Texas floods victim left harrowing death voicemails for his children as water rushed in behind him: Live updates
Jeff Ramsey, 61, and his wife Tanya, 46, were camping at HTR RV Park in Kerrville with their whippet dog, Chloe, when the Guadalupe River flooded and surged by up to 30 feet above its usual water level on July 4.
The father used his final moments to send a message to his two children, Jake, 24, and Rachel, 23, letting them know he loved them as the waters raged in the background.
More than 160 people are believed to be missing days after a destructive wall of water took the lives of over 100 people.
At least 27 little girls and their counselors from the century-old, all-girls Christian camp tragically died when the 'tsunami wall of water' struck the campsite before daybreak on Friday.
Five campers and one 19-year-old counselor are among at least 173 people still missing in the floodwaters five days on from the tragedy.
Officials in Texas are facing mounting questions about whether they did enough to get people out of harm's way.
Governor Greg Abbott has offered a sassy excuse for why he won't entertain questions about who is 'to blame' for the devastating floods.
Abbott held a press conference on Tuesday to update the public on the devastating death toll, vowing to stop at nothing until 'every person' is accounted for.
But when he was asked who was 'to blame' for the tragedy, Abbott went on the offensive, using a football analogy to warn the reporter that only 'losers' cast blame in a time like this.
It comes as a chilling new flash flood killed at least three people in New Mexico Tuesday night.
Texas flood victim left heartbreaking voicemails for his kids as the waters rushed in
Jeff Ramesy, 61, left devastating voicemails for his children seconds before the raging Texas floodwaters swept him and his wife away.
Ramesy and his wife, Tanya, 46, were camping at HTR RV Park in Kerrville with their whippet dog, Chloe, when the Guadalupe River flooded and surged by up to 30 feet above its usual water level on July 4.
His children, Jake, 24, and Rachel, 23, awoke to find a harrowing message from their father with the sounds of the raging floodwater in the background.
'Once they realized there was nothing they could do, my stepmom was on the phone with her mom while my dad made a call to me and my sister. We were asleep. He left us a message saying he was not going to make it and that he loved us so much, telling us goodbye,' Jake told the New York Post.
'He called me once he realized there was no hope. It was a short voicemail. He just left me a voicemail. He said, "Buddy. I love you so much. It doesn't look like we are going to make it. Tell Rachey I love her."'
Jake noted it was out of character for his dad to sound afraid, and his stepmom was screaming in the background, 'We're dying, we're dying!'
'You never heard this guy panic but we heard panic and fear in his voice,' he said.
Tanya was killed in the flood, but Jeff has not been found as of Wednesday morning, according to the family.
A local animal rescue found their beloved pup and will reunite her with the family.
12:57
Three dead in New Mexico flood
A man, a four-year-old girl and seven-year-old boy were swept away Tuesday night by floodwaters in southern New Mexico.
'Our hearts are broken for the families who have lost their loved ones in this terrible tragedy,' Village of Rudioso Mayor Lynn Crawford said.
'We are united in our sorrow and our commitment to supporting one another as we face this devastating loss together.'
Emergency crews carried out at least 85 swift water rescues in the Ruidoso area, including of people who were trapped in their homes and cars, said Danielle Silva of the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
The water had receded by Tuesday night and search and rescue and swift water rescue teams were scouring the town for the missing people, while public works crews cleared debris from the roadways. Some cars were left stranded in the mud.
12:55
Mom of three Camp Mystic campers shares their story of survival
Lisa Miller's three daughters, 14-year-old Eliza, 12-year-old Genevieve and nine-year-old Birdie, all miraculously survived the deadly flood.
Mom describes daughters' survival at Camp Mystic during Texas floods
At least 27 little girls and their counselors from the century-old, all-girls Christian camp tragically died when the 'tsunami wall of water' struck the campsite before daybreak on Friday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
Have you been a victim of the ‘gen Z stare'? It's got nothing on the gen X look of dread
Have you been the victim of a gen Z stare? Maybe you have but didn't realise, because you didn't know it existed, so let me explain: gen Z, now aged 13 to 28, have apparently adopted a widely deplored stare: blank, expressionless and unnerving. The stare is often deployed in customer service contexts, and many emotions can be read into it, including 'boredom, indifference, superiority, judgment or just sheer silliness', according to Forbes, whose writer described his unease in Starbucks when faced with a 'flat, zombie-like look that was difficult to read'. Hang on, aren't oversensitive snowflakes supposed to be younger people, not journalists my age? Has a generation ever been so maligned as Z? Probably, but I'm mortified by the mutterings about gen Z, when they are so self-evidently at the pointy end of older people's poor past (and present) decision-making. They don't get jobs, homes or a livable planet – but we're getting huffy about their 'rudeness' and 'lack of social skills'? Anything short of blending us into their protein shakes seems fair to me at this point. But I do get it, sort of. Young people have been treating their elders to scornful stares since homo sapiens first gruntingly suggested a 'nice walk' to their offspring, and it's easy to get defensive and lash out. As a 'meme scholar' suggested, crushingly, to NPR: 'Maybe what we're witnessing … is some boredom, especially with who they're interacting with.' That's exactly what I was afraid of. But everyone succumbs to the odd vacant stare and it's not necessarily directed at, or derogatory to, the stare-ee. I'm not qualified to parse gen Z stares (maybe they're thinking about matcha; maybe they're actually mewing?), but I can definitely explain some reasons my own people, gen X (aged between 45 and 60), go starey, slack-mouthed and silent – and why it's almost certainly not about you. We can't hear getting a bit deaf but struggling to accept it, so we're fumbling our way through the world with context clues and inept lip reading. If you say something and we just stare blankly, we're probably trying to decide whether to deploy one of our catch-all non-committal responses ('mmm'; 'right?') or ask you to repeat yourself. Again. We suspect one of our idols is standing behind that Thom Yorke or your kid's design-tech teacher? Winona Ryder or some woman you recognise from wild swimming? We need to know. Something you said triggered a memory of a public information film we saw at primary school.'Building site'; 'railway line'; 'fireworks'; 'electricity substation': there are so many trigger words that summon a horrifying mental kaleidoscope of doom. We've just remembered we were too 'cool' to top up our pension, ha ha ha, oh that realisation hits, mid-conversation, and we need to take a beat to fight the rising tide of panic. We've heard an unusual bird call but it would be rude to use the Merlin app on our that a redstart? Something weird is happening to one of our teeth.A filling coming loose, a tooth crumbling, some kind of searing, definitely expensive, pain? Mortality starts in the mouth. We started thinking about the 19-year-old Reform councillor in Leicestershire who is now responsible for children and family the 22-year-old one in charge of adult social care who previously said 'depression isn't real'. Just an ill-defined, increasingly uneasy sensation that we've forgotten something important meeting. Our passwords. The keys. Your name. You said something we don't get 'slay' and 'mid' and we hoped we weren't 'delulu' to believe we 'understood the assignment'. But you've just come out with an expression so baffling, we are simply unable to deduce any meaning from context. Maybe we are going to 'crash out'? Just give us a silent, sweaty moment. You're watching video on your phone without this one is about you and it's entirely deserved. I use my eyes to try to bore decency into sodcasters; I just wish my eyes were lasers. We're existentially we just lapse into a thousand-yard stare that semaphores: 'Help, reality has become overwhelming; I need to disassociate momentarily.' And who, of any generation, hasn't felt that this year? Perhaps the blank stare is actually proof there's more that unites than divides us. Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
8 hours ago
- The Guardian
One injured after plane in Denver aborts takeoff due to ‘landing gear incident'
One person was injured after a plane in Denver aborted its takeoff and evacuated those on board using its emergency slide, authorities reported. The Federal Aviation Administration said that a 'possible landing gear incident' hit the American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 and the slides were deployed amid signs of a fire underneath the plane. 'All customers and crew deplaned safely, and the aircraft was taken out of service to be inspected by our maintenance team. We thank our team members for their professionalism and apologize to our customers for their experience,' the airline said in a statement. One person taken to the hospital with a minor injury. 'The plane started vibrating and shaking really bad,' 17-year-old passanger Shay Armistead told CNN. 'We started tilting to the left side of the runway, and then we heard the sound of the wind from them lifting up the brakes of the plane and slamming on them really hard.' Denver is the sixth busiest airport in the world and a vital hub in the United States. The incident is the second involving a major airline in the US since Friday, when a Southwest flight took a sudden nosedive to avoid a midair collision shortly after takeoff in Burbank, California.
Telegraph
10 hours ago
- Telegraph
Passengers evacuate Boeing jet after tyres blow out
Passengers were forced to evacuate from a Boeing flight after the plane's tyres blew out on the runway. American Airlines Flight 3023 was preparing to leave Denver International Airport for Miami on Saturday when it 'experienced a mechanical issue' while accelerating before take-off, the airline said. The incident raises further questions over Boeing's safety record following a number of major failures. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement on Sunday that the crew onboard the Boeing 737 Max 8 plane 'reported a possible landing gear incident during departure' at around 2.45pm (9.45pm BST) on Saturday. All 173 passengers and six crew 'de-planed safely' but one passenger sustained a minor injury and was taken to a hospital for evaluation, the airline said. Video shows passengers using the evacuation slide to leave the plane as smoke billows from the fuselage, some carrying small children. Several people can be seen falling onto the tarmac as they land. Mark Tsurkis, 50, a passenger aboard the flight, told ABC News he heard 'a loud boom' as the plane was about to take off. 'I said, 'That's not good',' Tsurkis said, at which point the plane began to slow down, he said, and passengers could see one of the wheels pass by. 'When the plane stopped about 30 seconds to a minute later, somebody said, 'Smoke, fire.' And then a lot of people, of course, started panicking,' Tsurkis said. Shay Armistead, a 17-year-old passenger who was headed to Santiago, Chile, for a ski trip told CNN that Saturday's ordeal was 'kind of traumatising.' As the plane moved down the runway, passengers heard a loud bang and believed the tyre popped, Armistead said. 'The plane started vibrating and shaking really bad. We started tilting to the left side of the runway, and then we heard the sound of the wind from them lifting up the brakes of the plane and slamming on them really hard.' The airline said: 'We thank our team members for their professionalism and apologise to our customers for their experience.' The FAA said it was investigating the incident. Boeing has been heavily criticised in recent years over a string of failures. In June the National Transportation Safety Board blasted Boeing's safety culture and its failure to stop a cabin panel getting sucked out mid-air during a flight in January 2024. The board said the company failed to install four key bolts in a new Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 during production. Sunday's evacuation also comes amid concerns over aviation safety in the United States after a string of recent accidents and near misses. On Friday a Southwest Airlines flight plunged mid-air to avoid colliding with another aircraft while en route to Las Vegas, injuring two flight attendants. In January, a mid-air collision between a commercial aircraft approaching Ronald Reagan Airport near downtown Washington and a military helicopter killed 67 people. In May, US President Donald Trump's administration announced plans to overhaul its 'antiquated' air traffic control system, which suffers from a shortage of controllers in FAA-managed towers. The government has laid off hundreds of FAA employees as part of its plan to slash the federal workforce.
