How the cataclysmic Texas floods unfolded, minute by minute

Boston Globe

9 hours ago

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'It made like a swirl right around those cabins like a toilet bowl,' said Craig Althaus, who worked at the camp in Texas Hill Country for 25 years.
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At least 78 people died in the floods that swept through Central Texas on Friday - including 28 children - authorities said Sunday, and dozens more remain missing in one of the deadliest freshwater floods in decades. Ten children are still missing from Camp Mystic, the Christian camp on the banks of the river where for nearly a century girls have come to escape the heat of their hometowns: singing praise songs, learning how to fish and ride horseback.
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Sunday that rescue operations and efforts to find the missing were ongoing, even as serious flood conditions threaten again. Abbott said he visited Camp Mystic on Sunday and called the scene 'nothing short of horrific - to see what these young children went through.'
Authorities said they had little hint of the cataclysmic events to come when the National Weather Service issued its first flood watch for the area at 1:18 p.m. Thursday. The areas along the river in Kerr County were not only packed with campers at about 18 summer camps but thousands more celebrating the holiday in tents and cabins, some of which had been in Texas families for generations.
The Weather Service cautioned that 1 to 2 inches of widespread rainfall was likely, with 'the potential for a lower probability but much higher impact flood event overnight.'
But extraordinary conditions were working against them, meteorologists say. Atmospheric conditions sent plumes of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico deep into Texas - an area so prone to flooding that it is called 'Flash Flood Alley'- a system that then stalled and eventually dumped catastrophic levels of rain onto the same area in hours.
The Weather Service said it gave localities enough time to warn residents, but the most dire alerts came in the early hours Friday, with the flash flood warnings blasting from phones at 1:14 a.m. Many locals said those alerts never reached them.
Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice told reporters that he went for a jog along the river between 3:30 a.m. and 4 a.m. Friday and noticed only a light rain. He went home to shower and returned to a park to check conditions. By 5:20 a.m., the river had risen dramatically, surging from 7 to 29 feet within a few hours, authorities say.
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Thomas Rux, 65, said he was awakened by thunder and fire officials with a bullhorn banging on his door, which convinced him to leave his trailer by the river about 4:30 a.m. He grabbed his keys and wallet, and fled to a nearby business on higher ground. From there, he could see the river rise with shocking speed. Eventually his 44-foot-long RV drifted by, carried by the raging waters, lodging between two trees.
His alarm company called to see if someone has broken in. No, he told them, the river had just carried away his home.
Serena Aldrich, an attorney from San Antonio, said in an interview that her two girls, ages 12 and 9, were asleep at Camp Mystic - the beloved summer camp about to celebrate its centenary - when the storm bore down. The older girl, who was bunking in an elevated area they call 'Senior Hill,' was awakened by loud thunder. The younger girl, who was in a different cabin, woke up when water started flooding in.
Groups of girls in their pajamas, some without shoes, were guided by their counselors up the side of a tall hill to a camp area with the pavilion and the famous lighted sign - that can be seen for miles around - that says 'Mystic.' They were eventually rescued from a neighboring camp by helicopter. She said that the family was 'heartbroken' by the experience, but that the young counselors had been heroic.
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Amid the darkness and chaos, Camp Mystic director Richard 'Dick' Eastland was also trying to help evacuate the youngest campers in the Bubble Inn cabin, witnesses said. He and his wife, Tweety, had been directing the camp since 1974, now alongside their sons.
Eastland taught the girls how to bait a hook and fish, said Paige W. Sumner, the director of philanthropy at the local senior center who attended the camp for years.
'He was like a dad to everyone,' Sumner said in an interview.
Whenever one of the campers was injured or there was another emergency, she recalled, Eastland would jump up and quickly buzz to the scene in a golf cart. Eastland was found in a black SUV, along with three girls he had tried to save, and died on the way to the hospital, local authorities said.
Around 5 a.m., Collene Lucas left her job at a convenience store, not thinking much about the rain and wildly rushing river, which sits less than 100 yards from the home she shares with her husband, David.
'We're familiar with that sound,' Lucas, 62, said. When she got news of the flooding, she tried to head home to reach her husband, but was stymied when her truck stalled out in the water. Only when his dogs began raising a ruckus and emergency responders arrived at his door did David step out of bed - into two feet of water.
'I've been here close to 40 years, and I've never seen anything like this,' said David Lucas, 73, gray-bearded and weary. Never had water come close to the house, he said, not until the day it all but swallowed it whole.
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The river would eventually leave miles of devastation in its wake, with pecan, cypress and live oak trees toppled, and houses ripped from their foundations. At Camp Mystic, cots were overturned, swimming towels still on the line covered in muck and stuffies abandoned.
More than 850 people would be saved in the next 36 hours, authorities said. One little girl survived by clinging to a mattress for hours as it floated down the river, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told reporters.
By Sunday, rescue operations continued, with helicopters crisscrossing the cloudy skies above the First Presbyterian Church of Kerrville, and authorities vowed to continue searching until everyone believed lost had been found. Rain threatened and authorities warned ominously of another 'wall of water' headed their way.
Inside the church, the morning light streamed through stained glass windows where the roughly 200 parishioners wrestled with all their community had faced in recent days, and all that lay ahead.
The church had lost one of its beloved members. Jane Ragsdale, the director and co-owner of the nearby ​Heart O' the Hills camp, had died in the flooding. The camp, along the banks of the Guadalupe River, was not in session when the disaster hit. But Ragsdale had been described as the 'heart and soul' of the camp, where she had served since the 1970s, according to the camp website.
Inside her church Sunday morning, the service began with hymns and a long silence. The pastor giving the children's message told the young faces before her: 'It's okay to be angry about what's happened. It's okay to be really scared. It's okay to be terribly sad.'
The Rev. Jasiel Hernandez Garcia said he, too, had struggled to find the right words amid such tragedy.
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'This is not how this weekend was supposed to be,' Garcia said from the pulpit. It was supposed to be a time of celebrations and fireworks, of time with family and making new friends at nearby camps.
'In the blink of an eye, everything changed. The waters came quickly, too quickly. Homes flooded, roads disappeared, and people were swept away,' he said. 'What felt strong was made fragile. What seemed secure was taken away in just a moment.'
Dennis reported from Kerrville and Ingram, Texas, Gowen from Lawrence, Kansas, and Gregg from Washington. Scott Dance, Ben Noll and Matthew Cappucci contributed to this report.