In the morning, 17-year-old Chloe Adams woke up to a nightmare. Water from the bathroom drains was bubbling up through the kitchen tiles and quickly surrounding her house.
Chloe lives with her grandfather in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and since she was a child, her dog Sandy has been her faithful companion.. and alone with no one else.
"There was as much water as I could see," she said in a message to CNN. "I had a complete panic attack."
But she decided to make it out safely and take her dog with her.
A picture of a much younger Chloe with Sandy, her dog she rescued. "These are moons ago," Chloe's father, Terry Adams, told CNN.
At least 25 people were killed and hundreds more lost after heavy rains and flooding swept through eastern Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said.
Chloe's grandparents were in a house a few feet away, separated from their granddaughter by the water. They yelled at her to keep Chloe inside until help arrived. But with little cell service and a 911 center that was often overwhelmed and didn't respond to her calls, Chloe said she realized she had to get out to survive.
"My next thought was that we need to swim at my uncle's house," she said, adding that the rest of her family was staying. “I put Sandy in the water to see if she could swim. But she couldn't, so I picked her up and went back in, wading through waist-deep water to try and find something floating for her to wear.
Deadly flooding in eastern Kentucky
After experimenting with other furniture, she placed her dog in a plastic drawer from her closet to keep her dry—and then placed the drawer on top of a sofa cushion to keep her.
"Finally I had a plan that I believed ... could work," she said. "I knew the dangers of trying to swim in deep and moving water, but I felt I had no choice."
She swam in the cold water until she reached the thin roof of a nearby warehouse building, pushing Sandy's cushion in front of her; The only part of the structure not yet submerged.
There, the two sat for more than five hours while Chloe's cousin rescued the teenager and her dog with the help of a kayak. Nearby, Chloe's family, sheltered on the second floor of her uncle's house, watched and talked to her as she waited for help.
When the teenager returned to her grandmother's house, she was overcome with "relief to know that Sandy and I survived the flood," she said.
"My heart goes out to all the other people who lost and suffered much more than I did in this terrible devastation," Khloe added.
In a Facebook post after the rescue, the teenager's father, Terry Adams, called his daughter a "hero."
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