A CITY employee heartbreakingly recalled the moment he heard the terrifying screams for help from a campsite minutes before powerful 80 mph running water washed it off its foundation.
The devastating floods in Central Texas over the Fourth of July holiday have paralyzed the residents of Texas Hill Country, killing at least 120 across six counties, while an additional 173 people remain unaccounted for.
The death toll from the floods is expected to rise as emergency responders have shifted their search-and-rescue operation to a recovery mission.
The horror began in the early hours of July 4 when an extreme flash flood event pounded the Texas Hill Country region, causing the Guadalupe River in Kerr County to rise 26 feet in less than an hour.
In some areas, at least 2 to 4 inches of rain fell per hour, according to the National Weather Service.
Stuart Gross, a retired police officer and code enforcement manager in Ingram, Texas, recalled the nightmare weather phenomena when he and his wife had to evacuate their home and flee the torrential floods.
“Horrific damage. We had 36-foot crest down below my house. I was evacuated. My house was actually vibrating from the amount of water,” Gross painfully told The U.S. Sun.
“It was going down there. I work for the city. I’m a retired police officer, and as soon as I got my wife to safety, it was time to go to work, do what we have to do.
“There’s total devastation. We’re over a hundred dead and there are 200 missing.”
HARROWING SCREAMS
A downcast Gross said he watched powerless as the HTR Texas Hill Country campground directly below his home was completely obliterated by the raging waters.
The campsite and the Blue Oak RV Park are situated next to each other along the Guadalupe River and were believed to have been packed with dozens of families enjoying the long holiday weekend.
“I went outside of my house, even though the campground was below us, you can hear the screams,” the retired police officer recalled.
Gross recalled the campsite being filled with visitors for the holiday weekend, “It was completely washed off the map.”
“It’s terrifying. That water’s running about 80 miles an hour. Imagine 36-foot deep water, that’s 300 yards wide,” he added.
“Refrigerators, trash, brush going that fast in the water. You can’t do anything for them.
“Even with the helicopters, it takes a while for the river to come down before you can actually work at rescue.”
Among the victims who died at the HTR campground were James and Cindy Rushing, 64 and 53, respectively, whose camper was found completely washed away from the site.
“Everything gone – their camper, their truck, their belongings – completely washed away,” Tamra Blasius, the couple’s daughter, wrote on Facebook.
“There was no sign that anyone had ever been there. It was absolutely gut-wrenching.”
Gross, who has lived in Ingram County for 45 years, also experienced the devastating floods of 1987, when heavy downpours caused the waters in the Guadalupe River to rapidly rise.
There’s pieces of campers just scattered everywhere, there’s vehicles that are destroyed just laying in the riverbed.
Kenny Schenk, a storm chaser based in Texas.
However, unlike the rising death toll from the July 4th flooding, the 1987 tragedy only killed 10 people.
“[In ’87] We had a lot of warning. It was in the daylight. We knew it was coming. This was dark. This was heavy rain,” Gross told The U.S. Sun.
“I’ve been here 45 years and never seen the water that high. Like I said, you don’t play with that water. It’s dangerous, it’s very dangerous.”
DEVASTATING SITE
Kenny Schenk, a resident of Palestine, Texas, who has been a storm chaser for three years, has been criss-crossing through the impacted Central Texas region assisting those in need alongside the Dominator Storm Recovery team and the United Cajun Navy.
Schenk has experienced first-hand the damages caused by EF3 and EF4 tornadoes, but admitted the widespread destruction from the floods has shocked him.
“I’ve never seen nothing like this before. I’ve seen a lot of tornadoes. I’ve seen a lot of tornado damage, but I mean this doesn’t even compare to a lot of it,” Schenk told The U.S. Sun.
“I’ve seen trees completely flipped upside down like the branches are on the ground and the root balls are up in the air.
“I mean probably a good 3 – 4 hundred yards away from the river a lot of trees are just flattened down.
“There’s pieces of campers just scattered everywhere, there’s vehicles that are destroyed just laying in the riverbed.
“It’s real bad with tornado damage, but this is so widespread. It’s miles and miles and miles – dozens of miles down the river it’s like this.”
Schenk added, “I spoke with a couple people on Saturday [July 5] and they told me they were in their house and they got woken up in the middle of the night floating down the river in their house.
“I was heartbroken for them and kind of like I am right now for everyone else. It’s a lot to process honestly.
“You can tell it’s hard on everyone, especially a lot of the first responders. It’s a hard situation when you’re having to look for people that more than likely aren’t with us anymore.
“It makes it even harder especially being a lot of kids here.”
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Since the catastrophe, the debate around those in Central Texas has been the lack of a flood warning system, one that could alert residents when a flash flood is imminent.
For years, county officials understood the dangers residents faced from rapidly rising waters.
However, the funds for the proposed flood warning system, which was priced at around $1 million, were never approved by the Texas Division of Emergency Management, according to NPR.
Gross, the code enforcement manager in Ingram, said the warning system could have gave residents a chance to evacuate the area.
“My understanding is it’s been said that they are going to put on in before next summer. So, I’m going to hold their feet to the fire,” he told The U.S. Sun.
“I don’t think it would have prevented all the death by any means, but it would have given people a chance.”
Schenk, the Texas-based storm chaser, also said an emergency alert system would’ve made the warning more real for people in the area.
“If the sirens go off, it’s kind of like tornado sirens. It’s just to let people know, okay, you need to get out of here get inside,” Schenk said.
“You’ll see a lot because I’ve noticed when people hear tornado sirens it makes the situation more real for them.
“If you get your tornado warning on your phone, that happens a lot, and people don’t know what to do.
“But when you have the sirens going off you can tell people are more open to the warning. With flood warnings it’ll basically tell people, hey, water is coming you need to move to higher ground.”
Gut-wrenching stories from the Texas floods
- Glen Juenke, a security guard at Camp Mystic, the all-girls campsite where 27 campers and counselors died, described having to throw girls on top of floating mattresses to save them from drowning.
- “Each of those sweet girls [were] cold, wet, and frightened, but they were also incredibly brave,” he told CNN. “They trusted me, and we leaned on each other through a long, harrowing night together inside their cabin.”
- Julian Ryan, a 27-year-old father-of-two, died after suffering a horrific gash to his arm while trying to save his family.
- Ryan, a restaurant dishwasher, was asleep in his trailer home alongside his mother Marilyn, fiancée Christinia and 6-year-old and 13-month-old children when the floods hit.
- “It just started pouring in, and we had to fight the door to get it closed to make sure not too much got in,” Christinia told The New York Times.
- Christinia said her fiancé punched through a glass to save them, but the broken edges almost cut his arm clean off.
- One of the last things Ryan told his family was, “I’m sorry, I’m not going to make it. I love y’all.”
- Piers and Ruffin Boyett, two brave young brothers, were asleep in a cabin at Camp La Junta on the bank of the Guadalupe River when it was hit by a wall of water at 4am on July 4.
- The young boys knew instantly that they had to swim to safety, “The flood started getting bigger,: Piers told ABC affiliate KSAT-TV.
- “We had bunk beds in our cabins and [the water] was going up to the top bunk and we had no choice – and we had to swim out of our cabin.”
- “I had a first-hand view of the flood,” Ruffin, the elder of the two, said. “The cabins were flooding and the walls, they broke down.
- “All of the campers in those cabins had to go up on the rafters and wait there until they could swim out.”
