KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Texas residents trapped by catastrophic flooding last summer pleaded for water rescues and staffers at Camp Mystic begged for direction on how to escape rushing waters during the floods that killed more than 100 people, according to recordings of 911 calls released Friday.
Emergency dispatchers in rural Kerr County fielded more than 400 calls during the six hours when floods began to overwhelm the region overnight on the July Fourth holiday.
“There is water everywhere, we cannot move. We are upstairs in a room and the water is rising,” said a woman who called from Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp for girls, where 25 campers and two teenage counselors died. “If the water will be higher than the room, what should we do?"
The same woman called back later.
“How do we get to the roof if the water is so high?“ she asked. “Can you already send someone here? With the boats?”
She asked the dispatcher when help would arrive.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” the dispatcher responded.
The flooding killed at least 136 people statewide and the victims ranged in age from 1 to 91. Most of them were were from Texas, but others came from Alabama, California and Florida, according to a list released by Kerr County officials.
Many residents in the hard-hit Texas Hill Country have said they were caught off guard and didn’t receive any warning when the floods hit that night.
Kerr County leaders have faced scrutiny about whether they did enough right away. Two officials told Texas legislators this summer that they were asleep and a third was out of town in the initial hours of the flooding.
The Associated Press was one of the media outlets that filed public information requests for recordings of the 911 calls to be released.
In one heartbreaking call, a woman staying in a community of cabins told a dispatcher the water was inundating their building
“We are flooding, and we have people in cabins we can’t get to," she said. "We are flooding almost all the way to the top.”
The caller speaks slowly and deliberately. The faint voices of what sounds like children can be heard in the background.
Using recordings of first responder communications, weather service warnings, survivor videos and official testimony, The Associated Press assembled a chronology of the chaotic rescue effort.
