assistance for this staggering flood disaster hasn't been approved.
01:57And for Ashley and Trevor Towns, the place they had hoped to build their future has become part of a
02:02devastating new reality.
02:04Right now, it's just dealing with the insurance companies.
02:07And when the water took almost everything else.
02:09Did we lose everything?
02:10Yes.
02:10We couldn't take what mattered most.
02:12Did we lose each other?
02:13No.
02:14In Valkyria, Florida, I'm Leslie Hudson for AccuWeather.
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