NORMAN, Okla. — “I love my animals and I’ve waited my whole life to have this,” Randy Mize said about his home and farmland.
Sadly, almost all of it was lost during Wednesday night’s floods.
“Something inside of me kept saying, ‘Go to the barn. Go to the barn,'” he said.
Once he got in there, Mize found his chickens, ducks, geese and a bunny floating in the high water.
“All of this stuff inside of here was floating,” he said.
Mize rescued the animals — getting them to higher ground.
But he says the water quickly swelled from ankle high to chest deep, and his horses were nowhere to be found.
“I look, and I could see some eyes gleaming in the distance,” Mize said.
His four horses were stuck in water up to their neck.
And then, out of nowhere, a stranger named Cody showed up to his farm in the middle of the night. Together, the two men brought the horses to safety.
“By having him there, and by having another voice to communicate with, and telling me it’s going to be okay,” Mize said.
“I really believe, honest to God, that guy probably saved my life,” he said.
Then it was Mize’s turn to be hero.
“There’s a whole bunch of miracles that happened last night,” he added.
On his way home, he found a couple stranded on top of a truck just down the street.
“First thing I said was, ‘Are you lonely?’ They said, ‘Not now!’” Mize said.
Then another stranger showed up with a small fishing boat.
“We pushed the boat here and we went through my barn,” he said.
They managed to get the couple to safety.
“You can see the waterline where it goes across, and I mean, it’s a pretty weird experience to float in your barn on a boat,” he said.
Despite a lot of damage to his property and his home, Mize just feels blessed to be alive.
“I got to be a part of something that I always wondered what I would do,” Mize said.
Mize’s basement had a lot of flood damage, and unfortunately, he doesn’t have insurance.
Luckily, his two children and pregnant wife were all okay.
