High Waters Turn Lake Eufaula Cabin Into Houseboat

Lake Eufaula is now just inches away from forcing one woman out of her Checotah lakefront home.

This neighborhood on Lake Eufaula is just off Lotawatah Road, a street that's living up to its name. There's so much water it's basically turned one cabin into a houseboat.

The rain hitting already high water is a sound Carol Bass barely can stand to hear.

“Oh no, no, no… I don't want to more rain,” she said.

Because the rain is to blame for a lot of havoc in Eastern Oklahoma.

“Well, my fence is floating,” she said.

Carol's lived there for eight years – a place she's fixed up all on her own.

“I just call it a little, old cabin,” she said. “Some people call it shack because it kind of looks like a shack, but I'm not finished with it yet.”

On a normal day, her little old cabin would just overlook Lake Eufaula.

But this is not a normal day.

“Is that a fish?” she said, looking across her yard.

“I love it; I love it here cause I like looking at the lake,” she said. “I don't want to be in the lake, but I like looking at it.”

She doesn't have to look far, now with just one step out the back door, she's in the lake.

A place, for the time being, she'd rather not be.

“There's a lot of snakes in here,” Carol said. “They're just all over the place, I mean, ew!”

The water has flooded under her house and is only a few inches from finding its way inside.

“You can see way back over there, it is just flooded everywhere,” she said.

When it's not flooded, the lake sits back about 200 feet, she said.

“And there's a great big cliff and it's already passed the cliff and all the way up here,” she said. “So I've watched it really, really come up.”

The lake is filling up faster than the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can safely bring it down.

So while Carol's house is close to flooding, the water at her house, is actually saving many others downstream.

“You know, it's never been this high,” she said.

Now, Carol's furniture's on cinder blocks. Her bags are packed, and because she doesn't have insurance, her house is torn apart to protect all the projects she's worked so hard on – from floating away.

“I got my stuff ready to bail,” she said. “I'll grab the dogs and I guess we're outta here.”