Article Submitted by master911.
MANY years from now, a small group of Hurricane Ike survivors will probably still be telling the story of how, on the night the storm flattened their homes, they took refuge in a church - with a lion.
The full-grown lion was from a local zoo. The owner was trying to drive to safety with the animal when he saw cars and trucks stranded in the rising floodwaters. He knew he and the lion were in trouble.
He headed for the First Baptist Church at Crystal Beach, on Bolivar Peninsula, adjacent to Galveston, and was met by a group of residents who helped the lion wade inside. They locked it in a sanctuary as the storm raged.
The water crept up to their waists, and wooden planks came floating through broken windows. But the lion was as calm as a kitten.
When daylight came, everyone was still alive.
"They worked pretty well together, actually," said the lion's owner, Michael Ray Kujawa.
"When you have to swim, the lion doesn't care about eating nobody."
Amid the destruction in places like Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston, where rows houses were scoured from the landscape, seemingly impossible tales of survival have begun to emerge.
Whether through faith or fate, luck or resourcefulness, dozens of people who stayed behind made it out alive, and have harrowing stories to prove it.
As of Tuesday, the official death toll from Ike stood at 48. Only 17 were in Texas - and many of those were people killed by fires or generator fumes after the storm had passed. However, authorities held out the possibility that some victims were washed out to sea.
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