A Camp Mystic counselor described the heartbreaking sight of parents desperately searching for their children after the Texas floods that took the lives of 27 of her campers and colleagues.
The Biblical Texas floods have killed at least 104 across the state as of Monday afternoon, with 75 bodies having been recovered in hard-hit Kerr County alone.
Two brave Camp Mystic staffers died trying to save young girls as the Guadalupe River flooded and surged by up to 30 feet above its usual water level on Friday.
Authorities are racing against the clock as they continue their urgent search for 10 missing campers and one counselor.
Camp Mystic counselor Holly Kate Hurley, 19, recalled the heartbreaking scene that followed as parents tried to reunite with their daughters.
‘Seeing little girls run to their parents and just hug them and cry, and also just seeing some parents who were looking for their little girls and they weren’t there… But, that’s just a sight I don’t think I’ll ever forget,’ she told Fox News.
Hurley said she is thankful to the Army soldiers who helped them evacuate, but will never forget the moment when the water completely flooded the dam and swept away the camp’s waterfront cabins with campers still inside.
‘I was with my campers in the middle of the night, it was about 1.30 in the morning. And rain just kind of started coming through our windows. I woke my girls up, told them to close the windows and then the power just went out, all the fans turned off, running water didn’t work,’ she said.
She added: ‘In the morning, they gathered all the counselors that were at Cyprus Lake and they told us that two of the cabins with the seven-year-old girls were wiped away and all these girls were missing.
‘And we went back to our cabins and tried to keep up good spirits with these young girls. I think I was just in shock.’
The National Weather Service has extended a flash flood watch for the Texas Hill Country, where an additional one to three inches of rain is expected to fall Monday, until 7pm local time.
Officials have come under scrutiny as to why residents and youth summer camps along the river were not alerted sooner, but White House leaders have insisted there were no errors.
Hurley was a regular at Camp Mystic, having attended as a camper from the age of ten before joining the staff as a counselor.
A heartbreaking photo showed an entire cabin of Camp Mystic girls and counselors who were washed away in the horrific Texas floods.
The 13 girls and two counselors were staying in Camp Mystic’s Bubble Inn cabin, which, alongside the Twins cabin, housed the youngest of the girls, aged 8 to 10.
The cabins were less than 500 feet from the river and thus took in water from two directions – the Guadalupe river and a creek nearby, making the girls’ escape particularly challenging.
The bodies of nine of the girls and counselor Chloe Childress, 18, have been found as of Monday morning, while counselor Katherine Ferruzzo and four campers remain missing.
Those confirmed dead are: Janie Hunt, Margaret Bellows, Lila Bonner, Lainey Landry, Sarah Marsh, Linnie McCown, Winne Naylor, Eloise Peck, Renee Smajstrla and Mary Stevens.
Camp Mystic father-figure and owner, Richard ‘Dick’ Eastland, 70, died while trying to save the young girls.
Crews are trudging through debris and wading into swollen riverbanks in search for victims.
Joyce Boden’s father Ty found another dead child while frantically hunting for his daughter.
Ty Badon was scouring the epicenter of the carnage for his 21-year-old daughter when he stumbled across a little boy, who is one of at least 89 people killed by the inundation.
Joyce’s mother Kellye Badon broke the terrible news on Facebook Monday afternoon that she did not survive.
With more rain on the way, the risk of more flooding is still high in saturated parts of central Texas.
Survivors have described the floods as a ‘pitch black wall of death’ and said they received no emergency warnings.
Officials have come under scrutiny as to why residents and youth summer camps along the river were not alerted sooner about the severe weather or told to evacuate.
The White House has hit out the ‘depraved’ Democrats who are blaming President Donald Trump for the catastrophic floods in Texas.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt slammed Trump’s critics for suggesting that his cuts to NOAA and FEMA contributed to the devastation.
‘Unfortunately, in the wake of this once-in-a-generation natural disaster, we have seen many falsehoods pushed by Democrats such as Senator Chuck Schumer and some members of the media,’ she said.
‘Blaming President Trump for these floods is a depraved lie, and it serves no purpose during this time of national mourning.’
