At least 27 people are dead in Texas floods as the search continues for the many missing
AccuWeather said the private forecasting company and the National Weather Service sent warnings about potential flash flooding hours before the devastation.
'These warnings should have provided officials with ample time to evacuate camps such as Camp Mystic and get people to safety,' AccuWeather said in a statement that called the Texas Hill County one of the most flash-flood-prone areas of the U.S. because of its terrain and many water crossings.
Officials defended their actions Friday while saying they had not expected such an intense downpour that was the equivalent of months' worth of rain for the area.
One National Weather Service forecast earlier in the week had called for up to six inches of rain, said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. 'It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw,' he said.
Helicopters, drones used in frantic search for missing
Search crews were facing harsh conditions while scouring the waterlogged rivers, culverts and rocks. 'They are looking in every possible location,' Rice said.
More than 1,000 rescuers were on the ground. Helicopters and drones were being used, with some people being plucked from trees. U.S. Coast Guard helicopters were flying in to assist.
One reunification center at an elementary school was mostly quiet Saturday after taking in hundreds of evacuees the day before.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Terrain and timing conspired to cause 'horrifying' Texas rainfall
Texas Hill Country is prone to flooding, and climate change is making it more common. Texas Hill Country is no stranger to extreme flooding. In the rugged, rolling terrain it's known for, heavy rains collect quickly in its shallow streams and rivers that can burst into torrents like the deadly flood wave that swept along the Guadalupe River on July 4. The Guadalupe has flooded more than a dozen times since 1978, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, but the Independence Day flood is among the worst in its history. The raging river claimed at least 43 lives, officials said on July 5, and rescuers were still searching for missing children. Several factors came together at once – in one of the worst possible locations – to create the 'horrifying' scenario that dropped up to 16 inches of rainfall in the larger region over July 3-5, said Alan Gerard, a recently retired storm specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Hill Country, the region in Central and South Central Texas, also is known colloquially as 'flash flood alley,' for its propensity for fast and furious flooding when extreme rain falls, Gerard, who is now CEO of weather consulting company Balanced Weather said. As bountiful moist air from the Gulf of America, renamed from the Gulf of Mexico, moves over the steep hills, it can dump heavy rains. On July 4, rain was falling at 3-4 inches per hour, with some locations recording a deluge of up to 7 inches of rain in just three hours, the National Weather Service said. Seven inches of rain is nearly 122 million gallons of water per square mile. Over seven square miles that's enough water to fill the AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys. The Guadalupe River quickly responded, skyrocketing more than 20 feet in a matter of hours in several locations as it rushed downstream toward Kerrville, a city of 24,000. What caused the huge rainfall? Terrain and timing were the biggest factors in the storms, said Gerard and Victor Murphy, a recently retired National Weather Service meteorologist in Texas. Thunderstorms that began on July 3 and continued through the morning of July 4 dropped as much as 10.33 inches of rain near Ingram, Texas, and widespread amounts between 3 to 7 inches in more than a half-dozen counties across South Central, Texas. Because of the region's proximity to the Gulf, it gets "very high rainfall rates," especially in the summer months, Gerard said. "The Gulf is warmer than normal and disturbances moving through that flow can focus thunderstorm activity on a particularly area," he said. On July 4, it was a case of everything focusing in "exactly the wrong place." An upper level disturbance in the atmosphere tapped into a deep plume of tropical moisture left over from Tropical Storm Barry, which made landfall in Mexico on June 29, Gerard said. It didn't help that the storms that formed on Independence Day moved in the same direction as the Guadalupe River, which only added to the rain flowing off the terrain. Hill Country is a 'semi-arid area with soils that don't soak up much water, so the water sheets off quickly and the shallow creeks can rise fast,' Hatim Sharif, a hydrologist and civil engineer at the University of Texas at San Antonio wrote in a July 5 post on The Conversation. The escarpment is a line of cliffs and steep hills created by a geologic fault, Sharif said. "When warm air from the Gulf rushes up the escarpment, it condenses and can dump a lot of moisture. That water flows down the hills quickly, from many different directions, filling streams and rivers below." A weather balloon remotely launched by the weather service Del Rio in West Texas, showed near-record moisture in the upper atmosphere, Murphy said. With that enormous amount of moisture serving as fuel, the winds hitting the escarpment in West Texas served as a kind of match that started the storms. 'Once the storms get going, they're self-sustaining," Murphy said. That's also why it continued to rain and flood in the region on July 5. What role did climate change play in the Texas flood? Warming temperatures over land and especially in the Gulf are stoking extreme rainfall events more often in an arc across the United States, from Texas up into the Northeast, extreme storm experts tell USA TODAY. The region has always seen occasional extreme rains, but today they occur more often, according to weather service data. Air holds 7% more water for every 1.8 degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature. Waters in the Gulf are often 3, 4, or 5 degrees warmer than normal. At one point this year, sea surface temperatures in the Gulf off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana were more than eight degrees above normal. "As has been shown time and time again, event after event, climate change is leading to wetter, more extreme precipitation events," Kevin Reed, an associate provost for climate and sustainability programming at Stony Brook University, previously told USA TODAY. Out of 140 years of U.S. weather records, more than half of the standing 24-hour rainfall totals have been set in the last 30 years. Hill Country's reputation for flooding A guide to Texas State Parks makes it clear flash floods are common and life-threatening. "In hilly terrain, flash floods can strike with little or no advance warning," the guide advises. "Be aware of changes in the weather and seek higher ground early." "Never camp on low ground next to streams, bottoms of canyons or deep arroyos since a flash flood can catch you while you're asleep," it states. Texas as a whole leads the nation in flood deaths, "and by a wide margin," Sharif said. 'Many of those flood deaths have been in Hill Country."Flooding occurred in the Hill Country on July 4-5, 2002, when six days of rain had dropped between 40-45 inches of rain in the region. The Guadalupe reached a record height at the Canyon Dam. Seven people died in flash flooding and damage was estimated at $250 million Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national correspondent for USA TODAY, writes about climate change, violent weather and other news. Reach her at dpulver@ or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Beleaguered Weather Service defends its forecasts as Texas officials point fingers over flood warnings
Storms Federal agencies HurricanesFacebookTweetLink Follow The forces that descended upon the Guadalupe River in Texas' Hill Country on Thursday night were a worst-case scenario. Four months' worth of rain fell in just hours as water-laden thunderstorms stalled in place, giving rise to a wall of water that surged down the river in the blackness of night, limiting the number of people who could get the warnings and move to higher ground. While it is worst-case, the scenario is becoming more frequent as the world warms: More rainfall coming faster than it ever has before, with forecast models inherently biased toward what we used to consider 'normal.' For dozens of families, 'normal' was shattered Thursday morning when they woke to torrential rain and catastrophic floodwaters that have since left more than 45 dead, including 15 children, according to local officials. As an intensive search continues for more than 20 girls in Kerr County, Texas, who remain unaccounted for after the historic flood swept dozens from a summer camp, local officials are adamant they could not have done anything more to prevent the tragedy. 'Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming. We have floods all the time,' Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said at a Friday news conference. 'We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what's happened here. None whatsoever.' The National Weather Service issued a series of early-morning warnings about 'life-threatening flooding' along the river. But questions remain about how many people those alerts reached, whether critical vacancies at the forecast offices could have affected warning dissemination, and if so-called warning fatigue had been growing in a region officials have described as one of the most dangerous in the country for flash flooding. Prev Next The July 4th tragedy shares a striking resemblance with the 1987 Guadalupe River Flood. The National Weather Service described that flood in chillingly similar terms: a wall of water coming down the Guadalupe River, triggering a rise over 29 feet. The flood killed 10 teenagers and injured 33 others in Kerr County as a bus and van were leaving a church camp, according to the National Weather Service. Focus is also narrowing in on local officials and their systems, procedures and reaction to the warnings. Kerr County's judge said the county does not have a warning system for flooding, while Kerrville City manager said they 'could not anticipate' the severity of the flooding despite the warnings because the event happened so quickly. Gov. Greg Abbott and federal officials are defending the response as rapid in the face of what they called a once-in-a-century flood. 'There's going to be a lot of finger-pointing and a lot of second guessing and Monday morning quarterbacking,' said Texas Congressman Chip Roy. 'There's a lot of people saying why and how and I understand that. I understand why parents would be asking those questions and all of the media.' In a press conference on Saturday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the government response and the National Weather Service in the wake of the tragic flooding. 'When President Trump took office…he said he wanted to fix and is currently upgrading the technology. And the National Weather Service has indicated that with that and NOAA, that we needed to renew this ancient system that has been left in place with the federal government for many, many years, and that is the reforms that are ongoing,' Noem said. A NOAA official said they did not know specifically what Noem was referring to, but that upgrades to agency computer networks, radars and modeling systems are underway. Some of those upgrades have been taking place since before Trump took office for his second term. The National Weather Service began forecasting the threat of flooding in Kerr County as early as Thursday morning with a hazardous flood outlook. A flood watch was issued at 1:18 p.m. CT, that highlighted Kerrville, among other locations, as being at risk of flash flooding — though notably, as local officials have raised, the forecast was for less rainfall than what fell: as much as 5 to 7 inches for an event that ultimately dropped as much as 15 inches on parts of central Texas. Several technical forecasts followed Thursday afternoon and evening with increasingly heightened language about the magnitude of the potential flooding. At 6:30 p.m., river forecasters were calling for locally intense rain rates that would 'quickly overwhelm' the ground's ability to absorb the water. 'Rapid runoff is expected, with locally considerable flash and urban flash flooding possible … the nocturnal timing will also enhance the hazard potential and impacts,' the forecasters predicted. They also noted the potential for a historic rainfall event, though it's unclear if that messaging reached emergency managers. The first warning for 'life-threatening flash flooding' for Kerrville came at 1:14 a.m., and was marked specifically to trigger the Emergency Alert System. It would have sounded the alarm on cell phones in the warned area, assuming those phones had service, and their users hadn't turned off EAS weather alerts. Three hours later, the Kerr County Sheriff's Office sent the first report of flooding at low-water crossings. Several other critical alerts followed, warning of the imminent threat: A flash flood emergency warning was issued for Kerr County at 4:03 a.m., followed by one for Kerrville at 5:34 a.m. The raging river burst from its banks around 5 a.m., sweeping homes, cars, campers and cabins downstream. It took about 90 minutes for the 20-foot flood wave to move down the Guadalupe River overnight Thursday, triggering the river's second-highest crest on record. Not all areas along the river have alarms to flag flooding, City Manager Dalton Rice said at a news conference Friday. The alarms are typically 'further downstream,' he said, in places such as Comfort, about 15 miles southeast of Kerrville. One resident, Candice Taylor, pushed back on suggestions residents should have been prepared for the magnitude of the flooding, she told CNN affiliate KENS. 'Anybody who says anything like, 'This was forecasted. Why didn't you watch the news?' That's callous,' Taylor told KENS. Asked about why there aren't any evacuation notices, the Kerrville city manager said there's a 'delicate balance' when calling for an evacuation 'between sheltering in place and getting to higher grounds.' Evacuations could bring 'chaos' onto the roads and risk people getting stuck while trying to get out,' along with more vehicles swept away, said Rice. 'A lot of our operations plans – especially with these camps – that is the plan is sometimes shelter in place, get them to those known high grounds, and then wait for rescue,' Rice said. 'When this came in, people are sleeping, even if you were able to try to get notification, that evacuation period is a very delicate balance.' The National Weather Service has been hard hit by personnel cuts under the Trump administration, but that may not have significantly affected the forecasts and warnings for this historic and deadly flooding. The two Texas NWS offices most closely involved in forecasting and warning about the flooding on the Guadalupe River —Austin-San Antonio and San Angelo — are missing a few key staff members, but still issued a slew of watches and warnings about the flood danger to come on time. Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the NWS employees' union, told CNN that while there are shortages at both the NWS San Angelo forecast office and the Austin-San Antonio office, both had 'adequate staffing and resources' on Thursday night. The San Angelo office is missing its meteorologist-in-charge, Fahy said, as well as a senior-level hydrologist, and the Austin-San Antonio office is missing its science and operations officer. Perhaps most notably, the Austin-San Antonio office is short a warning coordination meteorologist, a role that serves as a crucial, direct link between forecasters and emergency managers. Both vacancies in Austin-San Antonio were the result of early retirement incentives offered by the Trump administration to shrink the size of the federal government, a NOAA official told CNN. Other NWS offices around the country are far worse off, operating with such thin staffing that they no longer operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Many NWS forecast offices have ceased launching their twice-a-day weather balloons, which provide critical data that can alert forecasters to the potential for flooding and other hazardous weather. The NOAA official defended the National Weather Service forecasts, and said the disaster ultimately resulted from too much rain in too short of time in one of the most vulnerable spots in the country for flash flooding, and in the overnight hours — the worst time of day to get warnings to people in harm's way. This particular population is also inundated with weather watches and warnings all times of day and night; in Texas Hill Country, where flash flooding is triggered frequently by summertime thunderstorms, warning fatigue can settle in. The Kerr County tragedy also shines a spotlight on the limitations of current forecasting technology: It is simply not possible to predict that a cluster of thunderstorms dumping months' worth of rain would stall out over a specific spot. And America's forecasting prowess could soon slip backwards, experts warn, if the Trump administration's 2026 budget proposal is enacted — just as the country needs to push the limits on what weather models are capable of. The budget seeks to eliminate all of NOAA's weather and climate research labs along with institutes jointly run with universities around the country. The entire research division of NOAA would be eliminated under the proposal, which is subject to congressional approval. This would shut down research and development of new forecasting technologies, including computer modeling and severe weather warning scenarios, and hamper prediction of hazards including flash floods. One of the NOAA labs slated to be shut down is the National Severe Storms Lab in Norman, Oklahoma, which works to improve flash flood forecasting among other hazards from severe thunderstorms. The NOAA research cuts would come just as human-caused climate change is resulting in more frequent and intense downpours like the ones that led to this tragedy in Texas. NOAA spokesperson Kim Doster told CNN that the Weather Service provided ample lead time prior to the onset of flash flooding. 'The National Weather Service is heartbroken by the tragic loss of life in Kerr County. On July 3, the NWS office in Austin/San Antonio, TX conducted forecast briefings for emergency management in the morning and issued a Flood Watch in the early afternoon,' Doster said in a statement. 'Flash Flood Warnings were also issued on the night of July 3 and in the early morning of July 4, giving preliminary lead times of more than three hours before flash flooding conditions occurred.' Wyndham Etheridge, a 14-year-old at Camp La Junta in Hunt, Texas, told CNN's Fredricka Whitfield he woke up to people from all over the camp coming to 'seek refuge' at his cabin. They stayed there, fearing the strong floodwaters could sweep them away. As the water rose, they climbed into the loft of their cabin to escape, but it wasn't safe, Etheridge said. 'So at some point we just decided … we could go to bed for a little bit, but then we woke up again to more water,' he said. Etheridge's parents were among the lucky who received word that their son was safe and could be picked up. 'All those boys were pretty traumatized,' said Amy Etheridge, Wyndham's mother. For the families of the many who were taken by the floods, their trauma is just beginning.
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Beleaguered Weather Service defends its forecasts as Texas officials point fingers over flood warnings
Storms Federal agencies HurricanesFacebookTweetLink Follow The forces that descended upon the Guadalupe River in Texas' Hill Country on Thursday night were a worst-case scenario. Four months' worth of rain fell in just hours as water-laden thunderstorms stalled in place, giving rise to a wall of water that surged down the river in the blackness of night, limiting the number of people who could get the warnings and move to higher ground. While it is worst-case, the scenario is becoming more frequent as the world warms: More rainfall coming faster than it ever has before, with forecast models inherently biased toward what we used to consider 'normal.' For dozens of families, 'normal' was shattered Thursday morning when they woke to torrential rain and catastrophic floodwaters that have since left more than 45 dead, including 15 children, according to local officials. As an intensive search continues for more than 20 girls in Kerr County, Texas, who remain unaccounted for after the historic flood swept dozens from a summer camp, local officials are adamant they could not have done anything more to prevent the tragedy. 'Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming. We have floods all the time,' Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said at a Friday news conference. 'We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what's happened here. None whatsoever.' The National Weather Service issued a series of early-morning warnings about 'life-threatening flooding' along the river. But questions remain about how many people those alerts reached, whether critical vacancies at the forecast offices could have affected warning dissemination, and if so-called warning fatigue had been growing in a region officials have described as one of the most dangerous in the country for flash flooding. Prev Next The July 4th tragedy shares a striking resemblance with the 1987 Guadalupe River Flood. The National Weather Service described that flood in chillingly similar terms: a wall of water coming down the Guadalupe River, triggering a rise over 29 feet. The flood killed 10 teenagers and injured 33 others in Kerr County as a bus and van were leaving a church camp, according to the National Weather Service. Focus is also narrowing in on local officials and their systems, procedures and reaction to the warnings. Kerr County's judge said the county does not have a warning system for flooding, while Kerrville City manager said they 'could not anticipate' the severity of the flooding despite the warnings because the event happened so quickly. Gov. Greg Abbott and federal officials are defending the response as rapid in the face of what they called a once-in-a-century flood. 'There's going to be a lot of finger-pointing and a lot of second guessing and Monday morning quarterbacking,' said Texas Congressman Chip Roy. 'There's a lot of people saying why and how and I understand that. I understand why parents would be asking those questions and all of the media.' In a press conference on Saturday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the government response and the National Weather Service in the wake of the tragic flooding. 'When President Trump took office…he said he wanted to fix and is currently upgrading the technology. And the National Weather Service has indicated that with that and NOAA, that we needed to renew this ancient system that has been left in place with the federal government for many, many years, and that is the reforms that are ongoing,' Noem said. A NOAA official said they did not know specifically what Noem was referring to, but that upgrades to agency computer networks, radars and modeling systems are underway. Some of those upgrades have been taking place since before Trump took office for his second term. The National Weather Service began forecasting the threat of flooding in Kerr County as early as Thursday morning with a hazardous flood outlook. A flood watch was issued at 1:18 p.m. CT, that highlighted Kerrville, among other locations, as being at risk of flash flooding — though notably, as local officials have raised, the forecast was for less rainfall than what fell: as much as 5 to 7 inches for an event that ultimately dropped as much as 15 inches on parts of central Texas. Several technical forecasts followed Thursday afternoon and evening with increasingly heightened language about the magnitude of the potential flooding. At 6:30 p.m., river forecasters were calling for locally intense rain rates that would 'quickly overwhelm' the ground's ability to absorb the water. 'Rapid runoff is expected, with locally considerable flash and urban flash flooding possible … the nocturnal timing will also enhance the hazard potential and impacts,' the forecasters predicted. They also noted the potential for a historic rainfall event, though it's unclear if that messaging reached emergency managers. The first warning for 'life-threatening flash flooding' for Kerrville came at 1:14 a.m., and was marked specifically to trigger the Emergency Alert System. It would have sounded the alarm on cell phones in the warned area, assuming those phones had service, and their users hadn't turned off EAS weather alerts. Three hours later, the Kerr County Sheriff's Office sent the first report of flooding at low-water crossings. Several other critical alerts followed, warning of the imminent threat: A flash flood emergency warning was issued for Kerr County at 4:03 a.m., followed by one for Kerrville at 5:34 a.m. The raging river burst from its banks around 5 a.m., sweeping homes, cars, campers and cabins downstream. It took about 90 minutes for the 20-foot flood wave to move down the Guadalupe River overnight Thursday, triggering the river's second-highest crest on record. Not all areas along the river have alarms to flag flooding, City Manager Dalton Rice said at a news conference Friday. The alarms are typically 'further downstream,' he said, in places such as Comfort, about 15 miles southeast of Kerrville. One resident, Candice Taylor, pushed back on suggestions residents should have been prepared for the magnitude of the flooding, she told CNN affiliate KENS. 'Anybody who says anything like, 'This was forecasted. Why didn't you watch the news?' That's callous,' Taylor told KENS. Asked about why there aren't any evacuation notices, the Kerrville city manager said there's a 'delicate balance' when calling for an evacuation 'between sheltering in place and getting to higher grounds.' Evacuations could bring 'chaos' onto the roads and risk people getting stuck while trying to get out,' along with more vehicles swept away, said Rice. 'A lot of our operations plans – especially with these camps – that is the plan is sometimes shelter in place, get them to those known high grounds, and then wait for rescue,' Rice said. 'When this came in, people are sleeping, even if you were able to try to get notification, that evacuation period is a very delicate balance.' The National Weather Service has been hard hit by personnel cuts under the Trump administration, but that may not have significantly affected the forecasts and warnings for this historic and deadly flooding. The two Texas NWS offices most closely involved in forecasting and warning about the flooding on the Guadalupe River —Austin-San Antonio and San Angelo — are missing a few key staff members, but still issued a slew of watches and warnings about the flood danger to come on time. Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the NWS employees' union, told CNN that while there are shortages at both the NWS San Angelo forecast office and the Austin-San Antonio office, both had 'adequate staffing and resources' on Thursday night. The San Angelo office is missing its meteorologist-in-charge, Fahy said, as well as a senior-level hydrologist, and the Austin-San Antonio office is missing its science and operations officer. Perhaps most notably, the Austin-San Antonio office is short a warning coordination meteorologist, a role that serves as a crucial, direct link between forecasters and emergency managers. Both vacancies in Austin-San Antonio were the result of early retirement incentives offered by the Trump administration to shrink the size of the federal government, a NOAA official told CNN. Other NWS offices around the country are far worse off, operating with such thin staffing that they no longer operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Many NWS forecast offices have ceased launching their twice-a-day weather balloons, which provide critical data that can alert forecasters to the potential for flooding and other hazardous weather. The NOAA official defended the National Weather Service forecasts, and said the disaster ultimately resulted from too much rain in too short of time in one of the most vulnerable spots in the country for flash flooding, and in the overnight hours — the worst time of day to get warnings to people in harm's way. This particular population is also inundated with weather watches and warnings all times of day and night; in Texas Hill Country, where flash flooding is triggered frequently by summertime thunderstorms, warning fatigue can settle in. The Kerr County tragedy also shines a spotlight on the limitations of current forecasting technology: It is simply not possible to predict that a cluster of thunderstorms dumping months' worth of rain would stall out over a specific spot. And America's forecasting prowess could soon slip backwards, experts warn, if the Trump administration's 2026 budget proposal is enacted — just as the country needs to push the limits on what weather models are capable of. The budget seeks to eliminate all of NOAA's weather and climate research labs along with institutes jointly run with universities around the country. The entire research division of NOAA would be eliminated under the proposal, which is subject to congressional approval. This would shut down research and development of new forecasting technologies, including computer modeling and severe weather warning scenarios, and hamper prediction of hazards including flash floods. One of the NOAA labs slated to be shut down is the National Severe Storms Lab in Norman, Oklahoma, which works to improve flash flood forecasting among other hazards from severe thunderstorms. The NOAA research cuts would come just as human-caused climate change is resulting in more frequent and intense downpours like the ones that led to this tragedy in Texas. NOAA spokesperson Kim Doster told CNN that the Weather Service provided ample lead time prior to the onset of flash flooding. 'The National Weather Service is heartbroken by the tragic loss of life in Kerr County. On July 3, the NWS office in Austin/San Antonio, TX conducted forecast briefings for emergency management in the morning and issued a Flood Watch in the early afternoon,' Doster said in a statement. 'Flash Flood Warnings were also issued on the night of July 3 and in the early morning of July 4, giving preliminary lead times of more than three hours before flash flooding conditions occurred.' Wyndham Etheridge, a 14-year-old at Camp La Junta in Hunt, Texas, told CNN's Fredricka Whitfield he woke up to people from all over the camp coming to 'seek refuge' at his cabin. They stayed there, fearing the strong floodwaters could sweep them away. As the water rose, they climbed into the loft of their cabin to escape, but it wasn't safe, Etheridge said. 'So at some point we just decided … we could go to bed for a little bit, but then we woke up again to more water,' he said. Etheridge's parents were among the lucky who received word that their son was safe and could be picked up. 'All those boys were pretty traumatized,' said Amy Etheridge, Wyndham's mother. For the families of the many who were taken by the floods, their trauma is just beginning.
