A week after Hurricane Harvey first hit the Gulf Coast, Houston is still drowning in the unprecedented amount of rain that’s pummeled the city. Thousands have been rescued by police, the National Guard, and homegrown outfits like the “Cajun Navy.” And now even monster truck drivers are stepping up.
A fleet of the big rigs pulled into Houston this week to help out with relief efforts, ABC News reports. As a few of the ten-foot tall trucks made their way through Copperfield, Texas, on Wednesday, residents waved them down and asked for help: One of the National Guard’s massive trucks had gotten stuck in a deep pool of water that had formed in the neighborhood. So the monster truckers stopped to see if they could tow it out. Lo and behold:
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Josh James, who uploaded footage of the rescue to Facebook, helped bring the monster truckers to Houston. He called up his boys at “Rednecks with Paychecks,” a local racetrack, and asked them to haul their jacked-up rigs into the flooded city. With the help of car service company 3P Offroad, James managed to put together a rescue team of more than 200 boats, 300 trucks, and 600 civilian responders, ABC reports. They’ve been on the scene since Saturday, just a day after Harvey made landfall.
“When people need help and I can help, I’m out there,” James told ABC.
The five monster truckers tooling around Houston are also giving firefighters and paramedics a lift to areas too deep underwater to reach in ordinary vehicles. They’ve plowed through feet of rainfall with officers and supplies in tow, en route to residents stranded in the city’s hardest-to-reach neighborhoods.
On Thursday, the team made its way toward Port Arthur and Beaumont, two Texas cities that flooded after the storm touched down in southwestern Louisiana Wednesday. You can follow the truckers’ next move on Facebook Live.
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