Houston man survives 'nightmare' week due to COVID and devastating storm

Just as José Loera and his family were assessing the damage to his mother’s home in Houston the family received more devastating news: Loera’s father, José Emilio, who had already been in the hospital for two weeks recovering from COVID-19, had lost the ability to breathe on his own. “We got hit pretty hard, not only the winter storm that affected my mom's household, but also with my dad,” Loera, 28, told Yahoo News on Monday. “He's currently in ICU on a ventilator," he added. "We've been living in a nightmare.”

影片文字轉錄稿

JOSE LOERA: The relief funds and everything will come in within a later time, but with everything going on with our situation and with any other Houstonian going through this right now, looks like we need these funds now more than ever.

My name is Jose Loera. I'm from Houston, Texas. I was born here, raised here most of my life.

For the past two weeks, we got hit pretty hard with, not only the winter storm that was affected at my mom's household, but also with my dad's situation going on. He got COVID pneumonia and we had to take him to the hospital. And now currently it's been a month since he's been hospitalized, and he's currently in ICU on a ventilator. So right now they're trying to still fight for his life, you know?

So my family right now, they've been through a lot-- we've been through a lot. But at the same time, it's has been united as a family to be together stronger. And honestly, it's been tough. It felt like we've been living in a nightmare.

For the past week or so, the water pipes at my mom's house burst-- it might have been Sunday, Monday night. Luckily, they were able to get out of there just in time before the whole ceiling of my mom's living room area busted down. The whole ceiling came down with all the insulation with the water pressure that was bursting out of the water line at my mom's house.

And that pretty much ruined all of her living room area, dining room area. We had to throw a lot of stuff away. We got hit pretty hard at my mom's house.

My dad, it's been a month since he's been hospitalized, like I mentioned, but he didn't really get critical till last Thursday. That's when they transferred him to ICU. And that's when they hit us with the news he's not doing so good and they had to put him under a ventilator, get him intubated, because his lungs were giving up on him.

Ever since then, he's been about the same. They haven't really gave us any good news that he's been progressing or not, you know, so we've been dealing with that. And with everybody going through COVID as well, you know, we haven't really had much help, which I believe that they will come, but that takes time, and I believe that we need that right now more than ever.