
How searchers are agonizingly scouring for Texas flood victims, including children – and absorbing an emotional toll
The intense flurry of search activity at what was once an RV park in Kerr County, Texas, paused for a moment Wednesday morning when the body of an infant was pulled from the debris.
'You know, all of this was moving faster than it was just a minute ago. You catch the smell. You mark a dog, you have a mark and the place goes quiet,' said Joe Rigelsky, a founder of Upstream International, a Christian nonprofit involved in the grim task of searching for the scores of people missing from devastating floods that struck Texas Hill Country nearly a week ago and killed more than 100 people.
The cadaver dogs detect the scent of bodies, give a 'positive mark' to their handlers and the searchers start digging into the ravaged landscape. Power saws whirred as Rigelsky spoke to CNN. Nearby, searchers on their knees dug with their hands through muddy soil and rubble. The smell of decay wafted through the air. Among the dead, Rigelsky said, are livestock and other animals that also were carried away by the fast-moving waters.
When searchers get a mark, they'll use 'equipment to hopefully clear some of the heavier debris and keep them hand poking and digging,' Rigelsky said.
The scene plays out over and over along piles of debris stretching for miles, largely along the Guadalupe River, which severely flooded early Friday and winds through 40 miles of Kerr County, where the toll is the worst: nearly 100 deaths there alone, including 36 children. The debris stretches several more miles downriver in nearby Kendall County, where some bodies also have been found.
On Tuesday evening, Rigelsky said, there were two marks from a dog nearby. Searchers dug up a truck. And while the dog kept marking the vehicle, no body was found. The next day was different.
'This morning … they ended up taking an infant out of this area,' he said.
'Last night going home to my wife, it was the discouragement of knowing that you had a mark but didn't find anything,' he said. 'So going to bed … knowing that we still had work to be done here, yeah, that's heavy.'
More than a summer's worth of rain had fallen in the area overnight into Independence Day, swelling part of the Guadalupe River from about 3 feet to 30 feet in just 45 minutes and transforming the beloved waterway into a killer. The flooding laid waste to communities across Kerr and Kendall counties, where neighborhoods and RV parks, as well as the 18 or so youth camps attended by thousands of kids each summer, were swept away in its fury.
The state's deadliest freshwater flooding in more than a century quickly killed numerous people – including locals celebrating Independence Day, child campers and camp leaders – while destroying homes, businesses and cabins.
A captain with the Virginia Beach Water Rescue Team, whose crews are assisting in Texas, said it will likely take 'days, if not weeks,' to thoroughly search along the Guadalupe River.
'We have a long, long way to go to really thoroughly search this area,' Capt. Max McQuarrie said Tuesday, noting that crews will be looking at 60 miles of river.
At least 150 people were reported missing in Kerr County alone, where the river begins.
Crews were contending with treacherous terrain, downed trees, mounds of debris and the searing Texas heat, McQuarrie said.
'It's going to be a slow, methodical process … to really provide the answers that everyone's looking for,' he said.
Many people died trapped in cabins along the river. Others presumably drowned or died in their cars or RVs, which now lay overturned, smashed and piled together at various locations. Accounting for people camping in RVs and calculating the number of RVs in the area at the time have been particularly challenging, officials said.
And debris piles, grimly, may contain more than wood and mud and belongings – a point that authorities have had to stress to the public.
Kerrville police Sgt. Jonathan Lamb on Wednesday urged residents to not use heavy equipment on 'debris piles until they've been checked by a search party because it's possible there are victims in that debris pile.' Officials also urged people to avoid burning debris.
As local authorities fended off questions about their preparation and early response to the disaster, they sought to focus on the efforts of first responders who managed to safely rescue people from vehicles and homes. 'I know that this tragedy, as horrific as it is, could have been so much worse,' Lamb told reporters.
'It's surreal, when you see the raw power of what this water did, and it is emotionally taxing on them, and they will push themselves to the point of exhaustion, trying to find and bring these people's loved ones home,' Amanda Nixon, a disaster trauma specialist, said of search personnel on the scene. 'I try to just let them be human in the moment and feel what they need to feel, and let them know that's OK.'
Josh Gill, incident coordinator for the United Cajun Navy, called the magnitude of the devastation 'unbelievable – one of the worst that I've ever seen.'
'The hardest part is working through the emotions. We know that there's children missing and there's families missing — trying to work through the emotions,' Gill told CNN. 'We want to hit every treetop, every rubble pile and find as many people as we possibly can, and we still hope, every morning, and we pray that we're going to find survivors.'
United Cajun Navy chaplain Tony Dickey's voice cracked as he recalled the strain of the search effort.
'You take the first responders, the search and rescue guys that are out here on the river, they're taking an extreme, hard, traumatic, emotional hit,' he told CNN Wednesday.
'If you were one of them going through a debris pile, and you pull that debris back, and there lays one of these precious children, that image is there. But they're willing to take that emotional toll to bring that loved one home to that family.'
A small army of searchers from across the US and even Mexico continued to work the perilous terrain on Thursday – aided by helicopters, drones and boats, as well as dogs and mules.
'You talk to any of those guys on those ground teams and they're tell you they're not going home until they find everybody,' said Mike Toberer, president and CEO of Mission Mules, a Christian nonprofit that provides disaster relief. The mules help searchers traverse the difficult terrain, which includes toppled trees and overturned vehicles.
In Kerr County, Rigelsky, who founded the Texas nonprofit with his wife of 23 years, Sami, said: 'Every day that there's a missing person, that's all hands on deck.'
CNN's Lauren Mascarenhas, Rebekah Reiss, Chris Boyette, Zoe Sottile, Sarah Dewberry, Alisha Ebrahimji, Ashley Killough and Michelle Krupa contributed to this report.
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New York Post
3 hours ago
- New York Post
Locals buy ‘haunted' Venice island known for horrific experiments in plan to ban tourists
A group of more than 4,500 residents of Venice chipped in to buy a 'haunted' island that once housed an asylum and a hospital for quarantined plague victims — to keep tourists away. The local investors are now due to take over the 18.5-acre island of Poveglia on Aug. 1 with a 99-year lease that will turn it into an urban park for Venetians that is strictly off limits to foreigners visiting the historic city, according to a report by CNN. The spooky island sits on the southern end of the Venice lagoon. Advertisement 5 Poveglia island was once a Roman military outpost, and later housed an asylum and a hospital for plague victims. Getty Images 5 Once home to controversial experiments on the mentally ill, Venice's Poveglia Island is now believed to be haunted. Getty Images 'It wasn't just outrage, it was psychologically traumatic to realize that the city could be broken up and sold to the highest bidder, without a starting price, without even a plan,' Patrizia Veclani, who formed the group Poveglia per Tutti, or 'Poveglia for Everyone,' told the outlet. Advertisement 'It's as if Rome were to decide to sell the Trevi Fountain,' Veclani said. 'The island would never have been as popular as other places, but keeping this small space just for Venetians is a victory.' Poveglia's haunted history dates back to 421 AD, when it served as a Roman military base. It was later a farming and fishing community before it was used to house victims of the bubonic plague when it broke out in the 18th Century, the report said. 5 Over the years Poveglia was also a farming and fishing community before it became a hospital and asylum. De Agostini via Getty Images 5 A group of 4,500 Venetians chipped in to buy the island to keep it away from private developers and tourists. Getty Images Advertisement At least 160,000 plague victims are believed to be buried there. In the 19th Century, the island was converted into an asylum for the mentally ill — and experimental treatments and abusive conditions reportedly ran rampant, the outlet said. Poveglia has been uninhabited since the asylum shut down in 1968, and today it is heavily overgrown with brush and woods with a large rabbit population surrounding 15 abandoned hospital buildings. Ghost hunters have since dubbed the island haunted, and it was featured in TV's 'Ghost Adventures.' Advertisement However, the island was put up for auction in 2014, and recent rumors suggested a private developer would end up buying it and adding yet another tourist attraction in a city weary of tourists. 5 Poveglia's new owners said they will turn the haunted island into an urban park exclusively for Venetians. Getty Images Alarmed, Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro organized a group to buy the island for $600,000, but their effort failed to get approval from the state and Poveglia's fate remained in limbo. However, Veclani's group banded together and landed the lease for $539,000. 'The island was made famous by foreigners who were looking for something to exploit,' Massimo Pera, a member of the group, told CNN. 'The memories of the island are steeped in pain, but we will transform it into a place of joy.'


Los Angeles Times
10 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Jim Crow meets ICE at ‘Alligator Alcatraz'
A few years ago I came across a profoundly unnerving historical photo: A lineup of terrified, naked Black babies cowered over the title 'Alligator Bait.' As it turned out, the idea of Black babies being used as alligator bait was a beloved trope dating back to the antebellum South, though it didn't really take off until after the Civil War. The image I saw was created in 1897, just one year after Plessy vs. Ferguson established 'separate but equal' as the foundational doublespeak of segregation. With formerly enslaved people striking out and settling their own homesteads, the prevailing stereotypes deployed to justify violence against Black people were forced to evolve. We were no longer simple and primitive, in desperate need of the civilizing stewardship of white Christian slave owners. After emancipation, we became dangerous, lazy and worthless. Worth less, in fact, than the chickens more commonly used to bait alligators. White Floridians in particular so fell in love with the concept of alligators hungry for Black babies that it birthed an entire industry. Visitors to the Sunshine State could purchase souvenir postcards featuring illustrations of googly-eyed alligators chasing crying Black children. There was a popular brand of licorice called 'Little African,' with packaging that featured a cartoon alligator tugging playfully at a Black infant's rag diaper. The tagline read: 'A Dainty Morsel.' Anglers could buy fishing lures molded in the shape of a Black baby protruding from an alligator's mouth. You get the idea. When I first learned of all this, naturally, I was unmoored. I was also surprised that I'd never heard of the alligator bait slur. Why doesn't it sit alongside the minstrel, the mammy and the golliwog in our cultural memory of racist archetypes? Did it cross some unspoken line with the vulgarity of its violence? Perhaps this particular dog whistle was a tad too audible? Or was it the plausible deniability? Did people (including historians) wave it away because babies were never 'really' used as alligator bait? It's true that beyond the cultural ephemera — which includes songs (such as the ragtime tune 'Mammy's Little Alligator Bait') and mechanical alligator toys that swallow Black babies whole, over and over again — there are apparently no surviving records of Black babies sacrificed in this way. No autopsy reports, no court records proving that anyone was apprehended and convicted of said crime. But of course, why would there be? The thing I found so unnerving about the alligator bait phenomenon wasn't its literal veracity. There's no question human beings are capable of that and far worse. Without a doubt, 'civilized' people could find satisfaction — or comfort, or justice, or opportunity — in the violent slaughter of babies. Donald Trump's recently posted AI clip 'Trump Gaza,' which suggests the real world annihilation of Palestinians will give way to luxury beachfront resorts, is a shining example. The thing that haunted me about alligator bait was the glee with which the idea was embraced. It was funny. Cute. Harmless. Can't you take a joke? Now here we are, 100 years after 'Mammy's Little Alligator Bait,' and the bigots are once again using cartoon alligators to meme-ify racial violence, this time against immigrants. Just like the title 'Alligator Bait,' the Florida detention center name 'Alligator Alcatraz' serves multiple ends: It provokes sadistic yuks. It mocks. It threatens. But most crucially, it dehumanizes. 'Alligator Bait' suggests that Black people are worthless. By evoking the country's most infamous prison, 'Alligator Alcatraz' frames the conversation as one about keeping Americans safe. It suggests the people imprisoned there are not vulnerable and defenseless men and women; anyone sent to 'Alligator Alcatraz' must be a criminal of the worst sort. Unworthy of basic human rights. Fully deserving of every indignity inflicted upon them. 'Alligator Alcatraz' cloaks cruelty in bureaucratic euphemism. It's doublespeak, masking an agenda to galvanize a bloodthirsty base and make state violence sound reasonable, even necessary. It has nothing to do with keeping Americans safe. Oft-cited studies from Stanford, the Libertarian Cato Institute, the New York Times and others have shown conclusively that immigrants, those here legally and illegally, are significantly less likely to commit violent crimes than their U.S.-born neighbors. If those behind 'Alligator Alcatraz' cared at all about keeping Americans safe, they wouldn't have just pushed a budget bill that obliterates our access to healthcare, environmental protection and food safety. If they actually cherished the rule of law, they would not deny immigrants their constitutionally guaranteed right to due process. If they were truly concerned about crime, there wouldn't be a felon in the White House. As souvenir shops and Etsy stores flood with 'Alligator Alcatraz' merch, it's worth noting that none of it is played for horror. Like the cutesy alligator bait merchandise before it, these aren't monster-movie creatures with blazing eyes and razor-sharp, blood-dripping teeth. The 'Alligator Alcatraz' storefront is cartoon gators slyly winking at us from under red baseball caps: It's just a joke, and you're in on it. And it's exactly this cheeky, palatable, available-in-child-sizes commodification that exposes the true horror for those it targets: There will be no empathy, no change of heart, no seeing of the light. Dear immigrants of America: Your pain is our amusement. The thing I keep wondering is, would this cheekiness even be possible if everyone knew the alligator bait history, the nastiness of which was buried so deep that 'Gator bait' chants echoed through the University of Florida stadium until 2020? Would they still chuckle if they saw the century-old postcards circulated by people who 'just didn't know any better'? My cynical side says: Yeah, probably. But my strategic side reminds me: If history truly didn't matter, it wouldn't be continuously minimized, rewritten, whitewashed. There's truth in the old idiom: Knowledge is power. Anyone trying to keep knowledge from you, whether by banning books, gutting classrooms, denying identities or burying facts, is only trying to disempower you. That's why history, as painful as it often is, matters. Remembering the horror of alligator bait isn't about dwelling on the grotesque. It's about recognizing how cruelty gets coded into culture. 'Alligator Alcatraz' is proof that alligator bait never went away. It didn't evolve or get slicker. It's the same old, tired cruelty, rebranded and aimed at a new target. The goal is exactly the same: to manufacture consent for suffering and ensure the most vulnerable among us know where they stand — as props, as bait, as punchlines. And no joke is more vulgar than one mocking the pain of your neighbors, whether they were born in this country or not. Ezra Claytan Daniels is a screenwriter and graphic novelist whose upcoming horror graphic novel, 'Mama Came Callin',' confronts the legacy of the alligator bait trope.


Buzz Feed
19 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
I Was Raised In Purity Culture. Then I Began Wearing A Secret Purchase Under My Clothes.
I met my husband in college, and we dated for five years prior to our wedding. I brought a whole host of fear-based ideas about sexuality to our marriage. Due to purity culture, which primarily targeted girls in the 1990s with a message that their sexual purity was their most prized asset, I could not help but believe a crown of stars awaited me if I stayed a virgin, possibly until death. In my all-girl Catholic high school theology class, we had learned virginity was a gift. We were told to imagine our sexual purity as a beautifully wrapped present. If we ever felt pressured to give in to the sexual advances of our male counterparts, we were to consider what it would be like to hand our future spouse a gift with tattered wrapping paper and bedraggled ribbons. As I entered college and wrestled with my faith, the book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, written by a young pastor named Joshua Harris, caused a huge splash in Christian circles. It offered what he called a blueprint for a successful courtship that would lead to marriage and encouraged heterosexual couples to limit physical contact until the male partner was prepared to ask for the female's hand in marriage. Then sex would be blessed by God. Then sex would be safe. Prior to our engagement, I had converted to my soon-to-be husband's faith, and together we attended Bible studies and spent whole weekends with our church community. I gave away my jewelry and dressed modestly. I hoped that God would look fondly on our relationship and that once we were married, all of my worries and fears about sex and sexuality would vanish. However, the problem with a belief system that positions one's sexuality as God-given and God-approved but which can only be shared in a committed heterosexual marriage is that it's entirely transactional. Who am I as a sexual being, irrespective of my future partner(s)? was never a question I was encouraged to ask or explore before my wedding. I was given 'a gift,' I was to keep it wrapped and then I would supposedly enjoy it once I got married. The formula prescribed by purity culture did not deliver the results I expected. Committing to abstinence required me to see sex as a toxic substance outside of marriage, and there was no guidance for shifting that narrative on my wedding night. I went from being a virginal bride to one who had no idea about the mechanics of sex, what my body was capable of, what I desired, what felt good or how to communicate any of this to my partner. Once I was married, I was constantly paranoid that I was not having enough sex and that I was doing it wrong when I was having it. None of this messaging came from my husband. It was simply the byproduct of all the troubling things I'd been taught my entire life. In church circles, I heard about the importance of good wives making themselves available and pleasing to their spouses. I rarely if ever heard the same for husbands. After our first year of marriage, I became pregnant, and then a year later I became pregnant again. In spite of the grace my husband offered me during our sleepless years, my hang-ups over not having enough sex remained and even intensified. When my children were still young, I took a job teaching at a Bible college in Tennessee. I was surprised at how many of my students married while they were still undergrads. Some of them were barely out of high school. I frequently overheard these young women discussing their two bridal showers: one thrown by elders to receive housewares and another thrown by friends to receive lingerie. It was a two-pronged preparation for the bride that said: Here is what you will need for your home and for your husband. But where was the ritual to prepare a young woman who was not getting married ― but who was still a whole person? I wondered. Does she not still need a cast iron pan? Does she still not deserve beautiful undergarments? I tentatively began to look for answers, but most of the books and podcasts I found in the 2010s that spoke to sexuality within monogamy skirted the issue of female desire. I was still hearing sermons about sexual purity as an absolute, and reading blogs by women who endorsed frequent sex as a safeguard against a husband's infidelity. Then an unlikely source helped me to course correct. I read an account of an American expatriate in France who discovered that French women reportedly spent 20% of their income on lingerie. At first I couldn't believe all of these women were forking over so much money on something that most people would never see, but I realized they were doing it for themselves. To please themselves. To feel good about themselves. I started to amass my own wardrobe of lingerie. I still wore the modest suits of a professor, but underneath were the reminders that I was more than a teacher with sensible shoes. In 2018, Joshua Harris denounced I Kissed Dating Goodbye and publicly apologized for the hurt caused by it. The following year, Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber published Shameless, an indictment of the shame-laced ways the church has indoctrinated young people about sexuality. By this point, I was beginning to lose my footing in my own marriage. My husband and I had moved across the country and were navigating new jobs and life with adolescent children. Natural growing pains were surfacing: We were two people who met before our brains were fully developed — before we knew who we truly were. The strains of our life together were pulling us apart. I started to visit social media accounts about lingerie as a way to relieve stress. Learning about the materials, the construction, the history, and the style of the pieces was soothing. I also discovered the women running these accounts, like the French women I'd read about years earlier, wore their lingerie not for a partner but for themselves. They were celebrating their own sexuality. Perhaps this was Victoria's Secret: not that she used a satin chemise to attract but that she kept a ruffle-trimmed slip in her boudoir to remind her of who she was. Seventeen years after we wed, my husband and I met in a courtroom, and, with the stroke of a judge's pen, our relationship was legally dissolved. My marriage was my only significant romantic relationship, and I mourn the familiar rhythms of that life. I am left with countless existential questions about what I do now, what I want... and an expansive wardrobe of lingerie. For the first time in over two decades, I am single. I am not afraid of falling in love again, but I am afraid of abandoning myself to someone else's narrative about who I am. I go on dating apps, sift through pictures of men flexing their muscles and cuddling their dogs, and then I delete the apps. In therapy, I discuss my hang-ups about all of this. 'What is the purpose of dating? For you?' my therapist asks. I do not have a clear answer, but I know those two words, 'for you,' are essential. I am 43 years old and just now beginning to unpack what sex and monogamy mean for me — and not because a pastor or book club defined it for me. I am still a person of deep faith, but I am no longer a member of a church. I am in a season of deconstructing beliefs that have done me far more harm than help. The path forward for me may be paved with rubble, but it is edged with lace and satin. In this new chapter, which I could never have envisioned as a young newlywed, I realize what all these lingerie-loving women I've come across know about intimate apparel: It is a symbol of their superpower. They wear pieces that allow them to simply feel good in their bodies. When we feel good in our bodies, we can talk back to the shame. We can celebrate the marvelous capacity our bodies have to experience desire and pleasure. This is a wondrous thing ― no matter one's size, shape, skin color or creed. Obviously, wearing lingerie is just one of countless ways through which a person can access that freedom, but for me (and many others), it serves as a gentle yet potent reminder of my commitment to seeking the kind of liberation that has eluded me for much too long. Recently I purchased a luxurious royal blue loungewear set. It sits in a gold cardboard box, tied with a matching royal blue ribbon. I have not decided if I will wear the set for a special occasion, like when I find true love again, or simply when I'm having a good hair day. What I do know is that the decision is not one to fear — especially because I am the one making it.