Peanut Butter Dream Machine (PBDM) Build

nice build!

 

Hurricane Harvey visited us. For 12 hours it sat on top of Orange, TX and rained harder than any thunderstorm I've been in. We get a lot of them here, and I've endured Hurricane Rita, Katrina, Ike, and Humberto. It dumped something like 42" of water in 2 or 3 days. It caused flooding so bad that even 2 weeks later it's not all drained off. We had to abandon our house (water came up to the slab but never got it luckily).

Both my Tacoma and 4Runner are lifted just 2" (+ bigger tires), but it might have made the difference. We drove through waist deep water in both, wife in tow with the 4Runner and me driving the Tacoma pulling our adventure trailer. We figured if I had the RTT with me, we could camp on high ground no matter where we stopped. We had supplies for at least a week.

To get out of the neighborhood we had to drive through approx 28" - 30" of water, and the seals held, no water came into the cab for the short time.

All roads were blocked the first day, we were stuck in town. Interstates, highways, back roads were all under water. The miliary was using Deuce and a halfs to traverse some of it, and boats for the rest. People were launching boats in streets so they could rescue people. Very few if any people had flood insurance in our neighborhood and the one behind us because in 50+ years since those neighborhoods were built, it never flooded.

50% of the houses in my neighborhood flooded, but 100% of the houses in the one behind us did. Many of my friends lost their cars and houses and were rescued by boats. A few even lost their businesses in addition to that. We really did have an apocalypse here. More than 60% of the town suffered some type of damage, and power was out for at least a week, some up to 2.5 weeks. Military aircraft, helos, trucks, lined the streets while power companies cut down trees and fixed lines.

In all of it, even though she was upset and crying, my wife drove our 4Runner out of it, through 15 miles of 18" water which took almost 2 hours. We watched cars stall out in front of us and we slowly crept by them. I saw cars so submerged next to me I didn't know what they were, and I can usually identify any vehicle.

We made it out of town, and as soon as the water came back down I made trips in daily to help my friends.

Looking back I can see our lives were only in mild danger, but we didn't know that at the time. We never ventured off high ground without knowing the path and what we could do. We had radios between the trucks. We had supplies for days. I had my RTT to camp anywhere. I'm sure glad we were prepared, so many were not.

At one point my wife said, "We didn't build these trucks so we could evacuate."

I disagree. I built them so we could get to safety, and that's exactly what these trucks did. I'm grateful to the people on here and Tacomaworld who gave me advice and suggestions on how to build a vehicle like this, because of it I got my family to safety in a time where many could not.