‘I'll never forget that. Kids screaming': Inside the Texas floods' 45 minutes of terror

The Age

5 days ago

It turned on them in the middle of the night: gradually, then all at once. And what should have been a celebration of America's proudest day suddenly turned into an American tragedy.
They had come to be near the water – for summer camp, for a change of scene, perhaps just for the long weekend – but the river, wild and free, had its own terrible ideas.
Lorena Guillen, who runs Blue Oak RV Park on the banks of the Guadalupe River just outside Kerrville, won't ever forget the screams – audible over the heavy rain – as a family of five clung to a tree on the banks of her campsite.
'My husband got into the water and he was yelling at the man to throw the baby at him so he can save the baby,' she said. 'A second later, they were gone, they were swept away. You could hear people screaming. The rescue team tried so hard to rescue them, but they couldn't – they couldn't get to them.'
Guillen, who was going door-to-door trying to get people out of their camper vans to escape the rapidly rising floodwater, said she saw vehicles floating by in the torrent with their lights flashing and what appeared to be people thumping on the windows from inside. Entire cabins went past too.
'You could see the cabins from next door smash into the trees, you can see the scarring on the trees,' she said. 'The cabins were just completely getting destroyed. They would go underwater completely, and the screaming stopped.'
The chaos that unfolded that night in Texas Hill Country, in pitch black and pounding rain, has now claimed at least 104 lives, with the death toll almost certain to keep rising. Most of those deaths, 84, were in Kerr County.
It is already one of the worst flooding events in US history, having struck at the start of the Independence Day holiday weekend and during summer camp season: a beloved American tradition that sees millions of children and young adults taking part in structured activity programs, often by the water.
Further upstream, more than 700 young girls were at Camp Mystic, a non-denominational Christian camp that draws from nearby Texas cities and was founded in 1926. Texas senator Ted Cruz called it 'an incredible Texas institution' that had helped to turn young girls into strong women for a century.
On Tuesday AEST, the camp said 27 girls and counsellors had died in the floods. Authorities reported another 10 girls and one counsellor were still missing. 'Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy,' the camp said in a statement. 'We are praying for them constantly.'
Along the river, teams have begun to clean up the brutal carnage caused by the raging waters. Cars and RVs, smashed up beyond recognition except for a tyre or two, were carried out on flatbed trucks. Large trees were sprawled all over the bank, having been uprooted by the deluge. Parts of corrugated iron sheds, cables, and camping detritus were strewn around the grass, though Guillen said a lot had already been cleared.
On the water, a small grey boat manned by a crew in fluorescent vests occasionally started its loud propeller engine and scoured the river. Guillen knows the sound all too well. 'They're looking for bodies,' she says.
The family that was swept away while clinging to a tree are, as far as she knows, the only casualties from her campsite. It was a packed ground that night, with 28 recreational vehicles, or RVs. The neighbouring campsite fared far worse, with 26 campers reported missing, according to the Kerr County Lead.
How such devastation could happen, despite at least some flood alerts and warnings going out in the preceding hours and days, is now the subject of intense examination and concern. But whatever the deficiencies of systems meant to protect Hill Country residents and visitors, everyone agrees the water came on fast and strong in a way few have experienced before.
The day before, a Thursday, had been 'the most beautiful day you could imagine', Guillen said. 'It was perfectly sunny, crystal-clear waters, everybody was jumping in the water and having fun. We had a band playing outside because it wasn't raining. You could see fathers dancing with the little girls.'
Guillen said she closed the on-site restaurant about 1am. At 2.30am, she went down to the river's edge to check the water levels. By that point, the rain was torrential. But the water looked fine, she said. She rang the sheriff's department 'and they had no information for me, they did not know'.
An hour or so later, Guillen said she was woken up by the sound of rescue teams. A resident had called 911 – emergency services – and the water had already risen three metres. During a critical 45 minutes of intense rainfall, water levels rose 7.9 metres, Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring told reporters on Friday.
As astonishing as the statistic may seem, it concurs with the experiences of those caught in the flash flood. 'Some people were trying to get into their vehicles, and there was no time,' Guillen said. 'They just had to run up the road as fast as they could. Some of them were barefooted and without a shirt, just holding on to their pet.'
Tommy Ireland, 70, had lived in his RV at a neighbouring campsite, River Run, for the past four months. He says the electricity went off about 3am; he was already awake from the heavy rain.
'All of a sudden people [were] knocking on the door saying, 'Hey, get out, get out',' he says. 'It just came and washed everything away. I heard screaming going down that river. I'll never forget that. Kids screaming.
'Then the sound of those trees, just going around snapping. Bang. I mean – so loud it just blows your mind. Houses snapping trees. Just awful, awful sounds.'
Ireland escaped with nothing. His pick-up truck and possessions are gone. 'I lost everything, dude. I mean everything I own was in there, in my truck,' he says. He is staying with his brother-in-law, but doesn't know where else he can turn.
'They said FEMA might help us,' he says, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which President Donald Trump has pledged to dismantle. 'We'll see, I don't know. I hope they can.'
He could do worse than asking his fellow citizens. Every community speaks of binding together in the face of tragedy, but in this part of central Texas, the promise seems to have already come to life. While waiting at the decimated Blue Oak RV Park, I watch as Jennifer Dickson and her daughter, Kielan, arrive at lunchtime bearing trays of breakfast tacos, pancakes and sausage wraps for her friends and colleagues.
'Living in a small town, everybody knows everybody,' says Courtney Friedrichs, who was volunteering as an unofficial gatekeeper at the campsite entry. 'And yes, sometimes that can be a bad thing, but in crisis situations it's always a good thing. You put your differences aside, and you work together to make sure that everybody's OK and everybody has what they need.'
Friedrichs owns and runs the local wrecking service, wears a fluoro yellow vest and speaks with confidence and detail about her community. She is emphatic: there was no warning of the deadly flood before it hit. The first notification she received on her mobile phone came at 1pm on Friday afternoon, she says, well after the damage had been done.
The solution, says Friedrichs, is technology – a siren alert system along the river. Neighbouring counties have implemented this safety measure, but Kerr County has almost indignantly refused to follow suit. Rob Kelly, the top local official, said in the aftermath of the tragedy that the county does not have a warning system despite it being 'the most dangerous river valley in the United States', which floods regularly.
Indeed, the lack of a warning system has been a known issue for many years. Several US media outlets have in recent days unearthed commentary from a 2016 hearing on flood sirens, sparked by deadly floods, in which a then-county commissioner known as H.A. 'Buster' Baldwin voted against such a system.
'I think this whole thing is a little extravagant for Kerr County,' he said at the time. Expense has always been – and continues to be – one of the primary concerns of opponents.
It remains to be seen whether 104 grieving families – and counting – will change that calculus. An hour's drive south in San Antonio, about 200 people gathered on Monday night for a vigil in a downtown park, where they prayed, mourned the victims and turned their minds to ensuring such a tragedy doesn't happen again.
'We know there can be better infrastructure,' said Trish Deberry, head of the city business alliance Centro San Antonio, which convened the event. 'Despite hundreds of billions of gallons of water that are falling, we know that there can be better.'
Attendees clutched thin white candles in the hot evening air. A trail of white petals had been laid in a path towards the San Antonio selfie sign, and at the base of the speakers' podium was a small heart covered in tinsel in the colours of the American flag, surrounded by tea light candles.
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Among the mourners was Aiden from Trinity University in San Antonio. Aiden, who did not want to give his last name, lost a close friend whose body is yet to be recovered, as well as several other young acquaintances.
'They didn't deserve to lose their lives; they had so much ahead of them,' Aiden said. 'They were so young and so vibrant and so energetic. It's a tragedy.
'We're here together to be here in the sense of tragedy and be here for each other and be here as a community, and that's all that matters. But it's horrible what's happened, and we pray that they find peace.'