"I'm really upset at myself for staying"

With wind whipping and water rapidly rising around her house in Sneads Ferry, North Carolina, Rivera was cursing herself for not leaving when she had the chance — and waiting to be rescued.

“I’m really upset at myself for staying,” Rivera, 47, told NBC News. “I just want to get out of here.”

Rivera said a friend of hers had already called the Cajun Navy, the ragtag team of Louisiana boaters who plucked dozens of stranded people from the rooftops of their flooded homes last year in hurricane-ravaged Houston, to come get her.

“Half my dock is floating,” she said. “Our house is completely surrounded by the ocean on all sides. I feel like our house could go at any minute. … We already have a foot of water in our garage and the neighbor’s house is completely flooded out.”