Beaumont, Texas: In a city with no water, two men get Coca-Cola's permission to steal it

Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE Cody Adams of Beaumont, TX tried to cross State Route 96 when he was caught in a rough current and had to hold onto the median until Bill Zang rescued him with his hovercraft in Beaumont on Saturday, September 2, 2017. Danielle Parhizkaran/Northjersey.com

Sam Byers, an EMT from Arlington, Texas, wades past the gates of the Coca-Cola warehouse in Beaumont to get uncontaminated water on Sept. 2, 2017. (Photo: Danielle Parhizkaran, Northjersey.com via USA TODAY NETWORK)

In a city with no water, here is a list of items required to break into a warehouse and steal 14 cases of bottled water:

One (1) hovercraft, capable of zinging over the flooded streets of Beaumont, Texas, at 60 miles an hour.

Oh, and permission from the Coca-Cola Company.

Fortunately, Bill Zang recently found himself equipped with all four things. At a few minutes after 3 p.m. on Saturday he killed the hovercraft’s engines and floated toward the Coca-Cola warehouse on the northern edge of Beaumont. At the back gate, Zang hacked the lock with a saw, then his friend Sam Byers slammed the lock with a hammer.

The lock broke. The gate swung wide. Both men laughed.

“This is so much fun!” said Byers, happy finally to find water in Beaumont, where the water treatment plant had been offline for two days.

Story continues after this collection of Harvey video reports:

Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE HARVEY AFTERMATH: PHOTOJOURNALIST DANIELLE PARHIZKARAN IN TEXAS Video: Harvey survivor returns home to find hope | 1:00 Tom Powell walks through the flooded cottage on his ranch in Thompsons, T.X. Luckily, Powell was in the midst of building a new home up the hill, saying the flood was a sign to "rise up and get to a higher level, physically and spiritually." Danielle Parhizkaran/NorthJersey.com 1 of 5 Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE HARVEY AFTERMATH: PHOTOJOURNALIST DANIELLE PARHIZKARAN IN TEXAS Video: Good Samaritan rescues Houston residents with military vehicle | 1:48 Nick Sissa recently bought a military vehicle for the fun of it, which came in handy during the massive flooding Houston suffered during Hurricane Harvey. Sissa visits the Beinart family who he rescued from their home in Meyerland. Danielle Parhizkaran/Northjersey.com 2 of 5 Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE HARVEY AFTERMATH: PHOTOJOURNALIST DANIELLE PARHIZKARAN IN TEXAS Video: Man saved by hovercraft | 0:55 Cody Adams of Beaumont, TX tried to cross State Route 96 when he was caught in a rough current and had to hold onto the median until Bill Zang rescued him with his hovercraft in Beaumont on Saturday, September 2, 2017. Danielle Parhizkaran/Northjersey.com 3 of 5 Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE HARVEY AFTERMATH: PHOTOJOURNALIST DANIELLE PARHIZKARAN IN TEXAS Video: Harvey wreaks havoc on undocumented immigrants | 0:49 Hurricane Harvey hit Houston's undocumented immigrants especially hard, with some not being able to pay rent because they haven't been able to go to work. Father-son activists Robert and Zakary Rodriguez donate their time, and a mattress. Danielle Parhizkaran/Northjersey.com 4 of 5 Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE HARVEY AFTERMATH: PHOTOJOURNALIST DANIELLE PARHIZKARAN IN TEXAS Video: Shelter Update from the Red Cross at GRB Center | 1:05 Scott Toncray from the Red Cross gives us a feel for what's going on at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, where residents are finding shelter after Hurricane Harvey. The shelter started with 10,000 displaced but is now down to 1,780. Danielle Parhizkaran/Northjersey.com 5 of 5 Last VideoNext Video Video: Harvey survivor returns home to find hope

Video: Good Samaritan rescues Houston residents with military vehicle

Video: Harvey wreaks havoc on undocumented immigrants

Video: Shelter Update from the Red Cross at GRB Center

A week after Hurricane Harvey made landfall, most of the rescue and recovery efforts in south Texas are no fun at all. The work is simultaneously plodding and emotionally charged. Relief workers spend days floating through flooded neighborhoods, checking and rechecking houses to make sure all the people and pets have been evacuated.

Sometimes they rescue a cat. Sometimes they discover a corpse. Sometimes they find nothing but flooded homes and silence. At this point, as the adrenaline of early rescue efforts fades into fatigue, many rescuers find the inertia of routine becomes their primary fuel.

Bill Zang of Rockport, IL carries out cases of water from the Coca-Cola warehouse in Beaumont, Texas on Sept. 2, 2017. (Photo: Danielle Parhizkaran, Northjersey.com via USA TODAY NETWORK)

“I have no idea when we got here,” said Zang, president of the Hovercraft Unlimited company, who drove from his home in Rockport, Illinois, with two hovercraft to help rescue hurricane victims. “What was that, two days ago? Four? The days all start running together after a while.”

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Sometimes, however, the routines get scrambled, and relief workers get the opportunity to do something they will remember for the rest of their lives. Their stories serve as a reminder that even though the sky over south Texas has brightened, and the nation’s attention has begun to move on with the rain, thousands of people are still in desperate need of help.

“There is still a lot of work to do,” Zang said.

H.E.B. Grocery employees hand out hot lunches for those in need in Beaumont, Texas on Sept. 2, 2017. The mobile kitchens, situated in the parking lot of H.E.B. Grocery on College street, served 2,000 meals for lunch and anticipate serving the same amount for dinner at 5 P.M. tonight. (Photo: Danielle Parhizkaran, Northjersey.com via USA TODAY NETWORK)

For Edwin Toy, the break in the monotony came Thursday night, when he was the lead driver of a 16-truck convoy delivering bottled water from Houston to Beaumont. The trip normally takes about an hour and a half, Toy said.

On Thursday it took 10 hours. Toy sat in the cab of his truck with water lapping halfway up his gas tank.

“We just had to get through,” said Toy, 53, a driver for the H-E-B Grocery Company. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.”

Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE While most Houston residents are moving on with their lives a little more than week after Hurricane Harvey, hundreds of homes remain flooded and more than a thousand remain housed in emergency shelters. (Sept. 5) AP

For Cassidy Meeks, the adrenaline came from running up and down U.S. Route 69 northeast of Beaumont, looking for people to save. At 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, Meeks met a woman at a nearby Shell gas station who said her brother was trapped on the highway by water rushing from the flooded Pine Island Bayou.

Meeks didn’t have any special gear at her disposal. She simply started walking. She went north as far as she could, hugging the highway’s concrete median for support as the water rose to her neck.

Finally she turned around and flagged down Zang, aboard his bright blue hovercraft.

“He’s out there somewhere, but I can’t find him,” Meeks, 20, of Joshua, Texas, told Zang. “We’ve got to find him. It sounds like he’s about to drown.”

Zang was not excited about the mission. The current was moving at about 15 miles an hour, he said, and one mistake could drown both himself and the man he was trying to save. He roared off anyway, sending a plume of spray behind his craft’s main propeller.

Seven minutes later Zang returned with Cory Adams, looking wet and sheepish, sitting in the backseat.

"He was in the nasty part" of the water flow, said Zang. "If you fall in there, you're swept away for 2 miles and nobody will ever find you."

Amy Torres hugs her brother Cody Adams, of Beaumont, Texas, after he was rescued from being stranded on a median in the middle of State Route 96 in rough flood waters in Beaumont on Sept. 2, 2017. Adams was saved by Bill Zang (not pictured) in his hovercraft. (Photo: Danielle Parhizkaran, Northjersey.com via USA TODAY NETWORK)

No one else in the vicinity had a boat powerful enough to even get close to Adams, however. He had been in the torrent for an hour, he said, and he was losing strength.

"I thought I was going to drown," said Adams. "If he didn't come and save me, there's no way I would have made it."

Compared with most of his rescue missions after Hurricane Harvey, Zang’s effort to remove water from the Coca-Cola warehouse was a bit of a lark. Someone with the Coca-Cola Company informed Beaumont’s Fire Department that the facility contained thousands of bottles of fresh water, but flooding in and around the building prevented people in most vehicles from entering and retrieving it.

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The firefighters asked Zang if he could help, he said. And so he and Byers found themselves standing behind the Coca-Cola warehouse a few minutes after 3 p.m. After entering the gate they motored to the building, where Byers broke a window with a hammer, reached inside and pulled a door open.

Inside they found tens of thousands of bottles of Fanta, Dr. Pepper, Coca-Cola and Dasani brand bottled water. They loaded 14 cases of water onto the hovercraft’s flat deck, powered up and sped away. The cases later would be picked up by other volunteers and delivered to National Guard troops, who would distribute them to Harvey evacuees.

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