A Mother Is Warning Others After Her Son Was Electrocuted In Hurricane Harvey’s Floods
Hurricane Harvey hit southern Texas last week, which brought as many as 50 inches of rain in some places. At least a dozen people have died, according to local media reports.
A Mother from the Spring Branch neighborhood of Houston reached out to media on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the electrocution death of her son. She wants to warn others wading through the flooded remnants of Hurricane Harvey that they could be tempting the same fate.
“I just want to save a life,” Jodell Pasek said to a reporter as she sat in her front yard in plastic lawn chairs because her home was completely in the dark, without power after the storm. She says that the power went out right around the same time her son was dying, less than 5 miles away.
Andrew Pasek, 25, and his friend Sean Stuart, decided to return to Pasek’s sister’s house north of the Addicks Reservoir to rescue the cat that she left behind. When she evacuated earlier, she didn’t think she’d be gone that long. As the water began to rise again on Oak Spring Drive, they decided to wade through the water to get to the house.
They were in just two feet of water when Andrew suddenly stopped near an electrical lamp post in a front yard.
“And Andrew stepped in the water, and he felt the shock,” his mom said. “Sean reached for him to try and pull him and Andrew said ‘No, I’m dying. And you will die too.’ And he just fell over in the water.”
Sean Stuart says that Andrew stumbled and put his hand on the electrical light pole and then, with the electrical current racing through him, could not pull away.
“And he told me just to get away from him. Just get as far away from him as I could. And so I had to let him go,” Stuart said.
“They couldn’t get him out. Nobody could touch him. Nobody could resuscitate him. Nobody could help him and they had to leave him there in the water for over an hour until Centerpoint came and finally turned off the electricity to the subdivision,” his mom said.
Electricity can actually travel short distances in water, which is something that many will admit they didn’t take into full consideration during the rescues when they waded through knee deep water.
“That could happen. And it just so happened it happened to my son,” Pasek said.
So, a grieving Mother, less than a day after her son’s electrocution death, has asked to send a public warning.
“That’s the only reason why I’m doing this. I just wanted it to be for something. If this can save one other life or bunches of lives it would be something where I could say I helped somebody with his departing.”
How very sad for this family, but let’s learn from this occurrence and prevent future tragedies from happening.