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Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Digging through sand, mud, debris and silt. Why the search for the missing in Texas may take months
Sixty miles of river. Murky waters, thick mud and seemingly insurmountable piles of debris. Painstaking recovery efforts are still underway for around 100 people missing following the devastating July Fourth flooding along the Guadalupe River in central Texas. Stark images show search teams on their hands and knees sifting through two-story piles of debris from trees turned into sticks. The grim task, using strategies including hand-sifting and specific diving techniques, is expected to drag on for months. 'We have a long, long way to go to really thoroughly search this area,' said Capt. Max McQuarrie of the Virginia Beach Water Rescue Team, whose crew is assisting in Texas. 'It's going to be a slow, methodical process … to really provide the answers that everyone's looking for.' While many families are waiting for those answers, some have already learned their loved ones were among the more than 130 people who died as a result of the floods. 12-hour shifts, with little time off 'More than 1,000 local, state and federal responders – in addition to thousands of volunteers from across the country – continue intensive search operations,' Kerr County Emergency Operations Center Unified Command said Tuesday. Search teams run 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with an hour break for lunch at noon, before heading back into the field, said Joe Rigelsky, a founder of Upstream International, a Christian nonprofit involved in the search. Credentialed search teams are eating 'heavy in protein, good carb-load meals' – prepared by organizations like World Central Kitchen and Mercy Chefs – so they have the energy to do the work, he said. 'Work teams come in shifts, but team leads – I haven't had a day off,' said Rigelsky, who arrived July 4. The process can take an emotional toll, Michael Guyer, a volunteer who joined the search last week, told CNN. 'The burnout is real,' Guyer said. 'For hours you'll be digging through piles of silt, mud, debris and rock. Typically finding nothing in frustration. Then the next hour or day you'll hear that someone in that very spot found bodies, and you think to yourself, 'If only I dug more, if only I had dogs, if only we had more manpower and equipment.'' Equipped with the limited resources of only a shovel and 'our sense of smell,' Guyer said, search conditions can be 'miserable' at times. 'There is so much sand, mud, debris and silt we are digging through that it takes hours to dig with just shovels,' he said. Complicating matters, volunteers were asked to vacate the river area for their safety during inclement weather with the potential for renewed flash flooding earlier this week. The Upper Guadalupe River Authority continues to advise the public to avoid being near or in waterways in Kerr County 'due to debris, fast-moving currents, and poor water quality.' The 'suck pile' and talks of draining a nearby lake Areas to be searched range from nearby lakes to large piles of debris in residents' own front yards. Authorities in Kerrville say they are working on plans to remove water from at least one lake in their search for victims. They are seeing how feasible it would be to drain Nimitz Lake, which is overflowing a dam on the Guadalupe River, Assistant City Manager Michael Hornes said in a special city council meeting Monday. 'Nimitz Lake is saturated, it's overtopping the dam, and it's going to continue as long as the rain continues,' Hornes said, noting murky water and debris are making it difficult for searchers to see. Holmes said city, state and federal officials are working through several plans on how to safely pump water from the lake without causing additional issues upstream due to how saturated the soil is from recent rains. Back on land, many debris piles on private properties can't be reduced by hand and require heavy machinery. Kerrville officials are requiring professional search teams to check the piles before removing them. Officials have also warned residents not to burn debris piles for fear that remains may be trapped underneath. The searches are conducted in small, established search grids. Each section of the grid system is then meticulously documented – how often the section was searched, which assets were used and what the water levels were at the time of the search. McQuarrie's team has been working on a 10-mile section in the heart of Kerrville, which includes debris piles, islands and tributaries. The divisions are lettered from Alpha through Lima; some are smaller, some a little bigger, depending on how challenging the search areas are, McQuarrie told CNN. The Delta search area assigned to his team from Virginia includes four to five bridges, and six or seven low-head dams, each of which run their own challenges, according to McQuarrie, who noted water levels vary from very deep to very shallow. Downed trees, massive piles of rock and debris are found along both sides of the river, forming an entirely different landscape than the green pasture and land that once lined the banks. One section of the search area, where large amounts of rock and sediment are piled up, carried there by the 'absolute force of nature' the Guadalupe swelled to on July 4, has been dubbed the 'suck pile' by search and recovery crews, McQuarrie said. The pile, which varied in height, stretched at least 200 yards, he added. 'We're dealing with areas that have anywhere from six to eight feet of new land,' Rigelsky told CNN. 'We've got areas that weren't islands before.' 'Looking, smelling, listening' Since their arrival a week ago, McQuarrie's team has been combing through their search area 'looking, smelling, listening,' he told CNN. The team starts with a primary search where they pick spots they want to go back over and mark those with cell technology. Then secondary searches are done, followed by targeted searches, which often include canine search teams and heavy equipment, like excavators. 'Debris fields, in the early stages, may not have decomposing matter in them, so dogs might not pick them up. So, you may mark that as unsearchable, and then you come back with whatever equipment can make it searchable,' Rigelsky explained. 'It really has been a heavy dog-oriented search. The humans, the people involved, are only as good as the dogs they're with,' Rigelsky said. Images shared by the Center Point Volunteer Fire Department show a canine team, machine operators and a recovery crew working in unison to carefully search one of the many giant debris piles along the 60-mile stretch 'layer by layer,' the department wrote on social media. 'What we're really focusing on now too, are the divers,' Razor Dobbs with the Center Point Volunteer Fire Department told CNN affiliate WFAA. 'The divers now are being able to go in and really scour underneath the surface, because up on top of the land, it's been combed over … scores of times by human eyes, on foot, and also with the canine units.' Once the solid layer of debris is cleared off the surface of the river, divers gear up and search the bottom and nooks below the surface, the fire department said. 'There is a bit of risk to it, just because of visibility. We don't have any visibility at all, so everything is by feel,' Dale Hammon, an experienced blackwater diver with a group of divers called 300 Justice Road, told CNN affiliate KBMT. For all the teams involved, safety is paramount. 'We're trying to manage two really important things here, making sure we're all safe and getting home – and trying to be as diligent as possible, trying to cover it as best we can, making sure we leave no stone unturned, both literally and figuratively,' McQuarrie explained. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré, who spent years working on disaster recovery operations with the military, including bringing relief to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, told CNN, 'It's hard, tedious work.' 'In reality, we'll be finding remains for months and years to come,' Honoré said, noting remains continued to be found six months after Katrina struck New Orleans. CNN's Ray Sanchez, Ed Lavandera, Ruben Correa, Isabel Rosales and Tori B. Powell contributed to this report. Solve the daily Crossword
CNN
4 days ago
- General
- CNN
Thick mud and huge piles of debris. Why the painstaking search for the missing in the Texas floods may last for months
Sixty miles of river. Murky waters, thick mud and seemingly insurmountable piles of debris. The painstaking recovery efforts continue for around 100 people still missing following the devastating July Fourth flooding along the Guadalupe River in central Texas. 'More than 1,000 local, state and federal responders – in addition to thousands of volunteers from across the country – continue intensive search operations,' Kerr County Emergency Operations Center Unified Command said Tuesday. 'Teams have had boots-on-the-ground from the headwaters of the Guadalupe River to Canyon Lake and back again, focused on the mission of recovering and returning loved ones to their families.' Images of search teams on their hands and knees sifting through two-story piles of debris from trees turned into sticks illustrate the painstaking efforts. The grim effort, using strategies from hand-sifting to sophisticated dives, is expected to drag on for months. While many families are waiting for answers, some have already learned their loved ones were among the more than 130 people who died as a result of the floods. 'We have a long, long way to go to really thoroughly search this area,' said Capt. Max McQuarrie of the Virginia Beach Water Rescue Team, whose crew is assisting in Texas. 'It's going to be a slow, methodical process … to really provide the answers that everyone's looking for.' Search teams run 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with an hour break for lunch at noon, before heading back into the field, said Joe Rigelsky, a founder of Upstream International, a Christian nonprofit involved in the search. Credentialed search teams are eating 'heavy in protein, good carb-load meals' – prepared by organizations like World Central Kitchen and Mercy Chefs – so they have the energy to do the work, he said. 'Work teams come in shifts, but team leads – I haven't had a day off,' said Rigelsky, who arrived July 4. Volunteer Michael Guyer, who joined in the search efforts last week, told CNN the process can take an emotional toll. 'The burnout is real,' Guyer said. 'For hours you'll be digging through piles of silt, mud, debris and rock. Typically finding nothing in frustration. Then the next hour or day you'll hear that someone in that very spot found bodies, and you think to yourself, 'If only I dug more, if only I had dogs, if only we had more manpower and equipment.'' Equipped with the limited resources of only a shovel and 'our sense of smell,' Guyer said, search conditions can be 'miserable' at times. 'There is so much sand, mud, debris and silt we are digging through that it takes hours to dig with just shovels,' he said. Complicating matters, volunteers were asked to vacate the river area for their safety during inclement weather with the potential for renewed flash flooding earlier this week. The Upper Guadalupe River Authority continues to advise the public to avoid being near or in waterways in Kerr County 'due to debris, fast-moving currents, and poor water quality.' Areas to be searched range from nearby lakes to large piles of debris in residents' own front yards. Authorities in Kerrville say they are working on plans to remove water from at least one lake in their search for victims. They are seeing how feasible it would be to drain Nimitz Lake, which is overflowing a dam on the Guadalupe River, Assistant City Manager Michael Hornes said in a special city council meeting Monday. 'Nimitz Lake is saturated, it's overtopping the dam, and it's going to continue as long as the rain continues,' Hornes said, noting murky water and debris are making it difficult for searchers to see. Holmes said city, state and federal officials are working through several plans on how to safely pump water from the lake without causing additional issues upstream due to how saturated the soil is from recent rains. Back on land, many debris piles on private properties can't be reduced by hand and require heavy machinery. Kerrville officials are requiring professional search teams to check the piles before removing them. Officials have also warned residents not to burn debris piles for fear that remains may be trapped underneath. The searches are conducted in small, established search grids. Each section of the grid system is then meticulously documented – how often the section was searched, which assets were used and what the water levels were at the time of the search. McQuarrie's team has been working on a 10-mile section in the heart of Kerrville, which includes debris piles, islands and tributaries. The divisions are lettered from Alpha through Lima; some are smaller, some a little bigger, depending on how challenging the search areas are, McQuarrie told CNN. The Delta search area assigned to his team from Virginia includes four to five bridges, and six or seven low-head dams, each of which run their own challenges, according to McQuarrie, who noted water levels vary from very deep to very shallow. Downed trees, massive piles of rock and debris are found along both sides of the river, forming an entirely different landscape than the green pasture and land that once lined the banks. One section of the search area, where large amounts of rock and sediment are piled up, carried there by the 'absolute force of nature' the Guadalupe swelled to on July 4, has been dubbed the 'suck pile' by search and recovery crews, McQuarrie said. The pile, which varied in height, stretched at least 200 yards, he added. 'We're dealing with areas that have anywhere from six to eight feet of new land,' Rigelsky told CNN. 'We've got areas that weren't islands before.' Since their arrival a week ago, McQuarrie's team has been combing through their search area 'looking, smelling, listening,' he told CNN. The team starts with a primary search where they pick spots they want to go back over and mark those with cell technology. Then secondary searches are done, followed by targeted searches, which often include canine search teams and heavy equipment, like excavators. 'Debris fields, in the early stages, may not have decomposing matter in them, so dogs might not pick them up. So you may mark that as unsearchable, and then you come back with whatever equipment can make it searchable,' Rigelsky explained. 'It really has been a heavy dog-oriented search. The humans, the people involved, are only as good as the dogs they're with,' Rigelsky said. Images shared by the Center Point Volunteer Fire Department show a canine team, machine operators and a recovery crew working in unison to carefully search one of the many giant debris piles along the 60-mile stretch 'layer by layer,' the department wrote on social media. 'What we're really focusing on now too, are the divers,' Razor Dobbs with the Center Point Volunteer Fire Department told CNN affiliate WFAA. 'The divers now are being able to go in and really scour underneath the surface, because up on top of the land, it's been combed over … scores of times by human eyes, on foot, and also with the canine units.' Once the solid layer of debris is cleared off the surface of the river, divers gear up and search the river bottom and nooks below the surface, the fire department said. 'There is a bit of risk to it, just because of visibility. We don't have any visibility at all, so everything is by feel,' Dale Hammon, an experienced blackwater diver with a group of divers called 300 Justice Road, told CNN affiliate KBMT. For all the teams involved, safety is paramount. 'We're trying to manage two really important things here, making sure we're all safe and getting home – and trying to be as diligent as possible, trying to cover it as best we can, making sure we leave no stone unturned, both literally and figuratively,' McQuarrie explained. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré, who spent years working on disaster recovery operations with the military, including bringing relief to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, told CNN, 'It's hard, tedious work.' 'In reality, we'll be finding remains for months and years to come,' Honoré said, noting remains continued to be found six months after Katrina struck New Orleans. CNN's Ray Sanchez, Ed Lavandera, Ruben Correa, Isabel Rosales and Tori B. Powell contributed to this report.
CNN
4 days ago
- General
- CNN
Thick mud and huge piles of debris. Why the painstaking search for the missing in the Texas floods may last for months
Sixty miles of river. Murky waters, thick mud and seemingly insurmountable piles of debris. The painstaking recovery efforts continue for around 100 people still missing following the devastating July Fourth flooding along the Guadalupe River in central Texas. 'More than 1,000 local, state and federal responders – in addition to thousands of volunteers from across the country – continue intensive search operations,' Kerr County Emergency Operations Center Unified Command said Tuesday. 'Teams have had boots-on-the-ground from the headwaters of the Guadalupe River to Canyon Lake and back again, focused on the mission of recovering and returning loved ones to their families.' Images of search teams on their hands and knees sifting through two-story piles of debris from trees turned into sticks illustrate the painstaking efforts. The grim effort, using strategies from hand-sifting to sophisticated dives, is expected to drag on for months. While many families are waiting for answers, some have already learned their loved ones were among the more than 130 people who died as a result of the floods. 'We have a long, long way to go to really thoroughly search this area,' said Capt. Max McQuarrie of the Virginia Beach Water Rescue Team, whose crew is assisting in Texas. 'It's going to be a slow, methodical process … to really provide the answers that everyone's looking for.' Search teams run 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with an hour break for lunch at noon, before heading back into the field, said Joe Rigelsky, a founder of Upstream International, a Christian nonprofit involved in the search. Credentialed search teams are eating 'heavy in protein, good carb-load meals' – prepared by organizations like World Central Kitchen and Mercy Chefs – so they have the energy to do the work, he said. 'Work teams come in shifts, but team leads – I haven't had a day off,' said Rigelsky, who arrived July 4. Volunteer Michael Guyer, who joined in the search efforts last week, told CNN the process can take an emotional toll. 'The burnout is real,' Guyer said. 'For hours you'll be digging through piles of silt, mud, debris and rock. Typically finding nothing in frustration. Then the next hour or day you'll hear that someone in that very spot found bodies, and you think to yourself, 'If only I dug more, if only I had dogs, if only we had more manpower and equipment.'' Equipped with the limited resources of only a shovel and 'our sense of smell,' Guyer said, search conditions can be 'miserable' at times. 'There is so much sand, mud, debris and silt we are digging through that it takes hours to dig with just shovels,' he said. Complicating matters, volunteers were asked to vacate the river area for their safety during inclement weather with the potential for renewed flash flooding earlier this week. The Upper Guadalupe River Authority continues to advise the public to avoid being near or in waterways in Kerr County 'due to debris, fast-moving currents, and poor water quality.' Areas to be searched range from nearby lakes to large piles of debris in residents' own front yards. Authorities in Kerrville say they are working on plans to remove water from at least one lake in their search for victims. They are seeing how feasible it would be to drain Nimitz Lake, which is overflowing a dam on the Guadalupe River, Assistant City Manager Michael Hornes said in a special city council meeting Monday. 'Nimitz Lake is saturated, it's overtopping the dam, and it's going to continue as long as the rain continues,' Hornes said, noting murky water and debris are making it difficult for searchers to see. Holmes said city, state and federal officials are working through several plans on how to safely pump water from the lake without causing additional issues upstream due to how saturated the soil is from recent rains. Back on land, many debris piles on private properties can't be reduced by hand and require heavy machinery. Kerrville officials are requiring professional search teams to check the piles before removing them. Officials have also warned residents not to burn debris piles for fear that remains may be trapped underneath. The searches are conducted in small, established search grids. Each section of the grid system is then meticulously documented – how often the section was searched, which assets were used and what the water levels were at the time of the search. McQuarrie's team has been working on a 10-mile section in the heart of Kerrville, which includes debris piles, islands and tributaries. The divisions are lettered from Alpha through Lima; some are smaller, some a little bigger, depending on how challenging the search areas are, McQuarrie told CNN. The Delta search area assigned to his team from Virginia includes four to five bridges, and six or seven low-head dams, each of which run their own challenges, according to McQuarrie, who noted water levels vary from very deep to very shallow. Downed trees, massive piles of rock and debris are found along both sides of the river, forming an entirely different landscape than the green pasture and land that once lined the banks. One section of the search area, where large amounts of rock and sediment are piled up, carried there by the 'absolute force of nature' the Guadalupe swelled to on July 4, has been dubbed the 'suck pile' by search and recovery crews, McQuarrie said. The pile, which varied in height, stretched at least 200 yards, he added. 'We're dealing with areas that have anywhere from six to eight feet of new land,' Rigelsky told CNN. 'We've got areas that weren't islands before.' Since their arrival a week ago, McQuarrie's team has been combing through their search area 'looking, smelling, listening,' he told CNN. The team starts with a primary search where they pick spots they want to go back over and mark those with cell technology. Then secondary searches are done, followed by targeted searches, which often include canine search teams and heavy equipment, like excavators. 'Debris fields, in the early stages, may not have decomposing matter in them, so dogs might not pick them up. So you may mark that as unsearchable, and then you come back with whatever equipment can make it searchable,' Rigelsky explained. 'It really has been a heavy dog-oriented search. The humans, the people involved, are only as good as the dogs they're with,' Rigelsky said. Images shared by the Center Point Volunteer Fire Department show a canine team, machine operators and a recovery crew working in unison to carefully search one of the many giant debris piles along the 60-mile stretch 'layer by layer,' the department wrote on social media. 'What we're really focusing on now too, are the divers,' Razor Dobbs with the Center Point Volunteer Fire Department told CNN affiliate WFAA. 'The divers now are being able to go in and really scour underneath the surface, because up on top of the land, it's been combed over … scores of times by human eyes, on foot, and also with the canine units.' Once the solid layer of debris is cleared off the surface of the river, divers gear up and search the river bottom and nooks below the surface, the fire department said. 'There is a bit of risk to it, just because of visibility. We don't have any visibility at all, so everything is by feel,' Dale Hammon, an experienced blackwater diver with a group of divers called 300 Justice Road, told CNN affiliate KBMT. For all the teams involved, safety is paramount. 'We're trying to manage two really important things here, making sure we're all safe and getting home – and trying to be as diligent as possible, trying to cover it as best we can, making sure we leave no stone unturned, both literally and figuratively,' McQuarrie explained. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré, who spent years working on disaster recovery operations with the military, including bringing relief to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, told CNN, 'It's hard, tedious work.' 'In reality, we'll be finding remains for months and years to come,' Honoré said, noting remains continued to be found six months after Katrina struck New Orleans. CNN's Ray Sanchez, Ed Lavandera, Ruben Correa, Isabel Rosales and Tori B. Powell contributed to this report.
CNN
4 days ago
- General
- CNN
Thick mud and huge piles of debris. Why the painstaking search for the missing in the Texas floods may last for months
Sixty miles of river. Murky waters, thick mud and seemingly insurmountable piles of debris. The painstaking recovery efforts continue for around 100 people still missing following the devastating July Fourth flooding along the Guadalupe River in central Texas. 'More than 1,000 local, state and federal responders – in addition to thousands of volunteers from across the country – continue intensive search operations,' Kerr County Emergency Operations Center Unified Command said Tuesday. 'Teams have had boots-on-the-ground from the headwaters of the Guadalupe River to Canyon Lake and back again, focused on the mission of recovering and returning loved ones to their families.' Images of search teams on their hands and knees sifting through two-story piles of debris from trees turned into sticks illustrate the painstaking efforts. The grim effort, using strategies from hand-sifting to sophisticated dives, is expected to drag on for months. While many families are waiting for answers, some have already learned their loved ones were among the more than 130 people who died as a result of the floods. 'We have a long, long way to go to really thoroughly search this area,' said Capt. Max McQuarrie of the Virginia Beach Water Rescue Team, whose crew is assisting in Texas. 'It's going to be a slow, methodical process … to really provide the answers that everyone's looking for.' Search teams run 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with an hour break for lunch at noon, before heading back into the field, said Joe Rigelsky, a founder of Upstream International, a Christian nonprofit involved in the search. Credentialed search teams are eating 'heavy in protein, good carb-load meals' – prepared by organizations like World Central Kitchen and Mercy Chefs – so they have the energy to do the work, he said. 'Work teams come in shifts, but team leads – I haven't had a day off,' said Rigelsky, who arrived July 4. Volunteer Michael Guyer, who joined in the search efforts last week, told CNN the process can take an emotional toll. 'The burnout is real,' Guyer said. 'For hours you'll be digging through piles of silt, mud, debris and rock. Typically finding nothing in frustration. Then the next hour or day you'll hear that someone in that very spot found bodies, and you think to yourself, 'If only I dug more, if only I had dogs, if only we had more manpower and equipment.'' Equipped with the limited resources of only a shovel and 'our sense of smell,' Guyer said, search conditions can be 'miserable' at times. 'There is so much sand, mud, debris and silt we are digging through that it takes hours to dig with just shovels,' he said. Complicating matters, volunteers were asked to vacate the river area for their safety during inclement weather with the potential for renewed flash flooding earlier this week. The Upper Guadalupe River Authority continues to advise the public to avoid being near or in waterways in Kerr County 'due to debris, fast-moving currents, and poor water quality.' Areas to be searched range from nearby lakes to large piles of debris in residents' own front yards. Authorities in Kerrville say they are working on plans to remove water from at least one lake in their search for victims. They are seeing how feasible it would be to drain Nimitz Lake, which is overflowing a dam on the Guadalupe River, Assistant City Manager Michael Hornes said in a special city council meeting Monday. 'Nimitz Lake is saturated, it's overtopping the dam, and it's going to continue as long as the rain continues,' Hornes said, noting murky water and debris are making it difficult for searchers to see. Holmes said city, state and federal officials are working through several plans on how to safely pump water from the lake without causing additional issues upstream due to how saturated the soil is from recent rains. Back on land, many debris piles on private properties can't be reduced by hand and require heavy machinery. Kerrville officials are requiring professional search teams to check the piles before removing them. Officials have also warned residents not to burn debris piles for fear that remains may be trapped underneath. The searches are conducted in small, established search grids. Each section of the grid system is then meticulously documented – how often the section was searched, which assets were used and what the water levels were at the time of the search. McQuarrie's team has been working on a 10-mile section in the heart of Kerrville, which includes debris piles, islands and tributaries. The divisions are lettered from Alpha through Lima; some are smaller, some a little bigger, depending on how challenging the search areas are, McQuarrie told CNN. The Delta search area assigned to his team from Virginia includes four to five bridges, and six or seven low-head dams, each of which run their own challenges, according to McQuarrie, who noted water levels vary from very deep to very shallow. Downed trees, massive piles of rock and debris are found along both sides of the river, forming an entirely different landscape than the green pasture and land that once lined the banks. One section of the search area, where large amounts of rock and sediment are piled up, carried there by the 'absolute force of nature' the Guadalupe swelled to on July 4, has been dubbed the 'suck pile' by search and recovery crews, McQuarrie said. The pile, which varied in height, stretched at least 200 yards, he added. 'We're dealing with areas that have anywhere from six to eight feet of new land,' Rigelsky told CNN. 'We've got areas that weren't islands before.' Since their arrival a week ago, McQuarrie's team has been combing through their search area 'looking, smelling, listening,' he told CNN. The team starts with a primary search where they pick spots they want to go back over and mark those with cell technology. Then secondary searches are done, followed by targeted searches, which often include canine search teams and heavy equipment, like excavators. 'Debris fields, in the early stages, may not have decomposing matter in them, so dogs might not pick them up. So you may mark that as unsearchable, and then you come back with whatever equipment can make it searchable,' Rigelsky explained. 'It really has been a heavy dog-oriented search. The humans, the people involved, are only as good as the dogs they're with,' Rigelsky said. Images shared by the Center Point Volunteer Fire Department show a canine team, machine operators and a recovery crew working in unison to carefully search one of the many giant debris piles along the 60-mile stretch 'layer by layer,' the department wrote on social media. 'What we're really focusing on now too, are the divers,' Razor Dobbs with the Center Point Volunteer Fire Department told CNN affiliate WFAA. 'The divers now are being able to go in and really scour underneath the surface, because up on top of the land, it's been combed over … scores of times by human eyes, on foot, and also with the canine units.' Once the solid layer of debris is cleared off the surface of the river, divers gear up and search the river bottom and nooks below the surface, the fire department said. 'There is a bit of risk to it, just because of visibility. We don't have any visibility at all, so everything is by feel,' Dale Hammon, an experienced blackwater diver with a group of divers called 300 Justice Road, told CNN affiliate KBMT. For all the teams involved, safety is paramount. 'We're trying to manage two really important things here, making sure we're all safe and getting home – and trying to be as diligent as possible, trying to cover it as best we can, making sure we leave no stone unturned, both literally and figuratively,' McQuarrie explained. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré, who spent years working on disaster recovery operations with the military, including bringing relief to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, told CNN, 'It's hard, tedious work.' 'In reality, we'll be finding remains for months and years to come,' Honoré said, noting remains continued to be found six months after Katrina struck New Orleans. CNN's Ray Sanchez, Ed Lavandera, Ruben Correa, Isabel Rosales and Tori B. Powell contributed to this report.
CNN
10-07-2025
- General
- CNN
How searchers are agonizingly scouring for Texas flood victims, including children – and absorbing an emotional toll
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story includes graphic descriptions some readers may find disturbing. 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.
