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USA Today
07-07-2025
- Climate
- USA Today
Clinging to trees, escaping on rooftops: These survivors were swept into Texas floods
Before help could arrive, Texans in hard-hit areas like Hunt said they tried to save themselves from the deadly floodwaters. Some clung to trees. Others floated on mattresses. Many clamored onto rooftops. Survivors of the flooding in central Texas are beginning to share their harrowing experiences of escaping the deadly waters. With little warning from forecasters, some residents said they were alerted to the danger by panicked screaming and the sounds of the storm in the early morning hours of the holiday weekend. Rescue teams have scoured the area for signs of life and saved hundreds of people, pulling them into boats and helicopters. But many in hard-hit areas like Hunt, Texas, said they tried to save themselves. The survivors told their stories to USA TODAY. Mother and son cling to tree to survive Texas flood Before the sun rose on July 4, Taylor Bergmann awoke of the sound of his mother, Erin Burgess, screaming "We're flooding. We're flooding!" Water was coming in through the front door of their home in Hunt, located about 80 miles northwest of San Antonio. Bergmann, 19, could hear the glass back doors starting to crack under pressure. "After they broke, I mean, it was a matter of seconds, and there was five and a half feet of water in our house," said Bergmann, who works at a water park. They swam into the backyard where the fast-moving current swept away Burgess' boyfriend, Matt, and their dog Stella, Bergmann said. The mother and son tried to climb to their roof, but Burgess, who is recovering from facial surgery, couldn't make it. The pair wrapped themselves around a tree, with Burgess, a nurse, standing on her tip toes to keep her chin above water and Bergmann's six-foot frame shielding her from vehicles floating by. Bergmann said they stayed there for more than a hour until the water receded and they were able to take refuge at a neighbor's house. Eventually, they reunited with Burgess' boyfriend, Stella and another lucky survivor: their cat, Kiki, who rode out the flood on top of a mattress. Though they were able to save some of their belongings, the flood left their home a wreck, Bergmann said. "We're never living here again," he told USA TODAY. "We're selling the property, and we're moving very far away from running water." Couple escapes 'nightmare' after cabin floods Maria Tapia, 64, awoke in the early morning of July 4 to the sharp cracking of thunder and what sounded like little rocks hitting her bedroom window. Then, she heard sounds of water from the nearby Guadalupe River rushing past. As Tapia, who manages the property, got up to inspect the noise, her ankle submerged into half a foot of water. The cabin they have called home in Hunt, Texas, was built about 300 feet from the riverbed. Now, it was engulfed by the river itself. Tapia quickly jostled her husband, Felipe Tapia, 63, awake from a dead sleep and told him they needed to evacuate immediately. By the time the couple trudged to the living room, less than 10 minutes later, the water had risen to their knees. For minutes, they pushed against the front door, but it wouldn't open because of the pressure from the water. Finally, it budged. The couple furiously kicked through the screen door and plunged into the water outside, hoping to swim to their neighbor's house on higher ground. As she navigated the waters in the pitch black, Tapia said she heard the house's glass windows 'popping' and shattering. 'It was the worst night of my life,' Tapia said. 'It was a nightmare.' Before the flood, she said life in Hunt was 'paradise.' She and her husband planted flowers and grass outside by the river and found a community of friends who also managed properties in the area. Now, she says, the town is 'no more.' 'It is − how do you say − a ghost town,' Tapia said. The house they fled is still mostly standing, but it's badly damaged from the storm. The truck the couple recently purchased as a "splurge" washed up down the hill and filled with debris. Others in the area fared worse – several of Tapia's friends are still missing, and some loved ones were found dead, she said. Texas man saved by a meter box Christian Fell was planning to spend his July 4 eating catfish and shooting off fireworks at his grandparents' home in Hunt. Instead, he fought for his life. Fell, 25, was awoken by a crack of thunder around 3 a.m. He could hear noise inside the house, too. He got up, thinking there might be an intruder. "When I swung my feet over the side of the bed and I stood up, I realized I was standing in water up to my ankle," said Fell, who was alone in the house. He headed for the kitchen door. But when he opened it, more water poured into the home. He said he made frantic phone calls to his family and 911, but he kept getting disconnected. As the water rose to his waist, he went back to the bedroom and desperately tried to climb onto the floating furniture. "I was pretty, pretty scared," he said. "That's kinda when I realized they can't do anything to get me out, and I had to do something to keep myself alive," he recalled. The bedroom door wouldn't budge, so Fell swam through a broken window. Once outside, he clamored onto a meter box, where he stood on the balls of his feet for the next three hours. From his perch, Fell said he could hear the sound of roaring water and houses being ripped off their foundations. It was pitch black outside, but occasionally a flash of lightning or a car floating by with its hazard lights on would illuminate the darkness. "The transformers blew up at one point, and it was like the sun came out and I could see clear as day," he said of the electrical equipment around him. "I just saw like all this debris and stuff getting carried away." Eventually, Fell spotted police walking through the street with a flashlight and decided it was safe to climb down. Though Fell was spared, the house was "destroyed," especially the wooden deck where his family used to gather to eat their Thanksgiving meal. "The whole house pretty much acted like a dam for me and blocked all the debris," he said. "It was pretty, pretty lucky that it did that because all that would have come crashing down on me." 'I don't want to die' Addison Martin, 17, never prayed harder in her life. The high schooler was tumbling helplessly down the Guadalupe River, which had turned into a raging avalanche of water. She struggled to stay afloat, pummeled by debris and tree limbs. Cars and trailers floated nearby. But she had lost sight of her family. It had only been hours since their RV pulled into the riverside campground in Ingram, Texas, on July 3 after a nearly four-hour drive from Odessa, where she recently finished her junior year of high school. She joined her father and stepmother, Bobby and Amanda Martin, two brothers including Bailey Martin, a young Odessa police officer who had brought his girlfriend. They had planned a relaxing holiday weekend on the river. That night, she had trouble falling to sleep amid booming thunder and rain. Around 4 a.m., her brother woke the family up. Flooding that started slow was quickly accelerating. 'I was just grabbing everything I could. I put on my shoes, I got my bag, my phone. And then my dad opened the camper door,' she recalled, seeing the rising water. 'We need to get into the car,' she recalled her stepmother saying. 'The car is gone,' her father replied. Calls to 911 told them help was on the way, but first responders were swamped. As the water rose, they decided to climb a tree that sat between a camping spot that hung over an adjacent trailer. Addison and several family members stood on top. Then it started to shift. She saw her stepmother fall off and tried to pull her back up. She heard someone yelling for air. Soon she was in the water, fighting currents and limbs that briefly held her under. Her family members drifted out of sight. 'I remember just thinking, I don't want to die,' she said. She finally grabbed onto a branch of a tree and 'held on for my life' for hours. Trees were falling into the water. She asked God to keep her tree up: 'I've never prayed so much in my life.' Daylight finally broke, the tree still standing. By roughly 8 a.m., she yelled to first responders who came with a boat. She and her brother were reunited at a rescue center. But later came the devastating news. Her father and stepmother had not survived. 'They sat us down, me and my brother, to tell us that they were gone,' she said. She learned that another brother, Bailey Martin, and his girlfriend were still missing. John Keith Martin, Bobby Martin's father, confirmed to USA TODAY that authorities had identified the bodies of the Odessa couple. Addison, speaking from her biological mother's home in Lubbock, Texas, said she's not sure what's next. She is awaiting word on those still missing. Funerals will be coming. Friends and family have started a GoFundMe to help with those expenses. Family of 33 rides out the flood on rooftop The sun was shining when Riata Schoepf, 19, arrived at the River Inn Resort & Conference Center for an annual trip with the family of her boyfriend, Ephraim Fry, on July 3. But by the next morning, one of the 33 people in their group was banging on the door telling them a flood was coming. Schoepf, a student, got in the car, but quickly learned the only ways out of Hunt, Texas, were closed. With traffic at a standstill and debris crashing into them, they decided to ditch the car and wade through the knee-deep water. "I lose my shoes, lose everything," she said. "Like we're just walking barefoot in this really, really disgusting water." By the time they made it back to the inn, the water was up to Schoepf's chest. The only way out was up, so the owner of the inn used bedsheets to pull them onto the roof. Schoepf estimated they managed to pull about 50 people to safety, including the entire group on Fry's family trip. "As we're pulling all these people up, you just see, like, cars flying, you see dumpsters flying down the road, trees like just slamming into everything," she said. Schoepf watched the flood rage and helicopters pluck people from the water until the flooding subsided a few hours later. Once the bridges were cleared, rescue workers loaded Schoepf and her loved ones into charter buses headed for a shelter. As she saw the decimated homes and people's belongings strewn about, the gravity of her near-death experience hit her. "It felt like literally the longest and quietest drive I've ever been on because everybody's just looking at the damage that it's done," she said. "And it's not even like it was a flood. It was like something out of this world." By 3 a.m. on July 5, Schoepf finally made it back home to Austin. She said she still hasn't fully processed the terrifying experience. "More of me feels guilty knowing that so many other people are in a worse situation," she said.
Calgary Herald
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Calgary Herald
Review: Rune Bergmann gives exemplary farewell to orchestra and city
Article content Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. Article content It was a night of finales and farewells. On the last weekend in May, the CPO performed its final pair of concerts of the current season, a season with many highlights (including this one) and with 40 sold-out performances, a company first. Recovering from near bankruptcy some years ago, the CPO is now enjoying some of the strongest support it has had in many years. Article content Article content At least some of the reason for this lies in the astute programming, but perhaps even more lies in the new manner of presentation, not the least by its outgoing conductor, Rune Bergmann, whose smiling face and manner have signalled to all that classical concerts can be both serious and simple fun. Article content Article content Bergmann has been with the orchestra for nine years, which includes the difficult years of COVID-19. It hasn't been easy to bring audiences back, but Bergmann persevered and has led the orchestra in delicate performances of works by Mozart as well as monumental symphonies by Mahler. Article content And it was with Mahler, specifically Mahler's popular Second Symphony (Resurrection), that Bergmann chose to conclude his time with the orchestra. A symphony about farewells, it is also about hope and new life. It is also a symphony by which to measure the growth in the performing stature of the orchestra and the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus, both of which are enjoying a period in which a great many of their recent concerts have been of a very high level. Article content Just this past season, the orchestra performed a splashy Carmina Burana to open its season (also with the CPO Chorus), with concerts featuring world-famous soloists like Jonathan Biss and Honens winner Nicolas Namoradze. It also gave superb performances of Mozart and Elgar with Bergmann at the helm, and a wonderful Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. String soloists were not ignored either, with outstanding performances by violinists James Ehnes and Diana Cohen, and recently a sold-out appearance with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Article content This list of accomplishments, together with an earlier Beethoven symphony and concerto cycle and several Mahler symphonies, including an impressive performance of the Third Symphony, gives an indication of the wide range of music performed, and with impressive surety and confidence. Article content These qualities marked Bergmann's final appearance with the orchestra. One could only marvel at the authority of the opening cello section solo, as well as the numerous solo turns given to the wind and brass players (especially the solo trumpet of Adam Zinatelli). The percussion section whipped up a storm, and the chorus sang with hushed emotion and, in the final moment, with dramatic grandeur.
Calgary Herald
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Calgary Herald
Review:
Article content Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. Article content It was a night of finales and farewells. On the last weekend in May, the CPO performed its final pair of concerts of the current season, a season with many highlights (including this one) and with 40 sold-out performances, a company first. Recovering from near bankruptcy some years ago, the CPO is now enjoying some of the strongest support it has had in many years. Article content Article content Article content At least some of the reason for this lies in the astute programming, but perhaps even more lies in the new manner of presentation, not the least by its outgoing conductor, Rune Bergmann, whose smiling face and manner have signalled to all that classical concerts can be both serious and simple fun. Article content Article content Bergmann has been with the orchestra for nine years, which includes the difficult years of COVID-19. It hasn't been easy to bring audiences back, but Bergmann persevered and has led the orchestra in delicate performances of works by Mozart as well as monumental symphonies by Mahler. Article content And it was with Mahler, specifically Mahler's popular Second Symphony (Resurrection), that Bergmann chose to conclude his time with the orchestra. A symphony about farewells, it is also about hope and new life. It is also a symphony by which to measure the growth in the performing stature of the orchestra and the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus, both of which are enjoying a period in which a great many of their recent concerts have been of a very high level. Article content Article content Just this past season, the orchestra performed a splashy Carmina Burana to open its season (also with the CPO Chorus), with concerts featuring world-famous soloists like Jonathan Biss and Honens winner Nicolas Namoradze. It also gave superb performances of Mozart and Elgar with Bergmann at the helm, and a wonderful Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. String soloists were not ignored either, with outstanding performances by violinists James Ehnes and Diana Cohen, and recently a sold-out appearance with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Article content This list of accomplishments, together with an earlier Beethoven symphony and concerto cycle and several Mahler symphonies, including an impressive performance of the Third Symphony, gives an indication of the wide range of music performed, and with impressive surety and confidence. Article content These qualities marked Bergmann's final appearance with the orchestra. One could only marvel at the authority of the opening cello section solo, as well as the numerous solo turns given to the wind and brass players (especially the solo trumpet of Adam Zinatelli). The percussion section whipped up a storm, and the chorus sang with hushed emotion and, in the final moment, with dramatic grandeur.
South China Morning Post
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Who is Wes Bergmann, whose remarks about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's relationship went viral? He's a reality TV star whose credits include The Traitors and The Real World
Wes Bergmann of The Traitors fame, who's neighbours with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce , regrets spilling the beans about the NFL star's relationship with Taylor Swift Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift in January, in Kansas City, Missouri. Photo: Tribune News Service In February, Bergmann appeared on The Social Game podcast, where he spoke about living next to Kelce in a gated community in Leawood, Kansas City. Owing to the exclusivity of the residential area, he said it was easy to notice when Kelce and Swift started dating. 'I was like the first person to know about any of this stuff,' he claimed, before boasting, 'I beat the validating of [Swift] showing up to games and stuff by like six months.' Unfortunately, fans did not take kindly to Bergmann airing private details about the beginning of Kelce and Swift's romance, prompting him to apologise on X (formerly Twitter). 'I'm so sorry and confused,' he wrote, admitting that the information he shared was 'none of my business'. Advertisement So just who is Wes Bergmann? Here's what we know. Wes Bergmann is a reality TV star Wes Bergmann is on the third season of The Traitors (US). Photo: @westonbergmann/Instagram Bergmann started his entertainment career on the MTV reality show The Real World: Austin in 2005, while he was a student at Arizona State University. His first brush with virality came when he was slapped by fellow contestant Wren, after he let it slip that they had slept together. Today, he is best known for his recurring appearance on several seasons of the competition show The Challenge and its various spin-offs. He also took part in game shows House of Villains and Worst Cooks in America, and produced the business competition show The Blox. Most recently, he appeared in the third season of The Traitors (US). He's married Wes Bergmann and Amanda Hornick on their wedding day in 2018. Photo: @westonbergmann/Instagram Bergmann is married to yoga teacher and lifestyle influencer Amanda Hornick. She is also associate vice-president and manager of campus recruiting at HNTB, an infrastructure company.
Boston Globe
24-02-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Three years into war in Ukraine, Trump ushers in new world for Putin
After three years of grinding warfare and isolation by the West, a world of new possibilities has opened up for Putin with a change of power in Washington. Gone are the statements from the East Room of the White House about the United States standing up to bullies, supporting democracy over autocracy and ensuring freedom will prevail. Gone, too, is Washington's united front against Russia with its European allies, many of whom have begun to wonder if the new American administration will protect them against a revanchist Moscow, or even keep troops in Europe at all. Advertisement Trump, having voiced desires to take Greenland, has pursued a rapid rapprochement with the Kremlin, while sidelining shocked European allies and publicly assailing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine. It is a rapid shift of fortunes for Putin. He dug in on the battlefield — despite mounting pressures and costs — to wait out Western resolve in a far longer and more onerous conflict than Moscow had expected. Now, the Russian leader may believe his moment has come to shift the balance of power in favor of the Kremlin, not only in Ukraine. 'I think he sees real opportunity, both to win the war in Ukraine, effectively, but also to sideline the U.S. not just from Ukraine but from Europe,' said Max Bergmann, a Russia analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington who worked at the State Department during the Obama administration. The Russian leader's 'grandiose objective,' Bergmann said, is the destruction of NATO, the 32-country military alliance led by the United States, which was established after World War II to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union. 'I think that is right now all on the table,' Bergmann said. The opening represents one of the biggest opportunities for Putin in his quarter-century in power in Russia. For years, Putin has lamented the weakness Russia showed in the decade after the fall of the Soviet Union and has fixated on reversing the influence the United States has since gained in Europe at the Kremlin's expense. Advertisement Before Russia's invasion of Ukraine three years ago, Putin issued demands to the United States and its European allies that went far beyond Ukraine, proposing the resurrection of Cold War-style spheres of influence in a Europe divided between Moscow and Washington. He demanded that NATO agree not to expand farther east to any nations of the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine. He also asked the United States and its Western European allies not to deploy any military forces or weaponry in the Central and Eastern European countries that once answered to Moscow. Many of those nations, such as Estonia, Poland and Romania, have been NATO members for decades and would be difficult to defend against a Russian invasion without pre-positioned troops and equipment. 'In Putin's view, it's the most powerful countries that should get to determine the rules of the road,' said Angela Stent, emerita professor of government at Georgetown University. 'Smaller countries, whether they like it or not, have to listen to them.' Never mind, Stent said, that Russia lacks a superpower economy. 'But it does have nuclear weapons, it has oil and gas and a veto on the U.N. Security Council,' she said. 'It's just power, hard power.' At the time, the West immediately rejected Putin's prewar proposals as unthinkable. The Russian leader is now almost certain to revive them in impending negotiations with Trump, a longtime skeptic of NATO and U.S. troop presence in Europe. That has prompted a crisis among European allies, who are worried about what the U.S. president might concede. Advertisement 'There is something very big going on at the moment,' said Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London. 'This is not business as usual. This is a very different administration, and it's very hard to see how trans-Atlantic relations will be the same at the end of this.' Even if Trump's return has shifted the geopolitical environment in Putin's favor, the Russian leader has suffered serious setbacks over three years of war, and so far has failed to achieve his goal of bringing Ukraine back into Moscow's orbit. Russia turned the tide on the battlefield, wresting about 1,500 square miles of land from Ukraine last year, but still has not taken the full territory of the four Ukrainian regions the Kremlin formally 'annexed' in 2022. Though Ukrainian forces are reeling from personnel shortages, there has yet to be a vast Russian breakthrough causing a complete collapse of the Ukrainian lines. Putin's gains have also come at a significant cost. Russia is suffering losses from 1,000 to 1,500 dead and wounded per day by some estimates. Russia's war economy is showing strains, with 10% inflation, sky-high interest rates and sputtering economic growth, despite gargantuan state defense outlays. NATO has expanded to include two more nations in Russia's backyard, Finland and Sweden, the opposite of what Putin intended. 'If you're sitting in the Kremlin looking at this, yes, there is an opportunity, but don't get your hopes too high,' said Thomas Graham, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as a top White House adviser on Russia during the George W. Bush administration. 'A lot could change quickly, and at the end of the day, Trump is unreliable.' Advertisement To end the war, Graham added, both parties need to agree to stop fighting. Ukraine and its European backers most likely will not simply accept a raw deal that Trump cuts with Putin, despite intense pressure they might face from Washington. 'This is a lot more complicated than simply Putin and Trump sitting down and signing a piece of paper basically prepared by Putin,' Graham said, noting that he 'wouldn't pop the Champagne corks in Moscow right now,' even if Russia appears to be in a better position than it once was. Heading into talks, Trump faces the added difficulty that Putin is not a popular figure among the American public. Any deal seen as Kremlin appeasement could prove difficult to sell at home, though the vast majority of Americans favor a quick end to the conflict, which Trump promised on the campaign trail. Last year, more than 8 in 10 Americans expressed a negative view of Russia, and 88% said they did not have confidence in Putin to do the right thing in international affairs, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Nearly two-thirds of respondents called Russia an enemy of the United States. Trump's own secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who has been leading the talks so far, has in the past called Putin 'bloodthirsty,' 'a butcher' and 'a monster.' Putin, however, has benefited from changes in the information landscape and increasing admiration in the right-wing media universe, led by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who visited Moscow to interview him last year. Three years ago, Ukrainians successfully took to Twitter to popularize their cause around the globe at the outset of the invasion. But disinformation, often friendly to the Kremlin, has flourished on the platform since Elon Musk took over the company in 2022 and later rebranded the social media giant as X. Advertisement Federal prosecutors last year said they had unearthed a covert Russian campaign to spread Kremlin-friendly messages by funneling money to right-wing American influencers through a Tennessee-based media company. The Western countries that lined up against Putin are facing their own problems at home. The two most influential countries in continental Europe — France and Germany — have been mired in political dysfunction for months and gripped by the rise of Kremlin-friendly far-right parties, now enjoying the backing of both Russian and U.S. officials. In the United States, Trump's defense secretary has ordered senior leaders to begin the process of identifying major cuts in military spending. Some incoming top officials at the Pentagon have pushed for a significant withdrawal of U.S. forces from Europe to focus on China, arguing that Europeans can handle their own defense. Putin and his advisers would welcome the change. 'I would imagine if they are smart, they would adhere to Napoleon — when your enemy is destroying itself, don't interfere,' Graham said. 'I think that would be the approach at the moment.' This article originally appeared in
