Hurricane Harvey: Houston man goes fishing in his own front room as floods swamp city
‘Why go out looking for food when the food is coming to our living room?’
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Your support makes all the difference.Flooding in Houston has become so bad after Hurricane Harvey, one family was able to take up fishing – in their own home.
“Why go out looking for food when the food comes to our living room?” resident Viviana Saldaña posted to Twitter, sharing a video of her father, nearly knee-deep in water, catching a fish with his bare hands in the family’s front room.
The post quickly went viral, with as many as 460,700 people sharing it on Facebook by Monday morning.
Despite the obvious damage to their home from heavy flooding, Ms Saldaña can be heard on the video cheering and laughing as her father races around the living room, trying to catch at least one fish that had managed to swim its way into their house.
“My dad wants y’all to recognize his fishing skills. He already has a fish mounted on the wall, there’s another one getting done. He needs more!” Ms Saldaña wrote.
Many social media users remarked on how uplifting the video was to see during a difficult time.
“The fact u r laughing during such a horrible time is awesome! Best video of the day!” one commenter wrote on Facebook.
“At least they still have their sense of humour,” another said.
Theirs is one of the thousands of homes severely damaged by flooding in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, which has been downgraded to a tropical storm.
Hurricane Harvey, which made landfall late on Friday night, has since been downgraded to a tropical storm, dropping heavy rain on residents in Houston and surrounding areas in Texas.
Rising floodwaters have forced thousands of people to climb onto rooftops or seek higher ground, as overwhelmed rescuers struggle to keep up with the influx of calls for help.
Emergency responders have had to give top priority to those in life-or-death situations, leaving many affected by the storm to fend for themselves, as even hospitals in the Houston area had to be evacuated due to rising waters.
It's still unclear how many people have been rescued so far, with as many as 1,200 people saved from floodwaters in Galveston County alone.
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