Woman due to give birth in days learns her home was destroyed by Hurricane Harvey
"The worst part is seeing all my kids' stuff on the ground."
— -- Just days before Hurricane Harvey evacuee Danielle Weeks is due to give birth, she and her family -- with whom ABC News has been embedded since the storm made landfall in Texas last week -- have learned that their home was destroyed by the storm.
Weeks, who is expecting her third child on Tuesday, has not been able to go back to the town of Port Aransas since evacuating last week. She and her family are staying in a hotel in Corpus Christi until she goes in for her medically-necessary cesarean section.
On Saturday, the family tried to go back home to see what type of damage had been done, only to be turned away by law enforcement because the area was an active search-and-rescue scene.
ABC News was traveling with the family that day, and were granted permission by authority to drive to the area where their home was parked. The news crew offered to shoot video for them and bring it back.
Before the storm, the young family’s initial plans were to ride out the hurricane in a hotel, have their baby in the nearby hospital and go home. But after seeing videos of their car smashed and their RV flipped on its side with many of the inside contents spilled out, that all changed.
"The worst part is seeing all my kids' stuff on the ground," Danielle Weeks said while wiping tears from her eyes. "I just hope everybody left.”
Then, she spots a blanket in the video, one she had been knitting for the newest addition to the family.
"That's the baby's blanket I was making for her," she said as she begins to cry.
Danielle's husband William Weeks described through tears the mental back-and-forth he went through about where to to move the RV before the storm. He said he didn’t want to move it to Corpus Christi, which at one point was expected to experience the brunt of the storm. When he learned Harvey would be hitting Port Aransas harder than Corpus Christi, it was too late to get his home: the roads had already been shut down for mandatory evacuations.
But through their heartache, the Weeks say they are grateful that their family, including kids Annabella, 5, and Alizabeth, 18 months, are safe.
"All that can be replaced eventually," Danielle Weeks said. “It's better knowing ... at least now we can prepare.”
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