Then floodwaters turned the Guadalupe River into a raging torrent — and almost nothing has been normal since.
Last summer’s devastating flood killed 119 people in Kerr County, and it forever altered the lives of hundreds of others who were directly affected by the disaster.
Some of them lost loved ones to the raging river. Others were swept up by the floodwaters and narrowly escaped with their lives. Some saw their homes destroyed or damaged, their businesses shut down, their livelihoods taken away.
Across the Hill Country, there were scores of people who put their lives on hold to search for victims, rescue survivors, bring in supplies or help clean out and repair flood-ravaged houses.
In the year since, the flood survivors — and the people who have made it their mission to help them — have worked to rebuild, recover and try to make sense of what happened.
The path forward wasn’t easy, but many of them have found it.
Here are some of their stories:
‘It’s OK to ask for help’
The tree is still standing there, silently guarding the lot in Ingram where Christina Wilson and her family’s mobile home sat before the July 4 flood.
The tree was planted as a sapling before her fiancée Julian Ryan was born, and he helped care for it as he grew up.
Ryan, 27, died during last July’s flooding. As floodwaters rose inside their mobile home, he severed an artery in his arm when he punched a hole in a window to try and get his family out. He bled to death from the wound, slipping away before help could arrive.
Despite the tragedy, the property still feels like home to Wilson. The tree and the lot are a tangible connection to the man she loved.
Silt water marks from the flood ring the tree. On the bark, Wilson can see the last water line and how big the tree has grown.
To her, it’s a sign of hope.
She wants Julian Jr. to look after the tree, as his father did.
“His dad’s not here to pass it on,” said Wilson, 24. “I want to move back so Jay can take care of it and follow his dad’s footsteps.”
The year since the disaster has been a blur of grief and uncertainty for Wilson, as she has tried to rebuild her life and take care of her children, Maliki, Annalise and Julian Jr.
In the immediate aftermath, Wilson said, she was overwhelmed by what had happened.
“I shut down,” Wilson said. “I was going through the motions. Numb.”
She said she found a way to move ahead thanks to her family, neighbors, volunteers, relief agencies and parishioners from Trinity Baptist Church who lifted her spirits.
“They kept reminding me it’s OK to ask for help,” Wilson said. “And it’s OK to accept help.”
Case workers recommended that Wilson sign up for a Christian Women’s Job Corps of Kerr County program that provided computer training and helped her work through the trauma. In May, she graduated from the four-month program and will start a new job soon.
An aid agency provided a car for Wilson and her family. She said she is waiting to hear if they’ve been approved for a grant from the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country to get a new mobile home. If that happens, she plans to move her children out of the two-bedroom apartment they’ve been living in and back to the mobile home park where they lived before the flood changed everything.
Ryan wouldn’t want her and the children to live in fear for the rest of their lives, she said.
“He was a very happy person,” Wilson said. “He tried to be optimistic and look on the brighter side of things.”
She also believes she and her children are still alive in large part thanks to Ryan’s heroics.
When first-responders arrived at the mobile home park, “they didn’t see any way any of us could have survived how high the water was and how underwater the houses were,” Wilson said.
“It’s by the grace of God that somebody found us,” she said. “Julian had to have been there telling Him: ‘My family ain’t going anywhere.’”
‘You’ve got to have faith’
On the morning after the Guadalupe River flood, Joe Herrera sat in his chair and gave thanks for another day.
A few hours earlier, as floodwaters filled their home in the Bumble Bee Hills subdivision near Ingram, he didn’t know if he and his wife, Lilia “Lily” Herrera, would get another one.
The floodwaters rushed in about 2 a.m., flipping their refrigerator on its side and turning furniture into floating obstacles.
Herrera, who has Parkinson’s disease, leaned on his walker as he struggled to push open a door open leading to their garage. Once in the garage, they tried to roll the door up, but it wouldn’t budge. The couple was trapped, and the water was rising.
Then came a loud pounding on the garage door. It was a neighbor, who figured the Herreras were in trouble. The neighbor tied a rope around Herrera’s torso and hoisted him up an incline and out of the house. His wife of 44 years walked out on her own.
More help arrived as the sun rose over the two-bedroom, two-bathroom home the Herreras have shared for 26 years.
Herrera watched as more neighbors, their son Gabe’s friends and fellow parishioners from Notre Dame Catholic Church in Kerrville showed up, asking how they could help. There were also representatives from Somebody Cares America, an organization that mobilizes volunteers, churches and disaster relief.
“I just looked at everything, saying ‘wow, this is unbelievable,’” Herrera said. “I have good friends. We were really lucky. We all survived.”
As the weeks and months passed, the help never stopped coming.
Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Mobile Ministry Center joined in helping restore the Herrera’s home, which was caked knee-deep in mud after the waters receded.
The flooding took Herrera’s medical equipment, including a walker, motorized scooter, exercise bike, adjustable bed and treadmill.
Herrera said he wasn’t worried about losing the equipment — “It’s just items,” he said, “all replaceable” — but a friend let the couple stay in a vacant house that had a walker and scooter, everything he needed to get around.
Support from his friends and the community gave Herrera and his wife the strength to push forward, he said.
Two months after the disaster they moved back into their home. In September, he moved his automotive business to a new building.
Through it all, their faith has sustained the couple, Herrea said. Each morning when he wakes up and each night before going to sleep, he gives thanks for another day.
“You’ve got to have faith in God,” Herrera said. “He has a plan for everybody.”
‘The Hill Country will grow back’
Most mornings, John McCalla finds his peace with a quiet stroll on the Kerrville River Trail, a six-mile path that winds along the Guadalupe River.
But for months after the July 4 Hill Country flood, things weren’t very peaceful on the trail. Remnants of the disaster littered the river’s edge, and bulldozers rumbled nearby, pushing the debris into giant piles.
“The river is part of the city,” McCalla said. “It’s near and dear to everybody. It was an awful thing that happened but we’re going to get through it. It’s going to take a long time for the physical and emotional recovery.”
As director of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul’s Kerrville food pantry, McCalla has played a key role in helping lead that recovery. But he said he was amazed by the immediate outpouring of support for flood victims and the community as a whole.
Within hours of the flood, trucks started arriving in Kerrville packed with food, water and clothing. People from around the world sent monetary donations. The nonstop flow of supplies filled the Society of St. Vincent de Paul’s building on Broadway Street, forcing volunteers to stack the overflow in an adjacent building.
“The whole community was impacted emotionally by trauma or the flood,” McCalla said, “but they knew what they had to do and did what they had to do.”
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul was one of the more than 30 emergency aid agencies that responded to help residents displaced and in need of essentials. Supporters from San Antonio and other cities joined local volunteers to sort essentials such as clothes, shoes and hygiene items.
McCalla said proceeds from the society’s thrift store allowed them to buy food from organizations like the San Antonio Food Bank, which dispatched food delivery teams to the disaster area and set up donation stations. Kerr County is one of 29 counties the food bank serves in Southwest Texas.
The food bank and Central Texas Food Bank distributed more than 1.36 million pounds of food during the relief effort, according to Feeding Texas.
“We got so many donations directly to us that we were able to put that into a flood relief fund for people coming in that needed help with the flood,” McCalla said.
McCalla, who has been part of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul for 30 years, said the recovery work is still going on. Donations are still helping families impacted by the flood. There are deliveries of appliances and furniture when residents move back home. Along the river, people are planting trees and grass seed. People are still praying for everyone affected by the tragedy.
These days as he walks along the river, McCalla said, there is lingering sadness — but also signs of hope and restoration.
“It’s a daily reminder of the loss of life and devastation,” McCalla said. “It’s also a reminder that the Hill Country will grow back.”
‘Nobody was prepared for that’
It was after midnight when Texas state Rep. Josey Garcia’s cell phone rang. The person on the other end told her that heavy rainfall was spawning devastating flooding in the Hill Country, and people were in need of help.
As morning arrived, Garcia, an Air Force veteran who represents House District 124 in west San Antonio, assembled a team of about a dozen responders and headed out.
“Representing Military City USA as veterans, we take our service more seriously,” Garcia said. “I just know we respond. When people call for help, we go.”
Many on the team were military veterans like Garcia, who was deployed to Africa, Cameroon and Iraq during her time in the Air Force. When they arrived, they saw the force of the floodwaters had twisted trees, swept away homes and pushed debris into two-story tall mounds.
Garcia said the devastation reminded her of a war zone.
“I compare it to Baghdad,” she said. “The devastation was so insane. Nobody was prepared for that.”
Garcia and her team set up a command post at the Kerrville American Legion, before moving to a local VFW center. She received calls from DEA agents in Laredo, frogmen in Canada and cadaver dog trainers in Mexico, all wanting to join the recovery effort. By the end of the first day, they had combined forces to have a full search and recovery team with heavy equipment.
The recovery force, which eventually grew to more than 600 people, formed five teams: ATV/vehicle response, a walking crew, neighborhood relief coordination, supply logistics and livestock and ranch support. Teams worked 16-hour shifts. Volunteers responded to requests for help in Center Point, Comfort, Hunt, Kerrville and Ingram.
Garcia co-founded United America Outreach, a community-based nonprofit whose mission is to deliver clothing, food, and supplies to people in disaster-struck locales. The nonprofit has delivered aid across Texas, supplies to the Texas-Mexico border and meals during the Texas winter storms of 2021.
Garcia said helping those in need is what she and her fellow military veterans were trained to do.
“My team was responsible for bringing home upwards of 40 souls,” Garcia said. “That is something I couldn’t be more proud of.”
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