Dad tried to kayak in Texas floods to save his young daughters, whose last texts were ‘I love you'
'I love you,' the pre-teens wrote in a text.
R.J. and Annie Harber spent the Fourth of July at their one-bedroom cabin in Casa Bonita near Hunt, Texas, which they've owned since 2020. Their daughters, Blair, 13, and Brooke, 11, stayed with their grandparents, Mike and Charlene Harber, in a cabin closer to the lake. R.J. told the Wall Street Journal that he was awakened by pounding rain, thunder and lightning around 3:30 a.m. on the holiday. He woke Annie after feeling floodwater in their cabin and seeing water rushing in through the door.
Unable to open it, they escaped through a window with water already up to Annie's neck and fled to higher ground. They knocked on two nearby families' doors and woke them, too.
R.J. borrowed a kayak, a life vest, and a flashlight to reach the cabin where his daughters and parents were staying, but a swell knocked him into a post halfway there.
'I shined a flashlight out there, and I could see it was white water, and I've kayaked enough to know that that was gonna be impossible,' R.J. told the outlet.
He saw that an entire cabin had broken loose from its foundation and was lodged against the side of the cabin where his daughters and parents were staying.
'There were cars floating at me and trees floating at me. I knew if I took even one stroke further, it was gonna be a death sentence,' he said.
R.J. made the heartbreaking decision to go back to Annie and the other families. All of them made it to a home on higher ground where another family let them in around 3:45 a.m., the Journal reported. When RJ checked his phone, he discovered that Brooke had texted him at 3:30 a.m. It read 'I love you.'
Annie also received texts from both daughters saying 'I love you,' and their other grandfather in Michigan received one that said 'Love you' and a photo of him with the girls.
The Harbers and others waited in the dark all night, hearing terrifying noises they later realized were cabins being torn from their foundations. At sunrise, R.J. returned to find most of the community's cabins destroyed, including the one where his daughter and their grandparents had stayed, which had been completely washed away.
Kerr County, Texas, has become the center for disastrous floods that hit the state over the weekend. More than 100 people have died and emergency crews have done more than 400 rescues.
Blair and Brooke's bodies were found about 12 miles from the cabin. According to a GoFundMe started for the girls' funeral costs, the grandparents have yet to be found.
The girls' aunt, Jennifer Harber, wrote, 'They were believers, and one of their favorite classes was religion. Blair and I had a conversation about God and heaven two weeks earlier. They had their rosaries with them.'
The GoFundMe has raised over $290,000, surpassing its $275,000 goal. R.J. told the Journal that the family frequently visited their cabin to kayak, fish and play.
'Unfortunately, all those great memories are now a bad memory,' he said.
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