For the past two days, Ashley Looper has been trying to catch her breath.
“I still really don’t know what to think,” she said, “It’s obviously happened, but it just doesn’t feel real yet.”
Video shows the Oregon Coast Guard rescuing Ashley and her 4-year-old daughter into a chopper and out of the floodwaters.
Her two boys are also lifted into the helicopter, as well as Ashley’s sister carrying her 1-year-old baby.
Ashley said, “All I could see him do was like the kind of like, Okay, you two, he did like you two are going up, and then them two are gonna go up, kind of like the hand motion, so like what’s gonna happen? And instantly like– I may– I just like kind of started crying.”
Ashley said that morning, she woke up to the sound of someone yelling for help. She went outside to see the floodwaters surrounding her home in Forks. The family contacted authorities who said get on the roof.
“Kind of like close my eyes and covered up my daughter, and like just kind of told her, I just kept telling her, ‘Don’t look. Just don’t look.’ Because I couldn’t.” Ashley said.
She was able to return the next day and retrieve the ashes of her husband who passed away in a logging accident.
She said the floodwaters destroyed their house and car. The family saved only what they could carry.
Ashley said, “They’re like, ‘Keep it limited.’ So it’s kind of like a weird moment when you don’t know when you’re going to be back. But you have to keep it limited.”
For now, the family is working with the Red Cross and staying at a hotel as they make a plan for what’s next.
“And just thank God, like, just thank God that they did come and get us,” Ashley said.
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