‘All God.’ Yancey County couple survived Helene by floating on their couch

PENSACOLA, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – Helene was horrific in Pensacola, leaving the Yancey County community both scarred and scared. Yet somehow, they summon strength.

“I just want people to understand that you can’t give up, you’ve got to push no matter what,” Howard Ray told Queen City News.

A local church that withstood the floodwater is an image of enduring faith there.

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Meanwhile, Howard and his wife Lisa have a story that symbolizes Pensacola’s resilience.

“I don’t understand, we shouldn’t be alive, there’s no way, it’s all God,” Howard says, still shocked they made it.

“That’s where our house was,” Lisa says, narrating a short video clip on her phone that shows the now barren property.

“Way past down there,” she said, referring to the home hundreds of feet away from where it once was. The flooding swamped their trailer swiftly and violently.

“I just knew we were dead,” says Lisa, describing what she calls an act of God that gave the Rays a chance to escape.

“The trailer started filling up, and it’s like, it’s like [God] opened a piece up and I just had to sit down on that couch, and we floated out,” she remembers.

Incredibly, she and her husband held onto the sectional couch as a flotation device along the raging Cane River.

The water line at that point was at least 25 to 30 feet above normal.

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“While she was still on the couch, I remember just holding onto her,” said Howard. “And I remember her saying, ‘We’re going to drown.’ And I was like, ‘No if we’re going to drown, we’re going to drown together.'”

They held on for dear life, riding the couch their dog Saddi loved to lay on.

“We eventually floated down 400 yards and I told [Lisa] to jump,” Howard says.

“When he said ‘Jump,’ I grabbed the barbed wire fence and wrapped my hand around it and pulled myself up,” Lisa said.

Of course, sharp wire isn’t the ideal lifeline, but it was their only choice. She was later hospitalized with cuts on her left hand.

Then, they took shelter in a garage for hours, waiting for the water to subside. Howard is a lieutenant with the Pensacola Volunteer Fire Department and knew he was needed.

“My guys, they thought I was dead. Believe me, for a minute, I thought I was dead,” he said.

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Despite the trauma he and his wife went through, he rushed back to join fellow firefighters in disaster mode.

“I walked back to Pensacola to go help my boys because I ain’t leaving my boys no matter how much I’m hurting or whatever,” said Howard.

After Lisa was released from the hospital, she learned her best friend Michelle Quintero died in the flooding.

“I just collapsed,” Lisa said of the moment she got the news.

Quintero lived in South Toe in Yancey County and worked as a captain with the Madison County Sheriff’s Office.

“She was a good person, she’s a great mother. She had one grandbaby and one grandbaby on the way,” says Lisa.

Through the pain and loss, they move forward together in Pensacola. Since Helene, kindness and compassion rule.

Pleasant Valley Baptist Church found the Rays temporary housing, paying for an Airbnb for the next year, with donations from its Disaster Relief Fund.

Two days after the storm, the couple reunited with their dog Saddi. She was waiting next to their Jeep where their house used to be.

The Rays feel blessed no matter how little they’re left with.

“We shouldn’t be alive, but God has a purpose,” Lisa says.

We asked her what that purpose might be.

“I’m not sure, I’m still asking questions,” she said.

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“I think maybe what we’re doing right now maybe gets out and shows people that there is a God,” says Howard.

Faith keeps folks afloat right now, much like the couch that gave Rays a ray of hope.

“I know I might have lost everything but that doesn’t mean that I stop and that I’ve got to quit and just give up,” Howard said. “That’s not who I am.”

The Rays lost everything they own including their home and cars.

A GoFundMe has been set up to help get them back on their feet.

Pleasant Valley Baptist accepts donations by mail to help ongoing Helene recovery efforts at: Pleasant Valley Baptist Church Disaster Relief Fund, P.O Box 576, Burnsville, NC 28714

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