Mault got his “nightie-clad missus” out of the trailer and lifted her on top, and went back into the trailer to get sweaters or something. It suddenly turned dark. The moon disappeared in dust. The water had risen to Mault’s chin by the time he got out of the trailer.
By the time he’d crawled on the trailer roof, put on trousers, a shirt and sweater, and wrapped clothing around his wife’s legs, the water was beginning to cover the trailer roof and rising fast. They prayed that the trailer would drift toward a nearby tree. It did. The first branch broke as Mault grabbed it. He barely had time to get one arm around the tree and hold onto his wife with the other when the trailer was swept out from under them.
“It was horrible,” he says. “As I tried to pull the missus up the limbs kept breaking off. I tried to grab higher limbs and cling to the missus with my legs. The limbs still kept breaking off. Finally we found a limb that would hold.
“We were surrounded by deep water. Through the night we hollered and hollered for help. People tried to get to us with ropes, couldn’t reach us, and yelled that we should hang on, they were going for a boat.
“While we struggled to hold on, we could see the mountains sliding and falling every few minutes. There’d be a terrific roar, followed by more slides. I thought the world was coming to an end. It turned hazy, with thunder, lightning, then began to rain.
“As we clung to the tree, with water up to our necks, my wife slipped under three or four times. The last time she was gasping for breath, I managed to pull her out.
“‘Let me go and save yourself,’ she begged. ‘If you go, I’ll go, too,’ I told her.
“About 8:00 or 8:30 in the morning they came for us in a boat. It was just in time. We couldn’t have held out for another ten minutes. The water was rising so fast that the rescuers had to move their truck three times before they could unload the boat.
“At first, when rescued, we could see lights, then everything went black. We couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the tumbling mountains. We were froze stiff from hanging on so long. We couldn’t move our legs. The men had to help us into the boat.”
