After flood, ‘a friend in need is a friend indeed’

The water was chest-high, but Selma Swensk doesn’t know how to swim.

Twelve hours after her home in the Centre Lake subdivision started to take on water last weekend, she clutched onto a firefighter’s hand to help her out of the floodwaters. All she was able to grab from her home through the sleepless night were important papers, passports and her 15-year-old son’s guitar and his Sarasota Military Academy uniform.

Her son had been sleeping over at a friend’s house on Aug. 26. She was home alone with her 10-year-old Yorkshire Terrier, Daisy.

“I did not sleep the whole night. It was horrible. It was a nightmare,” Swensk said Thursday afternoon, as she dropped off Daisy at friend Jessica Murphy’s home. Where she is staying in East Manatee, pets aren’t allowed. Her son is staying with a friend in Sarasota.

Swensk and Murphy have known each other since their sons were in the fifth grade. Although they don’t live close to each other, Swensk said “it means a lot” that Murphy offered to help in a time of need.

The family of three — mother, son and dog — will be separated for the time being after record rains fell on Manatee County last weekend. Swensk’s home, which she has rented for four years, was one of 63 to be inundated with floods. More storms are expected this weekend.

Swensk said her renters insurance only would cover hurricanes, not floods. And because she’s a self-employed single mom, she can’t work as she deals with the aftermath.

When she arrived at her friend Murphy’s home Thursday, she collapsed onto her brown leather couch. Daisy soon started to snooze after a stressful week, resting at her temporary home with Murphy’s two rescues, Gibbi and Ruby.

“It has been so overwhelming,” Swensk said.

She asked Murphy on Wednesday if her dog could stay with her. “She knows that I foster and I love dogs,” Murphy said.

But she wanted to do more to help Swensk.

“I just feel so helpless,” Murphy said. “I want to help her put her life back together.”

A GoFundMe page she started Wednesday raised more than $1,400 as of Friday afternoon.

“Today, it’s like a progress day,” Swensk said. “Each day I’m cutting off the little things and being able to move on because if I sit there and I look at it all, I don’t do nothing. It’s one thing at a time.”

This story was originally published September 1, 2017 at 4:08 PM with the headline "After flood, ‘a friend in need is a friend indeed’."