NEW ORLEANS - As floodwaters gushed into their one-story home Monday, three Orleans Parish residents had less than a minute to get four little boys into the attic.
Appliances tipped over. The couch and bed floated. Water poured in from everywhere, even the electrical sockets.
Within seconds, two of the boys were clinging desperately from a ceiling fan, another from the top of an interior door.
Mary Williams, 28, hung from the door, clutching the 1-year-old baby.
Edgardo Velasquez, 25, punched at the 1-inch thick wooden ceiling, trying to make a hole big enough for everyone to squeeze through.
"I just prayed to God for help and for strength," he said Tuesday.
As he punched, roiling water ripped the baby away from Williams. She released the door and frantically searched under the water until she touched his collar and yanked him back up.
"The water just bumrushed, it came so quick," Williams said. "The house was filled in 30 seconds."
Their air pocket disappearing, Velasquez finished his hole and the family escaped into the attic.
But the water followed them, rising up into the attic until it lapped at their calves. Velasquez managed to punch another small hole in the roof.
Then the water stopped rising.
The family spent the night in the steamy attic, mirroring the plight of thousands of poor residents who were trapped after a broken levee flooded neighborhoods in the eastern part of New Orleans.
The family had no food or water in the attic, which they shared with spiders and insects.
The boys - two belonging to Williams and two to Velasquez and Angel Tobias, 18 - cried all night.
They heard helicopters flying overhead, looking for survivors.
In the morning, they climbed through the hole that Velasquez had punched out while water was still rising in the attic.
Williams tore off a piece of her orange shirt and tied it to a stick they fished from the water. She waved at passing helicopters, yelling:
"Help, help, I have children over here."
Finally a passing boat picked them up and deposited them at a staging area at the Strauss Bridge, near downtown.
They arrived dazed and barefoot, two of the boys in underwear. The baby threw up from all the water he had swallowed.
Why didn't they evacuate before Katrina hit? They couldn't afford to, they said.
Multimedia: Continuing fallout