Crowley men joined rescue teams in flooded Texas

David Martin and his cousin Kyso Bellard were sitting on their four wheelers preparing to go mudding when they heard a call on the radio.
“They were asking for anyone with a boat who could help out to please come and help rescue people,” said Martin. “I have a boat and I looked at Kyso and said “What do you want to do?
“We both said ‘let’s do this’,” he said.
Soon they had their boat hooked up and were driving towards Texas. They weren’t sure where they were going to launch from. But they eventually realized that they had different options.
“At first we wanted to go to Port Arthur,” said Martin. “When we got there we found that we couldn’t launch there. So we kept driving until we got to Orange (Texas) and we took the 16th St. exit on I-10.”
After securing a place to park, they didn’t find it too hard to launch their boat.
“Just down the block it got to where the water was 6 feet deep,” he said. “We launched and went out. That first day we rescued about 20-25 people.
“They looked so thankful...some hadn’t had electricity or eaten in a couple of days.”
When they went back the next day they were able to get to Port Arthur. They rescued approximately the same amount of people they did before. One woman and her two kids will always stand out in their memories.”
“She didn’t have power or water for two days and had two small children and none of them had eaten,” said Martin. “She was so thankful when we picked her up. She was trying to get to a shelter but said she was eventually trying to make it to her cousin’s house in Lake Charles. I told her ‘Well we’re from Louisiana. We can drop you off in Lake Charles and get you some food on the way there’.”
According to Martin, the woman began to get really emotional.
“She couldn’t stop crying,” he said. “She kept thanking us.”
Martin said that the two-day adventure was something he will never forget.
“I feel really good about what we did,” he said. “Those people over there were stuck without power and water. They were desperate.”
And Martin and Bellard, who went from being on their four wheelers to rescuing people in a span of a few hours, saw the desperation in their eyes.
“Some of those people were left with nothing,” said Martin. “I’m just glad we could help in anyway we could.”