Texas flood tragedy - family missing, one rescued after river sweeps campsite

Joe Chavarria searches through rubble at a campsite near where five of his family members disappeared when the Guadalupe River flooded in Kerrville, Texas. Only one family member, a 22-year-old cousin, Devyn Smith, has been found alive, desperately clinging to a tree. Photo / Jordan Vonderhaar, the New York Times

Hailey Chavarria sat outside a church providing shelter for survivors of the Fourth of July flash flood, and for families like hers who had rushed to Kerrville, Texas, seeking loved ones they had lost touch with.

For Chavarria, 28, a teacher from Austin, the wait has been agonising.

Five members of her family from Midland, Texas – her mother, her mother’s husband, an aunt, the aunt’s husband and a cousin – remained missing three days after a torrent of water smashed through their campsite along the Guadalupe River, where they had gathered for what was supposed to be a festive holiday camping trip.

Only one family member, a 22-year-old cousin, Devyn Smith, was found alive, desperately clinging to a tree.

Her rescue was captured on video, a moment for celebration in days with few of them.

For six hours she had been dragged down river more than 25km, through three dams, past broken RVs and refrigerators.

Smith remains hospitalised, Chavarria said, with staples in her head and “every inch of her body” scratched and battered.

As for the others, “I’m just hoping that they are somewhere,” Chavarria said, “and even if it’s the worst-case scenario, it’s just something identified and found”.

“If I dig too deep or consider the worst outcome, I’ll probably lose my mind,” she added, staring at an uneaten sandwich.

Her family had settled in for the night snug in tents erected along the river. The flood that arrived before dawn hours later swamped their tents.

They rushed to their vehicles to flee, but the merciless current caught up with them. One Chavarria family truck was found empty and mangled against a tree.

By today NZT, about a dozen relatives, including Chavarria’s father, Joe Chavarria, had arrived in Kerr County, armed with chainsaws and axes to cut through the tangle of trees and jetsam in the last place their family members were seen.

The family gathered outside Calvary Temple Church, where Hailey Chavarria tried her best to keep her older sister, Celeste Helms, 34, from falling apart.

“We have been going from centre to centre, and no one can give us an answer,” Chavarria said.

“I’m not blaming any of the people who work at these centres, because you can tell they want to help so bad, right? I think it’s just more of like, they weren’t, as a city or county, weren’t prepared for something like this.

“All I can do is stare at my phone,” she added.

They are holding to hope, though.

“My mum, she is a beast of a woman,” Helms said. “I just know she’s hanging out somewhere. She’s too strong.”

Devyn Smith, the survivor, relayed to Chavarria the harrowing story.

When they went to bed it had begun to drizzle. Around 4am, the campers were awakened by the rain, Smith told Chavarria.

They knew their lives were in danger. They had already tried to bolt for safety when their phones blared a flash flood alert.

Chavarria’s mother, aunt and stepfather and a cousin climbed into their ute as the waters raged. Some of them tried to warn a second group that had climbed into a smaller car on lower ground.

“Get out of the car!” they yelled, according to Smith. That group climbed out through a sunroof as the flood surrounded their small vehicle.

Then they were not heard of again. Rescuers found the grey ute hours later tilted to its side and smashed into a broken tree.

Chavarria described her mother, Michelle Crossland, who recently celebrated her 50th birthday with a big bash, as a “wild lady”, and her husband of 17 years, Cody Crossland, in his mid-40s, as a rugged man who played in a band and was attending barber school. She said Cody would have tried everything he could to stay alive.

“All the survival instincts would kick in for him, and he would ground her, because I know she would have been so freaked out,” Chavarria said.

The group often travelled together, visiting Las Vegas a few times a year, but this was the first time Chavarria knew of them camping in the Kerrville area.

Chavarria’s sister, Helms, said her 12-year-old had initially planned to join the family. “Thank God he ended up not going. I can’t even imagine,” she said.

Family members said the search had sometimes been a frustrating exercise. There was no point person updating families on the identities of those found, alive or deceased. Chavarria has resorted to calling funeral homes.

“Can you just tell me if my loved one is in there? That’s all I want to know. Even if they’re deceased,” she said she has pleaded in call after call.

Another relative, Eric Sanchez, 53, from Midland, stood sombrely next to the sisters.

“I came down as soon as I heard they were missing,” Sanchez said. “We are just waiting for any news.”

The parents of Smith are still missing. But she is recovering, Chavarria said.

“I don’t know how she survived,” she said, “if you are a believer, by the grace of God.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Edgar Sandoval

Photograph by: Jordan Vonderhaar

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