'I need somebody to take me seriously': More 911 calls released from Texas floods

Yahoo

a day ago

When a Gillespie County, Texas, 911 dispatcher answered the phone on the Fourth of July and asked the caller the address of her emergency, the woman on the other end of the line did not respond with the name of a street.
"The Guadalupe River in Kerrville," the caller said instead. "I need someone to take me seriously."
As the Guadalupe River overflowed in Kerr County, calls like this one poured into emergency communications centers in neighboring counties like Kendall and Gillespie, according to dispatch recordings released in response to a request filed by ABC News under the Texas Public Information Act. The flooding led to more than 130 deaths in Central Texas.
MORE: Texas floods: 911 audio from county near hard-hit Kerrville shows confusion and distress
"I have two missing people that were swept away in their Airstream at 4:58 this morning," the caller explained to the Gillespie County operator. "However, one phone [of theirs] is still ringing."
The tone of her voice grew more urgent.
"If you could take my information and take the phone number, they might be able to be found," she continued, begging the operator not to redirect her to someone else.
She went down a list of agencies she said she already called but had directed her elsewhere.
"Please do not do this to me," the caller said.
The operator told her that he was transferring her call to Kerr County, since Kerrville is not in Gillespie County.
On another recording, a different dispatcher told a caller that there had not been any reports of Gillespie County flooding yet.
"However, Kerr County is getting bad," the 911 operator said. "I don't know everywhere because their dispatch is, like, beyond swamped."
One man called 911 trying to find out where his daughter, a camper at Camp Mystic in Kerr County, was located. He told a dispatcher that he heard an indirect report that she was airlifted from the river.
"I'm trying to locate her whereabouts so I can meet her immediately," the camper's father said.
Fears of flooding in that part of Texas date back generations.
"I saw a post where they're comparing it to 2002," a dispatcher said in one of the recordings, referring to the floods 23 years ago that killed more than 200 people. "That is very unsettling for me."