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CNN By Michelle Krupa and Zoe Sottile, CNN (CNN) — With the holiday weekend ahead of them, some 750 girls bunked in last Thursday night at Camp Mystic. Just a few miles away in Central Texas, boys did the same at Camp La Junta. The 18 or so youth summer camps along the Guadalupe River
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‘There was a lot of water’
At Camp La Junta, Ruffin Boyett was the first to wake in his cabin around 4 a.m. Friday,
unable to “sleep because of the lightning,” he told CNN affiliate KSAT.
“People were screaming that there was a flood,” his brother, Piers Boyett, recalled. “There was a lot of water.”
Another camper woke up their counselor, who woke up the rest of the boys. Braeden Davis heard screaming around 4 a.m. from another cabin.
Windom Etheridge, 14, noticed “more and more” water flowing into the La Junta camp. People from other parts started coming “to seek refuge”
at his cabin.
“We didn’t really know what was going on around us because it was dark. We couldn’t see past the trees,” he told CNN. “All we really knew is that we needed to move stuff in order for it not to get wet.”
Windom and his pals “couldn’t really go anywhere because around us there were streams, really strong streams converging, and we didn’t want to get swept away because of all the runoff from the mountain.”
So they stayed put. At least for the moment.
At a nearby Kerr County RV park, a phone rang around 4:44 a.m. Robert Brake was calling his father to urge him to evacuate.
“Dad, you got to get out of there,” Brake implored.
But less than 10 minutes later, Brake’s brother went to check him – and found all the homes in the area had vanished in the flooding.
At another hamlet of this beloved river, a family away on
a camping trip fought the current.
Soon, it swept a woman away.
‘Made sure all the floaties were inflated’
Around 5 a.m., friends Joyce Badon, Ella Cahill, Reece Manchaca and Aidan Heartfield knew they were in danger at Heartfield’s dad’s Kerrville vacation home.
They called Heartfield’s dad.
“As they were on the phone, Aidan passed it to Joyce, saying that he needed to help Ella and Reese,” Cahill’s sister later learned.
“Joyce confirmed that all three have been swept away,” she said.
“Shortly after, the phone went dead.”
At an Airbnb where
Ricky Gonzalez was staying with a dozen friends, he woke up in the Airbnb to a friend’s dog pawing at the door. Looking outside, they watched one of their cars get swept away by floodwaters.
Water quickly rose to the second story. They had to act fast.
“The water was almost 30 feet deep. I can’t swim personally,” Gonzalez said. “We made sure all the floaties were inflated, air mattresses, coolers, getting everything ready, just in case that we need to, you know, survive.”
Gonzalez gave a “last goodbye” to his sister on FaceTime. And as the group geared up to escape through two big upper windows, he had a startling thought:
“Some of us aren’t going to make it out alive … I might see some of my friends pass away this morning.’”
‘Make sure we get you out of there’
At Camp Mystic, a quick-thinking security guard was putting campers on mattresses to help them ride out the rising waters.
“Each of those sweet girls (were) cold, wet, and frightened – but they were also incredibly brave,” Glenn Juenke told CNN. “They trusted me, and we leaned on each other through a long, harrowing night together inside their cabin.”
Camp counselors, many of them teenagers, also helped children escape through windows and move to dry land, a mother of three campers told CNN.
“Two counselors were in the rapids and one on the dry hill moving the kids from hand to hand,” the mother said. “A lot of them lost their shoes and then climbed up the rocky hill to safety.”
Kerr County had
no comprehensive flood warning system, even with the climate crisis expected to
worsen natural disasters, including extreme rain.
More than 100 game wardens and an aviation group tried
early Friday morning to get into Camp Mystic – but they could not access it.
Soon, Texas authorities were “
surging all available
resources” to respond to the Guadalupe River flooding, and
seasoned volunteers were headed to Kerr County.
In Kerrville, a law enforcement official
knocked on Rita Olsen’s door around 6 a.m. Friday: “There are people screaming in the river,” he told her. “We’re evacuating everybody.”
Carl Jeter heard a
woman’s screams outside his Texas home, he told CNN. “I’m gonna get help,” Jeter told her. “We’re gonna make sure we get you out of there.”
He dialed 911.
‘Oh my God, we’re floating’
At Camp La Junta, Windom and his friends “woke up again to more water,” he said. The Boyett brothers and their fellow campers recognized the danger.
“Oh my God, we’re floating,” Ruffin Boyett realized. The campers had to make a quick decision. “The flood started getting bigger,” Piers Boyett said. “We have bunk beds in our cabin, and (the water) was going to the top bunk.
“We had one choice: We had to swim out of our cabins.”
The campers sought higher ground and swam to safety, one’s father
told CNN.
They made their way to a service road, where emergency personnel found them.
The Guadalupe River had
risen from
about 3 feet to nearly 30 feet in nearby Comfort, Texas,
endangering more than 50,000 people.
Authorities finally managed to
enter Camp Mystic and start rescuing children, among them, a
congressman’s daughters, officials said.
But many still were unaccounted for.
‘That’s not something that is survivable’
As Ricky Gonzalez and his friends stood at the upper windows, the water began to recede. Leo Garcia, with his wife Paula, were driving to check on a family property when he spotted someone in a second-story window.
They stopped and waded through debris-filled water to the house.
“We all got out and just went over to the house and helped” Gonzalez and his friends out of the house, Leo Garcia recalled. “I think they were just so much in shock that they did not realize that the water had receded enough where they could have walked out.”
The Garcias took Gonzalez, his friends and their five pets back to their own home and fed them.
“We just tried to do what we do best,” Paula Garcia said, “and that’s to just take care of people.”
Carl Jeter stayed, too, with the woman in the tree.
But after 30 minutes, no one came to help.
So, Jeter got in his car and flagged down a state Department of Public Safety officer. A swift water team soon arrived and put a life vest on the woman. She jumped from the tree into the team’s boat.
Jeter then took her to his home, where he learned she’d been camping with her family along the river when it carried her way.
“It’s a true miracle,” he said. “We’ve been on the river for a long time, and that’s not something that is survivable.”
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