Clinging to trees, huddling on rooftops: Harrowing stories of survival in Texas floods

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6 days ago

Some clung to trees. Others floated on mattresses. Many clambered onto rooftops.
Survivors of the flooding in central Texas are beginning to share their harrowing experiences of escaping the deadly waters. With little warning from forecasters, some residents said they were alerted to the danger by panicked screaming and the sounds of the storm in the early morning hours of the holiday weekend.
Rescue teams have scoured the area for signs of life and saved hundreds of people, pulling them into boats and helicopters. But many in hard-hit areas like Hunt, Texas, said they tried to save themselves.
The survivors told their stories to USA TODAY.
Before the sun rose on July 4, Taylor Bergmann awoke of the sound of his mother, Erin Burgess, screaming "We're flooding. We're flooding!"
Water was coming in through the front door of their home in Hunt, located about 80 miles northwest of San Antonio. Bergmann, 19, could hear the glass back doors starting to crack under pressure.
"After they broke, I mean, it was a matter of seconds, and there was five and a half feet of water in our house," said Bergmann, who works at a water park.
They swam into the backyard where the fast-moving current swept away Burgess' boyfriend, Matt, and their dog Stella, Bergmann said. The mother and son tried to climb to their roof, but Burgess, who is recovering from facial surgery, couldn't make it.
The pair wrapped themselves around a tree, with Burgess, a nurse, standing on her toes to keep her chin above water and Bergmann's six-foot frame shielding her from vehicles floating by. Bergmann said they stayed there for more than a hour until the water receded and they could take refuge at a neighbor's house.
Eventually, they reunited with Burgess' boyfriend, Stella and another lucky survivor: their cat, Kiki, who rode out the flood on top of a mattress. Though they were able to save some of their belongings, the flood left their home a wreck, Bergmann said.
"We're never living here again," he told USA TODAY. "We're selling the property, and we're moving very far away from running water."
Maria Tapia, 64, awoke in the early morning of July 4 to the sharp cracking of thunder and what sounded like little rocks hitting her bedroom window.
Then, she heard sounds of water from the nearby Guadalupe River rushing past. As Tapia, who manages the property, got up to inspect the noise, her ankle submerged in half a foot of water.
The cabin they have called home in Hunt was built about 300 feet from the riverbed. Now, it was engulfed by the river itself.
Tapia quickly jostled her husband, Felipe Tapia, 63, awake from a dead sleep and told him they needed to evacuate immediately. By the time the couple trudged to the living room, less than 10 minutes later, the water had risen to their knees.
For minutes, they pushed against the front door, but it wouldn't open because of the pressure from the water. Finally, it budged. The couple furiously kicked through the screen door and plunged into the water outside, hoping to swim to their neighbor's house on higher ground.
As she navigated the waters in the pitch black, Tapia said she heard the house's glass windows "popping" and shattering.
"It was the worst night of my life," Tapia said. "It was a nightmare."
Before the flood, she said life in Hunt was "paradise." She and her husband planted flowers and grass outside by the river and found a community of friends who also managed properties in the area.
Now, she says, the town is "no more."
"It is − how do you say − a ghost town," Tapia said.
The house they fled is still mostly standing, but it's badly damaged from the storm. The truck the couple recently purchased as a "splurge" washed up down the hill and filled with debris. Others in the area fared worse – several of Tapia's friends are still missing, and she said some loved ones were found dead.
Christian Fell was planning to spend his July 4 eating catfish and shooting off fireworks at his grandparents' home in Hunt.
Instead, he fought for his life.
Fell, 25, was awoken by a crack of thunder around 3 a.m. He could hear noise inside the house, too. He got up, thinking there might be an intruder.
"When I swung my feet over the side of the bed and I stood up, I realized I was standing in water up to my ankle," said Fell, who was alone in the house.
He headed for the kitchen door. But when he opened it, more water poured into the home. He said he made frantic phone calls to his family and 911, but he kept getting disconnected.
As the water rose to his waist, he went back to the bedroom and desperately tried to climb onto the floating furniture. "I was pretty, pretty scared," he said.
"That's kinda when I realized they can't do anything to get me out, and I had to do something to keep myself alive," he recalled.
The bedroom door wouldn't budge, so Fell swam through a broken window. Once outside, he clamored onto a meter box, where he stood on the balls of his feet for the next three hours.
From his perch, Fell said he could hear the sound of roaring water and houses being ripped off their foundations. It was pitch black outside, but occasionally a flash of lightning or a car floating by with its hazard lights on would illuminate the darkness.
"The transformers blew up at one point, and it was like the sun came out and I could see clear as day," he said of the electrical equipment around him. "I just saw like all this debris and stuff getting carried away."
Eventually, Fell spotted police walking through the street with a flashlight and decided it was safe to climb down. Though Fell was spared, the house was "destroyed," especially the wooden deck where his family used to gather to eat their Thanksgiving meal.
"The whole house pretty much acted like a dam for me and blocked all the debris," he said. "It was pretty, pretty lucky that it did that because all that would have come crashing down on me."
Addison Martin, 17, never prayed harder in her life.
The high schooler was tumbling helplessly down the Guadalupe River, which had turned into a raging avalanche of water. She struggled to stay afloat, pummeled by debris and tree limbs.
Cars and trailers floated nearby. But she had lost sight of her family.
It had only been hours since their RV pulled into the riverside campground in Ingram, Texas, on July 3 after a nearly four-hour drive from Odessa, where she recently finished her junior year of high school.
She joined her father and stepmother, Bobby and Amanda Martin, two brothers including Bailey Martin, a young Odessa police officer who had brought his girlfriend. They had planned a relaxing holiday weekend on the river.
That night, she had trouble falling to sleep amid booming thunder and rain. Around 4 a.m., her brother woke the family up. Flooding that started slow was quickly accelerating.
"I was just grabbing everything I could. I put on my shoes, I got my bag, my phone. And then my dad opened the camper door," she recalled, seeing the rising water.
"We need to get into the car," she recalled her stepmother saying.
"The car is gone," her father replied.
Calls to 911 told them help was on the way, but first responders were swamped.
As the water rose, they decided to climb a tree that sat between a camping spot that hung over an adjacent trailer. Addison and several family members stood on top.
Then it started to shift.
She saw her stepmother fall and tried to pull her up. She heard someone yelling for air. Soon she was in the water, fighting currents and limbs that briefly held her under. Her family members drifted out of sight.
"I remember just thinking, I don't want to die," she said.
She finally grabbed onto a branch and "held on for my life" for hours. Trees were falling into the water. She asked God to keep her tree up: "I've never prayed so much in my life."
Daylight finally broke, the tree still standing. By roughly 8 a.m., she yelled to first responders who came with a boat. She and her brother were reunited at a rescue center.
But later came the devastating news. Her father and stepmother had not survived.
"They sat us down, me and my brother, to tell us that they were gone," she said.
She learned that another brother, Bailey Martin, and his girlfriend were still missing. John Keith Martin, Bobby Martin's father, confirmed to USA TODAY that authorities had identified the bodies of the Odessa couple.
Addison, speaking from her biological mother's home in Lubbock, Texas, said she's not sure what's next. She is awaiting word on those still missing. Funerals will be coming. Friends and family have started a GoFundMe to help with expenses.
The sun was shining when Riata Schoepf, 19, arrived at the River Inn Resort & Conference Center for an annual trip with the family of her boyfriend, Ephraim Fry, on July 3.
But by the next morning, one of the 33 people in their group was banging on the door telling them a flood was coming.
Schoepf, a student, got in the car, but quickly learned the only ways out of Hunt were closed. With traffic at a standstill and debris crashing into them, they decided to ditch the car and wade through knee-deep water.
"I lose my shoes, lose everything," she said. "Like we're just walking barefoot in this really, really disgusting water."
By the time they made it back to the inn, the water was up to Schoepf's chest. The only way out was up, so the owner of the inn used bedsheets to pull them onto the roof.
Schoepf estimated they managed to pull about 50 people to safety, including the entire group on Fry's family trip. "As we're pulling all these people up, you just see, like, cars flying, you see dumpsters flying down the road, trees like just slamming into everything," she said.
Schoepf watched the flood rage and helicopters pluck people from the water until the flooding subsided a few hours later. Once the bridges were cleared, rescue workers loaded Schoepf and her loved ones into charter buses headed for a shelter.
As she saw the decimated homes and people's belongings strewn about, the gravity of her near-death experience hit her.
"It felt like literally the longest and quietest drive I've ever been on because everybody's just looking at the damage that it's done," she said. "And it's not even like it was a flood. It was like something out of this world."
By 3 a.m. on July 5, Schoepf finally made it back home to Austin. She said she still hasn't fully processed the terrifying experience.
"More of me feels guilty knowing that so many other people are in a worse situation," she said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Texas floods: Survivors describe clinging to trees, climbing buildings