Heavy Rain Forces Families From Homes

Heavy rain last night caused flooding in some areas, five Sulphur families were forced to leave their homes in the middle of the night last night as water came up quickly.

Residents of the area on West 10th and Tulsa Ave. said the Sulphur Fire Department knocked on their doors around midnight telling to get out, but water was already up to their knees.One family said this is the third time their home has flooded but last nights was by far the worst.

Flood victim Shelia Copeland said, "When I opened the door and actually seaw how much water was out here, I told them we have a grand baby, we have no car, I told them we don't know what to do and they said we need to evacuate," she said. "Thank God."

The Copeland family said their home has flooded before, but last night was life threatening.

The Sulphur Fire Department said around midnight they realized residents on West 10th and Tulsa Ave. needed to evacuate.

"Most of the people we encountered were asleep," Fire Marshal Pete Haines said. "So we just started going door to door knocking on the doors and we were able to get them out before the water got any higher."

Sheila Copeland said, "It was right up to the porch, but he said the foundation might go and everything and we needed to leave and its never got as high as it did last night."

"At the time, we were able to walk them, go up and get them off the porches and walk them out here to safety," Haines said.

"I was knee deep, he was a little more, and then he carried her," Copeland said.

Haines said the raging flood water swept away any objects in its path and carried them downstream, making the rescue a little risky but thankfully no one was injured.

"I thank God for them knocking on the door last night because I dont know what we would have done," Copeland said. "We would be swimming."

Most residents returned home this morning but for many, it was to a house without power.

OG&E reported on their website 215 customers experienced outages, but it has since been restored.

Power may not be the biggest problem for many people, since homes were damaged during the flood.

"He has to wait for insurance and that takes a while to get it fixed but I don't know that I want to do this again," Copeland said.

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