KERRVILLE, Texas – In the heart of a crisis, the air was filled with a mix of frantic and desperate voices, punctuated occasionally by those who remained calm despite the looming danger and, for some, an unavoidable fate.
The pleas for help came from families stranded on rooftops, seeking refuge from the rapidly rising floodwaters. Mothers anxiously worried about their children, while bystanders listened helplessly to cries for aid from those clinging to treetops in the darkness.
One particularly harrowing call came from a man trapped in a tree, the branches threatening to snap under the relentless pressure of the flood. He pleaded with emergency dispatchers for a helicopter rescue, a request that tragically went unanswered.
These urgent calls were just a fraction of the more than 400 pleas for help that poured into Kerr County’s emergency lines last summer. The devastating flood, which struck during the overnight hours of the July Fourth holiday, overwhelmed the local emergency services. On Friday, the recordings of these 911 calls were made public.
The two emergency dispatchers on duty that night faced an insurmountable challenge as the Texas Hill Country was ravaged by catastrophic flooding. The Guadalupe River overflowed, submerging cabins and youth camps, leaving many trapped and desperate for assistance.
“The water is rising fast, and we can’t escape our cabin,” a camp counselor urgently informed a dispatcher, the background filled with the terrified screams of campers. “How do we reach the boats?” she implored, the urgency in her voice a reflection of the chaos unfolding around them.
Amazingly, everyone in the cabin and the rest of campers at Camp La Junta were rescued.
The flooding killed at least 136 people statewide during the holiday weekend, including at least 117 in Kerr County alone. Most were from Texas, but others came from Alabama, California and Florida, according to a list released by county officials.
One woman called for help as the water closed in on her house near Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp for girls, where 25 campers and two teenage counselors died.
“We’re OK, but we live a mile down the road from Camp Mystic and we had two little girls come down the river. And we’ve gotten to them, but I’m not sure how many others are out there,” she said in a shaky voice.
A spokesperson for the parents of the children and counselors who died at Camp Mystic declined to comment on the release of the recordings.
Calls came from people on rooftops and in trees
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 overtopped the Guadalupe River. Kerr County leaders have faced scrutiny about whether they did enough right away. Two officials told Texas legislators this summer that they were asleep during the initial hours of the flooding, and a third was out of town.
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. The AP was one of the media outlets that filed public information requests for recordings of the 911 calls to be released.
Many people were rescued by boats and emergency vehicles. A few desperate pleas came from people floating away in RVs. Some survivors were found in trees and on rooftops.
But some of the calls released Friday came from people who did not survive, said Kerrville Police Chief Chris McCall, who warned that the audio is unsettling.
“The tree I’m in is starting to lean and it’s going to fall. Is there a helicopter close?” Bradley Perry, a firefighter, calmy told a dispatcher, adding that he saw his wife, Tina, and their RV wash away.
“I’ve probably got maybe five minutes left,” he said.
Bradley Perry did not survive. His wife was later found clinging to a tree, still alive.
Moving higher and higher to survive
In another heartbreaking call, a woman staying in a community of riverside 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.
Some people called back multiple times, climbing higher and higher in houses to let rescuers know where they were and that their situations were getting more dire. Families called from second floors, then attics, then roofs sometimes in the course of 30 or 40 minutes, revealing how fast and how high the waters rose.
As daylight began to break, the call volume increased, with people reporting survivors in trees or stuck on roofs, or cars floating down the river.
Britt Eastland, the co-director of Camp Mystic, asked for search and rescue and the National Guard to be called, saying as many as 40 people there were missing. “We’re out of power. We hardly have any cell service,” he said.
The 911 recordings show that relatives and friends outside of the unfolding disaster and those who had made it to safety had called to get help for loved ones trapped in the flooding.
One woman said a friend, an elderly man, was trapped in his home with water up to his head. She had realized his phone cut out as she was trying to relay instructions from a 911 operator.
Dispatchers gave advice and comfort
Overwhelmed by the endless calls, dispatchers tried to comfort the panic-stricken callers yet were forced to move on to the next one. They advised many of those who were trapped to get to their rooftops or run to higher ground. In some calls, children could be heard screaming in the background.
“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.
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,” the dispatcher said. “I don’t know.”
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Associated Press reporters Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Ed White in Detroit; Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; and Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey, contributed.
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