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KERRVILLE —Hill Country flood survivors fought back tears Thursday as they described losing children, going days without contact from emergency management and discovering human remains still scattered in waterways even after victims who had been partially recovered were officially marked as found.
The public testimony at the joint hearing of the Senate and House Select Committees on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding in Kerrville underscored the devastating human toll caused by the Hill Country flooding as Texas lawmakers scrutinized official disaster response. Throughout the room, people wore green dresses, shirts, and pins to honor the memory of those lost at Camp Mystic.
Alicia Jeffrey Baker testified on behalf of her 11-year-old daughter Emmy, who died alongside her grandparents near the Casa Bonita development in Hunt, their family retreat since 1990. Baker waited 12 hours at Ingram Elementary with no officials in charge and no information available. Her daughter’s body wasn't identified until July 10, recognizable only by her charm bracelet.
Baker called for warning systems based on the precise level of river rise, saying that sirens going off every time the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issues an alert would be ignored.
Local contractor Bud Bolton, who lives just downstream from the RV parks on the Ingram-Kerrville border that suffered heavy losses of life, testified that he saw 108 RVs swept downstream, some of them with families still inside. Bolton, who woke up on his own when there was water on his doorstep around 4:15 a.m. said 20 fire trucks and rescue vehicles were parked near his home but no one knocked on his door to warn him. When Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, halted Bolton’s testimony, he seized the mic again saying, "I lost 27 people that I knew" before being cut off for exceeding his time limit.
Travis County survivors tell of neglect
Travis County officials failed to deploy emergency resources to the Sandy Creek area for days after the devastating July floods, leaving residents to organize their own rescue and recovery efforts, according to testimony from multiple survivors.
"Nobody came, nobody came, nobody came for us," Auburn Gallagher, a 25-year resident of Sandy Creek said through tears, describing how no emergency management personnel showed up in the hardest-hit Windy Valley area for more than 24 hours after the flooding. "We had Travis County employees tell us they were warned at midnight that we were going to flood, but nobody came. No fire, no EMS, no sheriff. Nobody came for us.”
“We had an entire palette of donated chainsaws that disappeared overnight,” said Melanie Strong, who lives 20 minutes from Sandy Creek and volunteered in the area, while suggesting that the Texas Department of Public Safety failed to deploy enough officers to the area to prevent looting.
Strong testified that when her boyfriend, a Texas Department of Public Safety lieutenant in the Capitol Region, checked for official requests for assistance from Travis County to DPS on the morning after the flood, "his answer was no."
Debris and human remains in waterways
Survivors from both Kerr and Travis Counties testified that because of the methods that emergency management teams use to identify missing persons, human remains are still in areas affected by the flood.
“I found a hip and a leg on my property,” testified Ashlee Willis who lives near Sandy Creek in Travis County. Willis said Travis County marks people as found when they find body parts that they are able to match to DNA and that “they are not coming back to find the rest of these people.”
“The fact is that cadaver dogs need to be brought out. Residents shouldn't be finding body parts,” said Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, in response to Willis.
Sens. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, and Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, chastised Travis County Judge Andy Brown for the county’s response after Bettencourt warned earlier in the day the panel would ask him “very pointed questions.” The two senators questioned Brown over discrepancies between witness testimony and Brown’s recounting of emergency response. They also alleged there were body parts still remaining in untouched debris fields and that 911 calls went unanswered.
“I'm not sure who has your ear, but what I've heard today compared to what I've heard before with you, there's just such a conflict of where assets were and where they were absent,” Campbell said.
Ann Carr noted a similar situation in Kerr County, where her property overlooks contaminated water. Carr testified there are vehicles emitting oil into a lake that abuts the Guadalupe River in Ingram.
"What we have noticed since the flood is our lake has become a toxic pit," said Carr.
In her testimony, Carr raised concerns about how officials are handling body recovery efforts, aligning with Willis’ testimony that finding partial remains leads authorities to mark a missing person as recovered. They'll find a finger, and they'll say that they recovered a body," Carr said.
Carr said that from her home she had seen cadaver dogs detecting possible hits off of Ingram Lake from the shoreline, adding that “We have asked [divers who have been in the lake] direct questions, are there bodies in the water? Their answers are yes."
At a July 14 Kerr County Commissioner's meeting, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said “there is a plan in place right now to accomplish draining [Ingram Lake].” However, no steps have been so far taken to drain it.
"Our lake is the lifeblood of our community," said Carr.
Some survivors too busy to make it to hearing
Brian Keeper, 68, was up late with a roof leak when he noticed the Guadalupe River had jumped its banks near his Hunt home. Within minutes, the artist was making frantic phone calls, waking 11 neighbors to warn them of the unprecedented flood bearing down on this small Hill Country community.
Though Keeper has ideas for the county — he thinks it should install flood warning systems near Hunt and should also create a local call tree that allows neighbors to call many of their neighbors at once — he didn’t attend Thursday’s hearing.
“They’re demolishing half my house today,” Keeper said Wednesday, adding that this is the first week he’s been able to think about anything beyond just getting by day-to-day.
Keeper, who is sleeping at a nearby summer camp, said that a volunteer donated a trailer that he will soon put in his driveway that will allow him to return to his property.
As for how he will actually rebuild his home, Keeper is unsure. He has lived in the house since he was a child and said it cost as much as a 10-speed bicycle when his family first bought it. Now, he’s focused on getting what he can from FEMA and determining how much of the rebuilding he can self-finance.
Volunteer contractors have offered to help Keeper rebuild. “I just have to provide materials,” he said.
“The average FEMA home repair payment for this disaster so far is about $8,000” according to an analysis of FEMAs open database conducted by Madison Sloane, director of the Disaster Recovery & Fair Housing Project at Texas Appleseed.
Keeper, an artist, also builds boats to earn money. All of the boats that he had in stock were washed away during the flood. He hopes that when the process of recovery is over he can build boats again.
Disclosure: Texas Appleseed has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
