EXCLUSIVE Texas flood survivors search for the missing and sift through ruins as they ask why there were no warnings
T he tragedy has claimed at least 89 lives, while 41 people are still missing including 10 young girls from a Christian summer camp.
Most of the victims were swept away in the early hours of Friday morning after the river rose 23ft in a matter of minutes.
Alerts that should have woken them to the impending danger never arrived, with many in areas with no signal or with alarms that didn't sound.
'There were no warnings on my phone until about eight in the morning which is long after this happened,' said Jamie Flick, 48, who lives in Ingram.
'That's crazy. The best thing I can think of is that they just didn't expect this here, but we have a lot of smaller tributaries that run into the Guadalupe.
'If it rains up that way, you're gonna be hit here, right? We don't know why the warnings weren't here, but they just weren't. It's scary.'
Flick was speaking to the Daily Mail while searching a local trailer park, upended by the floods, for missing pets.
All around are the signs of desolation.
Hidden among loblolly pines that once lined the river banks are the corpses of deer and other wildlife killed in the disaster, rotting in the 84F Texas heat.
The reek of dead fish flipped out of the water adds to the stench which mingles gruesomely with the smell of smoke emanating from the bonfires of tumbled tree branches set by cleanup crews.
Bridges, some caved in, are swarmed with rescue teams accompanied by cadaver dogs hunting desperately for any sign of life among the devastation.
Once an oasis of rural peace, there is quiet no more. Sirens constantly blare as police teams and first responders screech past on Highway 39, the country road that connects Kerrville with Ingram and the tiny town of Hunt where 27 children lost their lives at Camp Mystic.
Stories of near misses and death are everywhere. Flick tells of a friend from the same trailer park who woke in the small hours to find water pouring into her home.
'They got out through a back window,' Flick said. 'She was able to get out with her dog and her cat, they got stuck in a tree, her with her cat on her head.
'Her dog was on a harness, but she let him go at some point for whatever reason and couldn't get him back. Eventually a neighbor saved her and the cat.'
Bambi Harrell, 62, spent Sunday helping friends pick up the shattered pieces of their lives, told Daily Mail she had never witnessed disaster of this scale in her 25 years in the area
She added: 'They keep downplaying it, but I've never seen anything like this. They keep saying that 30 or 50 years ago, we had something like this.
'These trees are hundreds of years old, and they're uprooted and they're down.
'We've always had these huge trees, and the huge trees are gone now. So, it's nothing that's ever seen here before.'
Flick is not alone in her assessment of the devastation wrought by the floods.
Bambi Harrell, 62, who spent Sunday helping friends pick up the shattered pieces of their lives, said: 'I've lived here 25 years and I've seen a lot of flash flooding but nothing like this.
'We have some amazing first responders here that are going above and beyond.'
She added: 'I thought I was prepared for this, but I was not. I've never seen anything like this. It's devastating.'
Driving through Kerrville and the neighboring towns of Ingram and Center Point, the scale of the devastation quickly becomes clear.
A road bridge across the river was partially caved in, while huge loblollies lie snapped in half like discarded toothpicks.
Crushed cars are mangled on the Guadalupe's banks while upturned boats were scattered around – ripped from their moorings by the sheer force of the current.
Elsewhere, homes are ripped up, including in River's Edge – a small leafy row of trailer homes just a few feet from the Guadalupe in Ingram.
It was there that dad-of-two Julian Ryan, 27, died a hero after punching through a window so his family could escape – at the cost of almost severing his arm.
Speaking to CBS affiliate KHOU in the aftermath, his devastated widow Christine Wilson said: 'It severed his artery in his arm and almost cut it clean off.'
Julian Ryan, 27, is being hailed a hero after he used his final moments to save his family from the fast-moving waters. He died after punching through a window of their trailer home and severing his artery
Inside Ryan's trailer, flood marks almost reached the ceiling while the family's furniture was tossed around like toys by the water
Heartbreakingly, despite repeated 911 calls, Ryan could not be saved – telling his family, 'I'm sorry, I'm not going to make it. I love y'all.'
Daily Mail photos of the trailer home show the catastrophic damage it suffered, with flood marks almost reaching the ceiling while the family's furniture was tossed around like toys.
Mud is splattered up the inside walls while one side of the property was cracked and bent, with bits of the corrugated iron exterior ripped off.
Other trailers in the neighborhood had been shifted off their foundations – with some landing three streets away.
'It's just total devastation,' said neighbor Ray Lackey.
Like Ryan's, his trailer home was wrecked in the flood and is now filled with mud that has destroyed most of his possessions – including irreplaceable photographs of his late father and sister.
'There are families that lost their lives, people who were killed that I know. It's hard. I lost everything and everybody here – and I mean everybody here – lost everything.'
Lackey, a carpenter, was out of town when the flood hit but, with no insurance, he now faces an uphill battle to get his life back on track.
'Hopefully somebody will help us out somehow. I wish I would have had insurance, really, right?' he said.
'I never would have thought anything like this would have happened. The river has never come up. That's why I don't, and I've lived here for a good amount of time.'
On nearby streets, houses still stood but were packed with smelly river mud while another property – which had been named Paradise by its distraught owner – was playing host to a phalanx of police vehicles.
Meanwhile, the usually serene TX-39 highway that cuts through town had been turned into a snarl of cop cars and big rigs hauling specialist gear, such as air boats and cherry pickers equipped with tracks.
'Before this, this was just a beautiful, peaceful, lovely place,' said Lackey. 'It was very quiet. Nobody messed with nobody.
'Everybody helped out around here. And now everybody is kind of coming together. It helps having people like them around and now they're coming out to help.'
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