As the floodwaters recede, Kerrville confronts the devastation

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KERRVILLE — Kathy Perkins fled her home in the middle of the night on Friday, just before the flood waters rushed in. Her RV is a mucky, destroyed mess. She hasn’t been able to get answers about her insurance. She’s in a city shelter and has no idea where she and her dog Marley are going to go next.

Last night, lying in bed, she began to weep. Not because of her situation, she said, but because she couldn’t stop thinking about the little girls still missing from Camp Mystic, the Christian girls summer camp swept away by the storm.

“You just want to say a prayer but then you wonder if they’re even still out there to be prayed for,” Perkins, 65, said. “It’s just — there are just no words.”

As the rains receded, and Kerrville began the long process of rebuilding after ruin, the unique horrors of what unfolded here Friday night hung thick over the whole town.

“I just think about those girls and their parents,” Perkins said. “That’s my home. That’s my granddaughter’s home. But that’s nothing compared to what those families lost.”

On Sunday, as pastors preached from the pulpit, volunteers sorted donations and passersby ogled the still-roaring river, locals struggled to put into words the magnitude of what happened.

Perhaps, there are no words to describe the devastation that follows a 26-foot wall of water rising up in less than an hour, swallowing roads, bridges, whole RV parks and two cabins of young girls, leaving dozens of campers and counselors missing.

“Overwhelming,” was the word Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller landed on. He came in from San Antonio on Friday and visited families at the reunification center. His heart physically ached, he said, as he watched the pained silence and self-contained suffering each family sat with, and the unfettered joy of those reunited with their loved ones.

“I was there to hear the cry of those who hurt, and there are so many here who hurt,” he said, tearing up.

García-Siller has witnessed so much grief and suffering during his time as archbishop. After a school shooter in Uvalde left 19 students dead in 2022, he drove back and forth from San Antonio almost every day for three weeks. Now, he anticipates being similarly involved in what he expects to be a long recovery for the people of Kerrville.

“We think we control everything. We act as if we control life and can guarantee our security,” he said, reflecting on what he’s learned from these experiences. “But our power is miniscule over life. I think we must learn to embrace that as we embrace our beloved ones and embrace those suffering and in pain.”

As he spoke, helicopters crisscrossed overhead, searching up and down the river. All day, an alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies raced back and forth across town, shutting down whole stretches of the highway to accommodate rescue efforts, as linemen and construction crews worked down by the river to remove an extraordinary array of debris — mangled metal, shredded asphalt, upended cars, destroyed homes.

Restaurants, schools and churches turned into makeshift donation centers, as local officials tried to discourage any more well-intended volunteers from coming in from out of town to run amateur search-and-rescue and debris clearing operations.

“We have a ton of resources here. I could make a phone call and get a ton more here,” Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said Sunday afternoon. “We have all the resources and all the equipment and all the manpower and all the food we need here … We have it under control.”

Cross Kingdom Church received so many donations they had to start sending people to other sites just to spread the wealth around. During their Sunday morning service, people in raincoats and muddy boots sang for close to an hour, celebrating being alive and grieving those who had died.

In song after song, the worship band reminded churchgoers, some of whom had lost their homes and possessions in the floods, that there was always hope, even in the darkest times.

Halfway through the service, that hope seemed to be rewarded. Kim Strebeck, the church’s youth pastor, stood up and announced that two young girls had just been found, safe and alive, in a tree about 10 miles away. The crowd cheered and stomped their feet, so grateful for a dose of good news. One woman ran outside, cheering, “Who loves us?” as the kids around her shouted back, “Jesus!”

But by the end of the day, that little glimmer of hope had been debunked as a rumor. Despite an all-hands-on-deck search, there had been no girls found alive that day. The death toll had risen to almost 70 in Kerr County alone — more than the direct death toll of Hurricane Harvey — and the number of missing campers had dwindled to 10.

The search-and-rescue mission had to pause their work as a new storm rolled in, threatening more flash floods which could bring up to two feet of rain to the already swollen river.

Just before 6 p.m., people gathered on a hillside in a steady drizzle, overlooking the slowly rising water. They watched as an array of first responders assembled across the river, more and more flashing lights summoning the attention of the onlookers.

After a brief flurry of activity, observers said, they pulled what looked like a body bag out of the debris.