"On the night of April 28, 2024, rain thrashed along FM 2989, a six-mile, two-lane road in Walker County, Texas. Save for lightning that revealed the roadside trees, the road was pitch black. Jaquila Goodman, her fiancé Sylvester Degrate, and their 4-year-old daughter were driving northwest from Huntsville to Madisonville. Their daughter would stay with Goodman's father while the couple went to work. The trip, usually a half-hour, was made "very slow" by the storm."
"Degrate had turned down FM 2989 as an alternate route. Earlier that night, they were driving along Route 247 but had to stop in the middle of the increasingly flooded road. "We ran right into it," Goodman told me via email. "No signs, no cones, nothing." She told her fiancé to turn around. Degrate crept the car in reverse, while saying, "I'm trying to be real safe because I know this road is real thin.""
"Then they dropped. "Nose-dived," Goodman told a local reporter. "It felt like a bottomless pit." Hours of rain had collapsed FM 2989 into a rapidly expanding hole. Their car crashed into the bottom, deploying the airbags and smashing the windshield. Water quickly gushed into their car. Goodman pulled her daughter out of her seat; she and Degrate popped their seat belts."
On April 28, 2024, heavy rain and storms struck Walker County, Texas, producing overflowing creeks, tornadic damage nearby, downed trees, and flooded roads. Jaquila Goodman, her fiancé Sylvester Degrate, and their 4-year-old daughter drove along FM 2989 in darkness and heavy rain when hours of rain collapsed the roadway into a rapidly expanding sinkhole. Their car nose-dived into the hole, airbags deployed, windshield shattered, and water gushed into the vehicle. Goodman removed her daughter from her car seat; Goodman and Degrate unbuckled and escaped as doors were being forced shut by rushing water.
Read at Slate Magazine
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