We live on a ridge south of Kerrville. It’s been raining all night with lightning and thunder. Lulu the dog is definitely going to pee on the carpet, and probably already has.
Greggers gets up real early. Like 4am early, without an alarm clock or anyone telling me too. It’s weird.
It’s a day off – the fourth of July holiday. I was trying to avoid working, but was doing a boring report anyway. Just like every morning, I watched the news until the weather report played and then turned on a YouTube concert – Dylan Gossett Live from Stagecoach.
Kesley introduced us to Dylan’s music. She LOVES it and took us to see his concert at Gruene Hall near New Braunfels this past year. Her dog, Goober, always howls when he hears Dylan Gossett.
Around 7am a friend calls and says he can’t get in touch with Bill. He tells me the flooding is real bad. He’s lived here all his life and has never seen it this bad.
I wake Jenny up (Uncle Jenn) to go see the flood waters like we always do when it floods here. It’s really neat to see water where it shouldn’t be. Last year it flooded really bad, and we went to the bridges – the next picture below is from July 2024 when it flooded Louis Hays Park.
When it does flood here, the water always goes down very quickly because Kerrville is in the hills and the water flows downhill fast.
While Jenn is getting ready, I go back to watching San Antonio news and they’re starting to talk about flooding on the Guadalupe River in Kerrville. They are showing pictures of the river in Comfort, Texas (about a 30 minute drive downstream) and it is flowing normally – low and slow. They are warning people that the water is going to rise.
I’m telling her I want to go cross the bridge at the park, then check on Bill, then go to Comfort to see the flash flood come through Comfort!
We started straight to Bills.
The girls, Kes and Sunny met us near the park to help. We were told the river may rise again, that another wave was coming so we scrambled back to the other side of the river, where our house is in case we couldn’t make it across bridges later.
We checked the hospital. They were overwhelmed, and we were just in the way.
People were wet, cold, asleep on cots. We cleared our wardrobes and closets and helped put the word out that dry stuff was needed.
Around 2pm, there were maybe 100 people milling around Ingram Elementary, the designated reunification center.
They started a list for missing. We added Bill’s name and the picture.
