“Hold on to my neck so you can get out,” Hilario Reynosa told his wife, Elodia Reyes, when last Thursday night they saw their house flooded after the intense storms that hit eastern and central Mexico.
(Photo: Marco Antonio Perez / AFP)
Leaving the house was impossible, as the door was blocked by heavy furniture dragged by the avalanche. They had no choice but to go to the roof.
My wife “grabbed my neck and we went out (on the other side) and there we held on, there we woke up, there we passed her and she was asking ‘Help, help!'” Hilario recalls to the AFP.
Thus “the grandparents”, as they have been baptized on social networks, were immortalized in images in which they are seen sitting and hugging on the narrow structure of their house that was their salvation.
Around them, the overflowing river threatened them and the water covered them up to their hips. Finally, a person came to them in a rowboat. “She came to rescue us and took us to her house. She kept us there, she gave us food. Such a good lady!” says Elodia in a timid voice.
“There are people who sometimes you don’t know who they are, but they have a good heart. That’s the beautiful thing,” says her husband with a smile.
Their home was completely destroyed by the water and they now remain with a neighbor who took them in.
His face still shows an embarrassed expression after the ordeal. Hilario pulls the shorts he is wearing up to his thighs to show the extensive bruises he has had since that day. “Here it was, like this. The water was strong, like that,” the old man shows.
(Photo: Marco Antonio Perez / AFP)
At times, desperate, he thought that the water was taking his wife away from him. “He knows how to swim; I don’t,” explains Elodia.
The man proudly says that having been a fisherman and bricklayer gave him the physical strength to withstand the onslaught of the river for hours. The most important thing was “the lives of both of them,” says Hilario, who is now crying out for help to rebuild his home.
