Hurricane Harvey is the first major hurricane to make landfall in the US in a dozen years, and the strongest to hit Texas in over 50 years. It is causing unprecedented and catastrophic flooding in southeastern Texas, most notably Houston. A large number of municipal, state, and Federal assets have been brought to bear, including the entire state national guard. In addition, countless ordinary citizens are risking their lives helping out, including the not so ordinary Houstonian UFC heavyweight Derrick ‘The Black Beast’ Lewis.
For two days Lewis and his gigantic Chevy truck has been taking people to high, dry ground, based on phone calls and distress messages on the social network. One of the citizens he helped save saved a Confederate flag, but Lewis rolled with it.
I don’t care about that, said Lewis to John Morgan and Ken Hathaway for MMAjunkie. I live in Texas. It ain’t nothing new. I’ve been living in the South all my life, and it ain’t nothing I hadn’t seen before or discussed about. I don’t care about that type of stuff. I just wanted to help him.
I’ve always been that type of guy that I like to help people more than I like to help myself. And so I just seized the opportunity. The police, they kept getting on the news and saying that they’re not going to help no one unless it’s a life-or-death situation. Basically, the firefighters said the same thing.
Mostly, we’re trying to get all the families that have kids.”
I picked up one guy and his family, his wife – he just kept apologizing to me, because all he really had was his clothes, and he wanted to take his Confederate flag. He wanted to take that with him, and he just apologized and said, ‘Man, I’ll sit in the back of your truck, man. I don’t want to have my flag inside of your truck like this.’ I said, ‘Man, I’m not worried about that.’
He’s saying, ‘You never know if you ever need someone, so …’ – I already knew where he was going with it. I just said, ‘Don’t even worry about it. It’s OK. I don’t care about that.’ His wife kept hitting him and saying, ‘You should have just left it.’
It’s supposed to get pretty bad in the next few days because it’s already supposed to turn into another hurricane. It’s a tropical storm right now, and they said it’s heading toward the water and is going to turn right back into a Category 1 and head right back in our area. By Thursday, we should be having another hurricane.
Lewis has chronicled the storm and some of the efforts on the social network.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BYRbs6lnRydhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BYUHnPYneTRhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BYUvx-OHEU6https://www.instagram.com/p/BYWLOvNnU-Jhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BYWNpfVnTt0https://www.instagram.com/p/BYWkcLiHyOP
On top of the catastrophe, the #6 ranked Lewis fights the #2 ranked Fabricio Werdum at UFC 216 on October 7 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Right now, I’m really not worried about the fight, said Lewis. I’m just worried about making sure my kids and my family is OK and everyone else around me. The fight is going to come.
