Jennifer Shardlow figured it was time to evacuate when water poured through the walls and a snake swam through the kitchen.



“We still had a yard at midnight,” she said. “Then at 5.30 this morning the water started coming up through the boards and through the walls. I was sitting on a stool with the water up to my ankles when this snake swam by me. It ended up by the stove.”

Shardlow, 35, huddled over a coffee in an iHop diner along with other families who had fled homes in and around Houston, all trying to make sense of a world rendered alien.

The torrents unleashed by Hurricane Harvey, now a tropical storm, had turned the familiar unrecognisable on Monday. Furniture was floating, homes were traps, the I-45 highway was an escape route and its string of motels and diners were refuges.

“We haven’t seen the sun in four days,” said Erin Miles, 46, a bread distributor. “Alligators are coming up through the bayous,” said her husband, William. “You have to be careful where you sit.”

Hurricanes and storms are a way of life in this part of Texas, their names etched in memory. Allison (2001), Katrina (2005), Isaac (2008).

But this one is in a class of its own. An event which to many feels biblical and which will divide their lives into before and after Harvey.

“We never had to evacuate before,” said Shardlow, a business studies graduate, fighting back tears. She was still digesting the reality that her home, the one she and her husband Pete moved into just a few months ago, was now flooded.

They were in Conroe, a community just north of Houston. It had initially escaped flooding but early on Monday authorities released record amounts of water from a nearby dam to avert uncontrolled, disastrous breaches.

Lake Conroe received an average of 18in of rainfall during the storm’s first 72 hours, raising water levels more than 4ft above normal. Flooding from the dam was rising in feet and not inches, Conroe fire chief Ken Kreger told Eyewitness News, and floodwaters were moving fast. Authorities issued a mandatory evacuation order for one neighbourhood, McDade Estates, and urged residents in six other districts to leave.

The Shardlows and their neighbours watched the water rise – a man-made surge – with a sense of helplessness and hurt. “We don’t understand how they can do that,” said Pete, a consultant originally from England.

So, like thousands of others, the Shardlows loaded valuables and food – and their two cats – into their car and hit the I-45.

The highway is an eerie experience at night. You cannot see the moon or the stars, just the pale glow of headlights which puncture the black, pounding rain. At the rain’s heaviest on Sunday night, the only vehicles still on the road were towing boats.

State troopers cordon off a stretch of highway to Houston. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Neon signs warned of flash floods and implored motorists to retreat if they sensed trouble. “Turn back, don’t drown.”

Motels filled with families, all with tales to tell. Trees toppled on to homes, cars floating down driveways, frantic searches for pets, power cuts, dead phones, rain beyond imagining.

“We hit a hole,” said one man, who, with his wife, was checking into a Motel 6 early on Monday, nabbing the last room. “We could hear something cracking. It was too dark to see anything. We weren’t sure we’d make it here.”

For Jimmy Jones, working the front office, there was a sense of ritual: a storm hits, people flee homes, his motel fills up. “Last year it was the same thing. Then it was Ike and before that Katrina. You end up selling out pretty quick.” He was philosophical. “Acts of nature. Bad things.”

Adjacent to the motel was the Ark church. It was shut. “All services of the Ark church are canceled for Sunday. Please stay safe and in your homes,” said its website.

With most public spaces closed, roadside diners serving pancakes and omelettes became de facto sanctuaries.

“We left our home 30 minutes ago,” said Trey Taylor, 36, a telecommunications worker sipping a Coke at iHop with his wife Charlotte, also 36. “We’re just trying to figure out what to do.”

Mandatory evacuations had been ordered a mile from their home so after moving all their possessions more than 3ft above the floor – a level which should be safe, a Red Cross friend told them – they decided to join the exodus.

Parts of Texas resembled the set of Waterworld but for Taylor old world rules still applied. “Can I see some credentials?” he asked. He feared looters posing as journalists could take advantage of abandoned properties.

Houston so far has no fiasco to compare with the day the levees failed New Orleans in 2005 but some of the iHop patrons bristled with recrimination.

“It’s ridiculous that we’re having to evacuate people in dump trucks,” said William Miles. He blamed the mayor, Sylvester Turner, for cutting fire department resources.

He understood, however, why authorities told Houston residents to stay put rather than flee. “In hindsight, yeah, they should have evacuated, but they were going with what they had.” At least six people had been confirmed to have died by Monday morning and some 2,000 had been rescued.

Miles took a swig of coffee and frowned. “Want to see what my front yard looks like?” He held out his phone: a picture of a whale leaping out of the ocean. His friends guffawed. “Sorry man,” he grinned, “but in times like this you gotta find humour where you can.”

Kevin and Kelly Moncus, both 48, sat at a nearby table with their son, devouring pancakes. There was no power at home, rain hammered on the diner’s window and flash flood warnings crackled over the radio.

Would they consider living elsewhere? Kevin’s eyes widened. “I love Texas. Born and raised here. We’re not moving.”