Texas dad reveals truly horrific discovery he made while calling out missing daughter's name after floods

Daily Mail​

7 days ago

A Texas father has spoken about the harrowing moment he discovered a little boy's dead body as he searched for his own daughter in the aftermath of the horrific floods.
Ty Badon was scouring the epicenter of the carnage in the rural town of Hunt over the weekend when he stumbled across the boy, who is one of at least 80 victims.
'My son and I were walking, and what I thought was a mannequin... it was a little boy, about eight or 10 years old, and he was dead,' Badon told CNN.
The anguished father said he was searching for his 21-year-old daughter, Joyce Catherine, and his voice broke at the end of the interview as he asked for prayers.
Badon said the last time anyone had contact with his daughter was on July 4, when the floods hit, as she spoke on the phone along with three of her friends.
The group of four were staying in a cabin owned by another parent in the picturesque community, which sits around 120 miles west of Austin, Texas.
Badon, a Beaumont resident, said his daughter told the owner of the cabin that two of the group had been washed away while she was on the phone.
'A few seconds later, the phone went dead, and that's all we know,' Badon said.
The group of four were staying in a cabin owned by another parent in the picturesque community of Hunt (pictured after the flood), which sits around 120 miles west of Austin, Texas
'We presume that she got washed away as well. If you go back to where the house is, it's not a good sight.'
Badon said the house the group were staying in is 'no longer there'. 'We pray that all four of them are still alive. They're all missing,' he said.
His daughter is among dozens of people who are still missing, including 27 children, after the Guadalupe River rose more than 26 feet in just 45 minutes during the early hours of July 4, sending a wall of water over several communities in Kerr County.
Governor Greg Abbott said Sunday that there were 41 people confirmed to be unaccounted for across the state and more could be missing.
Hundreds of young girls at Camp Mystic, Christian summer camp on the banks of the river, and many people were on vacation in the rural area for the July Fourth weekend.
Pictured: A volunteer searches for survivors in a home that was lifted off its foundation and slammed into a tree during the devastating floods of the Guadalupe River in Kerrville
Residents have started questioning why officials did not warn them about the floods until 1.18pm on July 3 - the day they began - and framed them as only 'moderate' storms.
The National Weather Service escalated the alert to a flash flood warning at 1am Friday, followed by a more serious Flash Flood Emergency by 4.30am.
But by this point, water was already pouring into families' homes.
Many Texans have blamed the slow updates as part of the reason the floods have been so deadly.
The National Weather Service fired around 600 people in recent months as part of Donald Trump's sweeping cuts to federal services.
It had recently begun the process of hiring 100 new employees.
Trump has also proposed cuts to FEMA and NOAA, federal agencies which conduct climate research and help prepare states for natural disasters.
The Texas Hill Country in the central part of the state is naturally prone to flash flooding due to the dry dirt-packed areas where the soil lets rain skid along the surface of the landscape instead of soaking it up.
Friday's flash floods started with a particularly bad storm that dropped most of its 12 inches of rain in the dark early morning hours.
Survivors have described the floods as a 'pitch black wall of death' and said they received no emergency warnings.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, who lives along the Guadalupe River, said Saturday that 'nobody saw this coming.'
Various officials have referred to it as a '100-year-flood,' meaning that the water levels were highly unlikely based on the historical record.
Though it's hard to connect specific storms to a warming planet so soon after they occur, meteorologists say that a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and allow severe storms to dump even more rain.