Katherine Bauer was trapped in a car when the floods of Hurricane Ida hit when her husband Don in the driver’s seat pushed her through the cracked rear window and shouted, “Come on, go!”
“I thought he was right behind me,” Katherine exclaimed during an exclusive Friday interview with DailyMail.com, remembering the tragic night for the first time from her hospital bed in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia.
The couple was attending their daughter Sophie’s college volleyball game in Center Valley early Wednesday night when it began to rain.
Sophie’s team lost the game, but her father Don kept them encouraging afterwards.
“It was a tough game for us but he told me to keep my head up and keep playing,” Sophie told DailyMail.com. “He said he loves me and I hugged him and my mom goodbye.”
Katherine Bauer was trapped in a car when the floods of Hurricane Ida hit when her husband Don in the driver’s seat pushed her through the cracked rear window and shouted, “Come on, go!”
The couple was attending their daughter Sophie’s (pictured with her father Don and brother Darby) college volleyball game in Center Valley early Wednesday night when the rain caught up
Katherine, 54, and her 65-year-old husband (pictured on their wedding day) hopped into their Mazda SUV and headed home after the game, but the tides rose causing them to take multiple detours on routes they never will drove before
Katherine, 54, and her 65-year-old husband hopped in their Mazda SUV and headed home, but the tides were rising, making them take multiple detours on routes they had never driven before.
They stopped at a hardware store to buy a sump pump for Katherine’s mother, whose home was threatened by flooding. Then they drove home to the unincorporated Perkiomenville, Pennsylvania, and turned onto Trumbauersville Road.
As they approached a stream, a wall of water fell over the roadway.
“Suddenly there was a flood of water over the windshield and in seconds our engine was off,” Katherine said. “We hit a house that broke our rear window. It was dark and we swam and fetched water. ‘
Vehicles are submerged during flooding in Philadelphia on Thursday after downpours and high winds from the remnants of Hurricane Ida that struck the area
Kayakers paddle down part of Interstate 676 after being flooded by Hurricane Ida in Philadelphia. Flash floods caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida killed at least 44 people in four northeastern states on Thursday night, including several who died in basements during the “historic” weather event
Vehicles are flooded by the Schuylkill River in the Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia on Thursday. Don Bauer was one of several who did not make it out of their vehicles alive
Katherine was on the phone with her 23 year old son Darby when they pulled up. After beating the house, she called 911.
She and her husband called on the phone.
‘The operator says,’ Stop screaming, where are you? ‘ she remembered.
‘And I say,’ We don’t know where we are. ‘
The water continued to rise.
“We thought we had to get out now,” she said.
They loosened their seat belts. She was climbing over the console into the back seat when her husband yelled at her to jump out.
“He pushed me out,” she said.
Suddenly she found herself drifting downstream. “I grabbed the next branch and held on,” she said.
“I kept screaming for help, hoping someone would hear me,” she said. ‘Then the branch began to break.’
“I put myself in God’s hands and let go,” she said.
She floated to another tree just downstream.
“I got down to it and just prayed,” she said. ‘The water rose and I climbed higher on the branch.’
Then she saw a light in the distance and heard someone scream.
‘I’m here!’ she called back, although the stranger could not reach her.
The morning after Katherine was rescued, two state troopers entered her hospital room with the tragic news that her husband’s body had been recovered. He never made it out of the vehicle
Don worked as a bus driver for 15 years and used to take his own children to school
Moments later she saw fire trucks on the other side of the stream. Another 20 minutes passed, she said.
‘Help, I’m still here!’ she remembered screaming.
What she didn’t hear was her husband’s voice.
“I didn’t hear my husband at all and just thought, ‘He saved me. He saved me because my kids need me, my mother needs me. ‘
“In my family we joke that we are very stubborn,” she told DailyMail.com. “Stubborn can be good. I decided I won’t die tonight. I didn’t get this far, not make it.
“I was just praying that the branch wouldn’t give way,” she added.
An hour after she escaped from the vehicle, rescuers finally reached her on a raft.
“They came up and grabbed me,” she said. “It was hard to get in because I didn’t have the strength to help them. I couldn’t even get my leg over the side. ‘
Katherine was taken to a fire truck where she was wrapped in a blanket while rescue workers searched for her husband.
“I thought he escaped, but they came back and said they had to stop looking because the current was too strong,” she said.
She was taken to St. Luke’s University Hospital in Quakertown in an ambulance with hypothermia, muscle damage, and some scratches and bruises.
Water from the Schuylkill River inundates 26th Residential Street on Walnut Street in Philadelphia
A kayaker paddles down part of Interstate 676 after being flooded by Hurricane Ida in Philadelphia
A person walks on a flooded street as the Schuylkill River crosses its banks in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia on Thursday
The next morning, two state troopers entered their hospital room with the tragic news that their husband’s body had been recovered. He never made it out of the vehicle.
The SUV landed nearly 200 meters downstream from the house it came across.
On Friday, the home’s owner, firefighter Terry Kane, told DailyMail.com that he helped rescue two other drivers whose cars were smashed in front of his home.
He used a hammer to smash the window of a vehicle and free the male driver who was almost underwater. He said another driver, a woman, escaped her car and grabbed his door, where he managed to pull her in.
Kane said he’d lived there since the 1970s. I’m used to floods, ”he said. “But that’s the worst I’ve ever seen.”
At the hospital, Katherine Bauer, exhausted, described her situation as “really surreal”.
She was wearing a hospital gown and had an intravenous tube sticking out of her arm.
“I haven’t been home yet,” she said as tears welled up in her eyes. “It will hit me really hard when I get home and he’s not there.
The Schuylkill River flows over the walkways of the Walnut Street Bridge in Philadelphia
The Schuylkill River crosses its banks in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia, Thursday Jan.
“He was my rock,” she said of her 26-year-old husband.
Don worked as a bus driver for 15 years and transported his own children to school.
“His bus route was in our neighborhood and he knew all the kids by name,” Katherine said. “You would call him Mr. Don.”
“Sometimes I would call it crispy because it was so tough on the outside, but it was so soft on the inside,” Katherine said. ‘He would do anything for anyone.’
Sophie, 19, said her father would jokingly call himself the Grinch.
“In reality, he loved us all more than we could imagine,” she said. “He was worried about us all along. He always checked the oil in my car so it wouldn’t die and I wouldn’t get stuck anywhere. ‘
Sophie also noticed that her father absolutely hated the water. He would take the family to Assateague Island on the Atlantic coast in Maryland every year, but he would never set foot in the ocean.
“He stayed at the campsite and brushed the sand off the carpets, lay down in the hammock and relaxed,” she said.
Sophie had slept with her mother in the hospital room. Darby was there on Friday too, holding his mother’s hand.
“He hated the sand, hated the water, but loved walking with us,” Darby told DailyMail.com. “He was always a selfless person. Without him my mother would not have survived. He sacrificed himself for her. ‘
