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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome. It is Verdict was Center Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson
with you. Traditionally you hear the show on Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday. We are coming to you on Tuesday. After
the just tragic flooding in Texas the centers. You've been
down there with the people in Currville and the surrounding
area's comfort. This is action an area that I spend
(00:24):
a ton of time with my family at the Ranch,
and it has hit very close to home for us.
We also have friends who lost a daughter in this
flooding at the Christian camp that so many have talked
about and you've seen in the media, and it is
just so sad and devastating to know that there are
(00:47):
people that are going to be going to that little
girl's funeral on Friday, and to see what it has
done in Houston to people that knew so many that
we were there. You were down there, and it is
obviously sad, but it is also encouraged to see so
many people coming together, so many Texans coming together, so
many people rallying around these families, and it's just horrific time.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well, Ben, you and I are recording this at twelve
thirty six am Monday night, and I spent the entire
day in the Hill Country starting at six am this morning,
and I visited with families who were grieving. I went
to Camp Mystic and saw firsthand the devastation. I will
(01:30):
tell you, there are not words to describe just how
much Texas is hurting. This is across the state and
across the country. People are grieving. They're grieving for the
moms and dads, this flooding. I'll tell you, In my
thirteen years in the Senate, I've seen a lot of
(01:51):
natural disasters, hurricanes and tornadoes and wildfires, and it's always difficult.
But this was something really different what happened in the
Hill Country. Right now, the fatality count it is over
one hundred. It is expected to keep growing.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
They are still searching for and finding bodies right now,
can't Mystic. We know of twenty seven kids and counselors
who lost their lives in the flooding. There are an
additional ten more girls and one more counselor who are missing,
and so there are search and rescue teams that are
(02:35):
searching for them right now. Obviously, every hour every day
that goes by the the the odds of a happy
outcome go down, but we are certainly praying that that
those those eleven girls are found safe and sound. You know,
(03:00):
I want to tell folks a little bit about what
what has happened on the ground and where this is.
So if you're if you're not from Texas, the Hill
Country is in central Texas. It's the center central part
of the state and and it is I think the
most beautiful part of the state. And I think most
most Texans agree with that. Uh. There are rolling hills, Uh,
(03:22):
there are beautiful rivers, and in particular Kerr County, there
are about forty summer camps. And and there's a long
tradition of camps. It's an incredible tradition that goes back
one hundred years where people went and formed these summer
camps because the natural beauty was so extraordinary that it's
(03:45):
it's it's an incredible place for girls and for boys
uh to come and spend typically a month at a time.
And and Camp mystic Is it's one hundred years old.
It is a Christian girl camp. And I will tell
you Camp mystic Is is really an institution in Texas. Uh.
(04:08):
It is you see families from all across Texas who
at the end of of typically the month long camp
session that that there's a two day closing ceremony and
you'll see grandmothers and moms and daughters, three generations of
(04:32):
Texas women that are there, and and and it is
look for me, this is not abstract. Our girls have
have gone to camp in Hunt in Kirk County, UH
for a decade now. And and and actually just last
week Heidi was there picking up Catherine, our youngest daughter
from camp. And and and so this was literally a
(04:53):
week ago that that my daughter was there. She was
at camp that had been there for a month. And
I'll tell you these camp are they teach girls independence
and responsibility and teamwork. And the friendships that are formed
(05:13):
are lifelong friendships. Catherine's best friend is a girl from
the Rio Grand Valley who she would never have met
going to school and grown up in Houston if it
were not for that camp. And they are absolutely inseparable.
Those sorts of friendships you see at the closing ceremony.
You see women in their seventies and eighties with those
(05:37):
same lifelong friendships. And when this flooding hit, it just
devastated camp Mystic, and not just Camp Mystic, but the
entire region. It was the Fourth of July weekend, and
so you had thousands of thousands of people there celebrating
by the river banks. And the Guadalupe River is this
(05:58):
beautiful river that I have have floated on and swam
in dozens of times. It's a gorgeous river. It's wonderful.
People love to swim in it, vacation in it, canoe
in it, and.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
No, it's it's it's part of just the summers in Texas.
That and for people like you mentioned that are outside Texas,
floating the river is just so much fun because you
get I mean these basically they used to be back
in the day, the intertubes of tires. You get these
floats now and you float with your best friends. I
have a friend that actually met his future wife floating
(06:33):
the Guadalupe River. I mean, it's just a community. It's
a slow float, it's very safe. It is something that
you do. We've stayed on that river before, we floated it,
as you mentioned countless times. And on the Fourth of July,
a lot of people go down there camping. You can't
close the river. You bring your rv H and you
do that, and that's what people were doing. As you mentioned,
(06:54):
it was a fourth of July weekend.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Well, and you mentioned RV's the flo flooding. There were
many RVs that were just swept into the river, and
we don't have a count. So I started this morning
by meeting with the mayor and the county judge and
the county commissioners and Texas DPS and the sheriff, and
just getting a report from on the ground. And one
of the challenging things. We have over one hundred confirmed fatalities.
(07:21):
There are a number of bodies that have been discovered,
both adults and kids, that have not been identified yet,
and bodies that have been in the water for an
extended period of time can be difficult to identify visually,
and so they're doing DNA swabs. You know. When this
started happening, it was early in the morning on the
(07:42):
fourth of July. The National Weather Service put out an
emergency warning just after one am. They put out another
emergency warning just after four am, and the waters rose
about thirty feet in less than an hour. Thirty feet
is a lot for an order ordinary calm river to rise. Suddenly,
(08:02):
the flash flood was absolutely devastating. Now, Now, when this
was happening, within hours of the flooding occurring, I was
on the phone speaking with Governor Greg Abbott. I spoke
with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. I spoke with Nim Kidd,
who is head of the Texas Department of Emergency Management,
(08:26):
and I called President Trump and I talked to President
Trump on that first day and I said, mister President,
what is happening in Texas? That this is bad. It
is all indications are this is really really serious. There
could be a lot of fatalities. Information was just starting
(08:47):
to come in, so it was it was hazy, but
I said, this could be really really bad. And President Trump,
to his credit, he said, ted, whatever Texas needs, the
answer is yes. Whatever federal assets you need, the answer
is yes. And that I passed on to the state officials,
to the local officials, and I'll tell you, Ben, Within hours,
(09:07):
I was hearing from families. I was hearing from parents
whose daughters weren't mystic and whose daughters were missing and
they were panicked, and they were saying, can you tell
us anything? Can you do you have any information? And
I was connecting them with the local sheriff, with with
emergency management. And look, you and I are both dads.
(09:31):
It is difficult to imagine the panic, the fear, the bewilderment,
everything those moms and dads were feeling as you get
the news that your daughter is missing. And many of
those parents just drove to Central Texas immediately got in
the car and drove. As I told you, we picked
up our daughter last week from right there.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
And Catherine said to me, said, well, why would the
dads drive there? And I said, sweetheart, that's just that
what you do if you're if your child has lost,
you just go. You'll move heaven and.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Earth it, just do whatever you can. I mean, this
is the same conversation I have with my boys. And
in the ages here, you know, you see these little
girls that are missing, and one of my wife's high
school friend's daughter is one of those that lost your life.
And having that conversation with your kids or the same age.
(10:28):
My twins are six, they could have been at camp,
and my oldest is eight, could have been at camp.
And you put yourself in that situation of just what
would you do, and you're it's exactly what you just said.
You just go. And there's been I also want people
to understand flooding in this region, because I think there's
been a lot of misinformation, uh nationwide on this, so
(10:49):
that people understand the Hill Country and kind of how
it works. There's a lot of rock in the Hill Country,
and so when it rains, the water doesn't absorb into
the land. It does in most places in the country,
like when we get rain in Houston or when I
lived in Dallas, Like it rains and a lot of
the water goes into the earth, and you don't have
(11:10):
this flash flooding, this massive, quick flooding in the Hill Country.
That's what you get when you get rain. But to
be clear, in this part of the Hill Country, they
don't get a lot of rain. They can go hundreds
of days without rain in this area. And so when
it you know, there's a reality of like when it rains,
the locals know that you're gonna have some flooding in
(11:31):
the low lying areas, and you kind of know where
those areas are and where the bridges are and where
the low areas are in the roadways. This is something
that no one had seen in their lifetime. There had
never been flooding like this in Kerrville or in comfort
the way that we are witnessing it now. And so
there's some people I think out there acting like, well
(11:52):
they should, you know, this is something that happened so common.
I've seen comments like that this was catastrophic. You witness
it today.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, it was utterly unprecedented. I went up in a
Coastguard helicopter and I flew a significant portion of the
Guadalupe River, and I will tell you just looking at
the devastation. You know, water, when you have a fast
moving wall of water, nothing stands in its way. There
(12:22):
were cars strewn everywhere, and by the way, when a
car is being thrown and it crashes into a tree,
it destroys the car. But there were thousands and thousands
of trees that were just mowed over by the water
because when water hits a tree, water's a lot stronger
than the trees. And the volume of you saw houses
(12:43):
just taking clean off their foundation and swept into the
river that we were talking about r vs. A lot
of people bring ur vs or in mobile homes and look,
if you're going to a campsidey, you know it's a
Fourth of July weekend, it's a great weekend. And the
problem is r v's and mobile homes are particularly vulnerable
in a flood or tornado or other natural disaster, and
(13:07):
so you just had multiple RVs swept into the river.
They don't have a firm count, they don't know how
many people they're looking for because many of the visitors
were not from Kirk County. And we're just there to
celebrate the Fourth of July. Going down flying that helicopter
and just seeing the extent of the devastation was massive.
(13:35):
And look, but I want to say this this, there's
so much grief in Texas. Our hearts are broken right now.
And their families from from Houston, from Dallas, from Austin,
from San Antonio, from every community in Texas and there,
(13:55):
and they're they're campers who come from all over the
country to come to Camp Mystic, but many of them
from cities in Texas, and many of them You and
I know we have multiple friends who've lost children. My
street at home, around the oak tree in our front yard,
we have a big green ribbon for the girls. I
(14:15):
can't miss it. And if you look at tree after tree,
just going up and down our street, they're green ribbons
on tree after tree after tree. But I want to
I want to give some encouragement. Look, this is unbearably
hard and painful for the state, but in the face
(14:39):
of unspeakable pain, there's also unbelievable courage. And there were
over eight hundred and fifty rescues from that river. We
had early on when I got on the phone and
I worked to make sure that there were there were
federal assets. There went over a dozen helicopters in the air.
(15:01):
We had Coast Guard in the air, we had National
guardsmen in the air, we had DPS in the air,
we had Game wardens on the ground, and they were
rescuing people, pulling them out of harm's way. I met
today with a Coast Guard swimmer, and by the way,
Coast Guard swimmers are incredible. You know. I have analogized
(15:23):
Coastguard swimmers before to kind of a blend of Navy
seals and California surfers, and I've gotten to know several
of these Coast Guard swimmers and Hurricane Harvey, I got
to know them, and they're utterly fearless. These are guys
that jump out of helicopters into hurricane force winds and
waters and just swim and rescue people. And they kind
(15:44):
of you know, often will be just sort of dudes,
like surfer dudes, who are these incredibly fearless life savers. Well,
I met met this one one Coast guardsman who landed
at Camp Mystic. He was on a Coastguard helicopter. They
(16:07):
landed him there and he rescued one hundred and sixty
five girls and I talked with him. His name is
Petty Officer Scott Ruskin. He's twenty six years old. He's
from New Jersey and it was his first mission as
a Coast Guard rescue swimmer. He's due to the Coastguard.
He did a lot of training, but they put him
(16:28):
on the ground there and it was the highest part
part of Camp Mystic, And then they brought in a
whole series of helicopters to helicopter the girls out because
all the roads were underwater, so you couldn't drive in
and get the girls because the roads were completely submerged.
And so he was there. He spent three and a
half hours on the ground at Camp Mystic. Understand there's
(16:49):
torrential rains coming down. He's sitting there with girls, girls
who are terrified, who are crying, who are screaming, who
are scared. Some of them were singing hymns and he's
trying to comfort them. They dropped him off, and he
was the one staying with them and trying to get
the girls that they would come and land helicopters and
(17:11):
they would load about fifteen girls and they'd take take them,
take them to a safe place. They'd come back and
pick up another load, and another load and another load.
So for three and a half hours, you know, when
I visited with him, and it's interesting. He's twenty six
years old. He has kind of short blonde hair and
a mustache, and it's you know, he's done some media
interviews today and one of them he said, I'm just
(17:34):
a dude, which is sort of what what I said
about like the and he was saying and he was
kind of laughing and saying like like he talks to
his commanding officer and sometimes says, hey, dude, He's like,
oh wait, wait, you're a commanding officer. Sorry, But it's
it's kind of just how swimmers are. It's sort of
their culture. But he said he had just gotten off
(17:55):
the phone with a mom and dad and a girl
who he said, and he said they were crying and
he was crying because they said, you saved my daughter's life.
She said that when she was terrified, you held her
hand and just held her hand as you put her
in the helicopter, and and and made her not be
scared for a minute. And I that heroism was happening
(18:17):
over and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
It's it's incredible. It's the best part of the tragedy
is just seeing how quickly people came together. You know.
There there's also another aspect of this, and and I
do want to just take a moment and set the
record straight. There have been some people that have tried
to use this tragedy to score political points. I I
(18:45):
it makes me sad that are that that there's people
on the media, and there's people on the left that
are just that vile and partisan. We even saw, you know,
a pediatrician that actually worked with Mike kids go to
a pediatrician who said that basically, the people deserve what
they get because they voted for Donald Trump in this
(19:06):
area of the country. You know, Thank goodness, it was
exposed and she was fired today for that. It is
it is sad to see this happen. And I even
called her pediatrician's office, and I said, hey, like this,
I need to know that if there's an on call doctor,
they're not going to give my kid bad care if
(19:27):
they know what I do. And they said, watch our website.
You'll be getting an update soon. Thank goodness. They put
out there that this doctor had been had been fired
from this job as a pediatrician. And you look at
these moments and it does make you sad, But I
also think we need to be clear about the record here.
There's a lot of rumors that this was all preventable,
(19:49):
that this was somehow Donald Trump's fault, this was the
fault of defunding of FEMA and different agencies and National
Weather Service. All that is a lie. They were staffed adequately.
There were warnings that went out. Can we learn from
this and do better? Absolutely? Can we put maybe a
warning system on the river banks? So they've talked about
seven years ago, but it was voted down because the
(20:11):
costs and Kirk County that these are things that we
can learn from. But the partisan politics of this and
just watching people try to somehow blame Trump for this tragedy,
it really makes me sad that this is still where
we are in this way when something like this happens.
I wish people could just learn this isn't political. This
(20:33):
storm didn't care if you're a Republican or Democrat, or Agnostic,
or Christian or Jewish or Catholic or anything else. They
didn't care if you were rich or poor, black or white.
Everybody that was in the line of this flooding life
was in danger. That's what people should focus on and
the help we can do to give them, not trying
to say, all right, how do we use this to
make points?
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah, you see this unfortunately frequently after natural disaster, after
hurricanes or or tornadoes or in this case, flooding, that
that that partisans will try to attack their political opponents
and and and and score cheap points. And and there
are a bunch of folks online and both in the
media and and and on the left that are just
(21:16):
trying to attack Trump. And and you know, if there's
a hurricane, the hurricane is Trump's fault. And in this case,
the the sort of talking point of the left was
that that Doge made reductions in different areas of government
and the National Weather Service, they say Doge gutted it. Now,
now we know that that that is not the case.
How do we know that? Number one, because the National
(21:36):
Weather Service in this case put out two warnings, one
as I mentioned, just after one am, one after four am.
UH that that was their job. We also know the
National Weather Service for this region UH was headquarters in
New bron Foals, which is another small town not too
far away from Curville, not too far away from Hunt
and and and the night of of of of this flood,
(21:58):
they not only had full staff, they had three additional people.
Three extra people staffed that evening because they knew it
was going to be a difficult weather event, so they
deliberately staffed up. And lookie, I will say beyond that,
the National Weather Service Union, which has been very critical
of the DOZE reductions, as you would expect the union
(22:18):
to be, they publicly said that that the reductions through
DOGE had zero impact on the National Weather Service's ability
to predict what happened here. And given that they're they're
an entity that is naturally critical of those cuts, I
think that's that speaks volumes now, you know. I spent
(22:39):
the day, I did a lot of a lot of
interviews with a lot of reporters today, and many of
them were saying, okay, well, and they would ask this question.
Many of the reporters would say, well, isn't this all
Trump's fault? And so I tried to say, look, stop
politicizing a crisis that has broken the heart of our state.
But as you noted and listen, with any disag aster,
(23:00):
there's a natural order of events. The first phase is
is search and rescue. It is crisis saving people's lives.
And we have been in that phase. We're still in
that phase looking for these these eleven still missing girls.
But but but that phase will soon come to an end.
(23:23):
The next phase is rebuilding. And then there are many
people who have who have lost their homes, have lost everything,
and the and the rebuilding time phase will will take
It will take months, it may take years for some
of these some of these places to be rebuilt. But
but that's a process. That's a process that there will
be local assistance and state assistants and federal assistants at
(23:43):
the same time. We will when we get through the
crisis period, there will naturally be a retrospective examination of
what happened, what was the exact timeline, and what could
have gone better, what what lessons can be learned and
we've seen that. Uh, for instance, with the many hurricanes.
You know, you and I both live in Houston. If
(24:04):
you live on the Gulf coast, you have a lot
of hurricanes. I will say unfortunately, Texas has gotten really
good with dealing with hurricanes because we have a lot
of practice in it, and so we've learned lessons. We've
learned how to identify the most vulnerable areas, the most
vulnerable populations when a hurricane is in the Gulf, to
get them out of there, to try to minimize fatalities.
And I think we can certainly learn lessons here, in
(24:26):
particular the the you know, you're putting out warnings at
one am and four am. Most people are sleeping at
one am and four am, and every one of us,
if you and I, yeah, yeah, and actually with the
kids of the kids they don't have we knew people.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah. And by the way, there was people that we
knew that were in Curville that received the notices on
their phones. They woke up to them and yeah, they
didn't get them because they were asleep.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
And the cell coverage, I will say, in that region
is is just lousy. Like every time we go for
can't pick up you. It's very hard to get any
cell coverage at all, just just given the topography, there's
not a lot of cell towers there. And it's also
you know, the campers are not allowed to have phones,
(25:21):
and so they leave their phones at home, so it's
just the counselors and adults that have phones. But look, Ben,
if you and I could step in a time machine
right now and go back to two or three in
the morning on the fourth of July, we would run
into those cabins and pull those girls out and get
them out of there. Every one of us. We're just like,
(25:41):
dear God, get them the high ground. And so it
is perfectly reasonable to say, how can we improve the
response from when an emergency warning gets out to make
sure that it is heard. And I'll tell you I
spoke today with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, tech legislator's coming
back for special session shortly, and I suggested to him
(26:04):
this is something that should be on the call. The
governor chooses that, But Lieutenant Governor agreed that it made
sense to look at an emergency warning system along the
guadally Loopy River, much like we have up in the
Texas Panhandle. When there's a tornado, they have sirens that
go off. Because a tornado, like a flash flood, you
(26:25):
get very little warning. It can develop quickly, it could
be devastating, and so they'll set off the alarms. I
think it makes a lot of sense to consider putting
in a warning system like that. So at least if
you had a blaring alarm going off at one or
two or three in the morning, it would wake the
kids up and wake the counselors up and put them
in a position to get the kids out of harm's way.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
No, I couldn't agree with you more in that one.
How does that when you when you look at the
response moving forward? Final question on this, because there are
people that say, hey, we want to make sure, as
you just mentioned this ever happened again. Is this a
cooperation within the State of Texas with the federal government?
Does the State of Texas come first? There's a lot
of people that asked that question. I'd love for you
(27:09):
to answer it. Where does that start?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
So it'll be at every level of government. It'll be
the local level, it'll be at the state level, it'll
be at the federal level, and I think at every
level we're going to have discussions about what can we do,
what makes sense, how do we keep people safe? And look,
this level of devastation, We've never seen anything like it.
(27:36):
But I want to go back to some of the
signs of encouragement. I met with with one family today,
a mom and dad who had a young boy, a
fourteen year old boy, who was at Lahunta, which is
another summer camp for boys. It's right right down right
down the river from Mystic and Lhunta also flooded, and
(28:01):
miraculously nobody was killed. But they said their fourteen year
old son was woken up about three in the morning
and the counselors were telling him, come, come help us,
Let's get the little boys out of harm's way. And
he said they were going and getting getting seven and
eight year old boy, pulling them out of their cabin
and having them swim through rushing water and rescue them.
(28:23):
And I got to tell you this, Mom and dad,
they were there just just hugging. I was hugging them,
and they had tears in their eyes and they were
just and and first of all, their son was alive.
So I just said, praise God. But it was, you know, terrifying,
and and what I did say to the mom and dad,
(28:44):
I said, look that this this trauma, this experience, will
be with your son for the rest of his life.
It will be with both of you for the rest
of your lives. But I said, your son also has
the experience of knowing for the rest of his life.
That is a fourteen year old boy he helped save
the lives of these younger seven, eight, nine year old boys.
(29:05):
That there are there are boys and soon to be
men living because of his heroism in a time of crisis.
And that I heard another story of a counselor who
was in a cabin. The cabin was filled up with water.
His head was just barely sticking above the water where
he could breathe, and with each hand he was holding
(29:28):
up a mattress with a camper on the on the mattress,
and all three of them, the counselor and both campers survived.
Those sorts of acts of heroism happened over and over again.
There's stories of Eagle Scouts who were counselors rescuing young
kids over and over and over again. That was happening repeatedly.
(29:50):
But I'll tell you, Ben, the most difficult thing I
did today is. I went to Camp Mystic, and I
went and walked to the grounds at Camp Mystic, and
I think it may be the most horrifying thing I've
ever seen in my life. You walk through and actually
(30:10):
as you walk through, the river was calm and peaceful
and beautiful, but it rose, and it rose suddenly. And
I will say the press, I think has been less
than clear and honest about how Camp Mystic is it
is set up, because they've described it as saying, well,
(30:33):
the camps for the cabins for the young girls were
down by the river bank and all of the other
cabins were up high. That's not accurate. And walking the grounds,
the cabins are all hundreds of yards removed from the
river bank. There's a lot of distance between the river
and where the cabin is and the cabins are all
about the same elevation. There's some differences, but not massive
(30:55):
differences in elevation between the cabins at Mystic. And I
was talking with one of the longtime employees there who
said there had been a flood decades before and it
had gotten up, it had gotten up and crossed a
little bit of the ground and it had come to
sort of the foundation of one of the buildings that
(31:17):
was not a cabin, but one of the buildings closer
to the river. But it had never gotten close to
the cabins. So that's one thing to understand. People say, well, gosh,
this is prone to floods. Yes, but in the one
hundred years of Camp missed It, there'd never been a
flood where the water had gotten to the cabins. And
in this case, the water was eight feet deep in
(31:39):
the cabins. Walking through and every building you could see
the water line, you could see the water line outside
the buildings, and it was eight feet deep. And in
the cabins the water shattered the windows, it swept the
furniture out. You looked in the cabins and every one
of the cabins, the furniture had been swept out, the
(32:03):
windows were all shattered. And I got to tell you, look,
there was one cabin, it's called the bubble in, and
it's a cabin at missed It where the youngest girls were.
And outside the bubble in were sixteen white crosses, and
(32:30):
on each one of those was the name of a
little girl, and their names that we've read in the paper,
their names of little seven to eight year old girls,
third graders who lost their lives when one of the
crosses was for Dick Eastland, the camp director who drowned
(32:51):
trying to save the girls' lives. And he had spent
he graduated from ut fifty years ago and had spent
fifty years of his life running this camp for girls.
And he was in his suburban. They showed me where
he drowned. It was a couple of hundred yards from
where I was standing. In the river. He was trying
to save the girls in the water swept him away
and he drowned. And the sixteen crosses reading those names.
(33:18):
Two of those little girls go to school with my daughter.
There are third graders at our school. The parents of
one of those little girls lives a block away from me.
(33:39):
And I'll tell you, I just knelt and wept. There
were families there. Ben There was a mom and dad
who was kneeling in front of those crosses, and they
(34:03):
were kissing, kissing the cross and I stood back. I
didn't want to interrupt their grieving, but just watching them.
The mom came to that cabin, the bubble in and
she just broke down in tears in front of every cabin.
(34:27):
There were the children's belongings. There were trunks, there were
electric fans, There were slippers and flip flops and crocs.
There were teddy bears. There were stuffed animals everywhere. These
are little girls, and many of them have their names
(34:47):
on them. And there were moms and dads picking through
the rubble looking for their girls belongings. And I don't
know which of those moms and dads lost a daughter.
We know of twenty seven who were lost, and there
(35:10):
may be more. There are eleven that are missing. And
there were girls picking through the rubble. I don't know
if those girls were campers themselves who had survived. I
don't know if they're siblings who had lost a sibling.
But everyone is walking around. Shell shock doesn't begin to
(35:34):
describe it. They're up on the field. There was a
field that was basically a parking lot for the cars
of councilors, and the waters had thrown the cars on
top of each other. It was like they were matchbox cars,
just flipped over. You saw car after car after cars
(35:55):
stacked on each other, flipped on its side, flip the
over tossed around the dining hall. An entire wall of
the dining hall had been ripped off. They had heavy
wooden tables that filled the dining hall. Every one of
them had been pulled out in the bubble in which
is where a large percentage of the fatalities occurred. The
(36:20):
water swept in and just pulled those girls out the
windows it seeing that, and I saw it first from
the helicopter and you could see all their belongings spread out.
But then standing there and viewing it from the perspective
(36:46):
of a dad. You know, I have helped my daughters
pack their trunks. I've you know, can't pick up every
year you go and pick up your daughter's trunk and
it's a joyful time. Our state is more mourning right now, Ben.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
I tell you, for everyone listening and I say this,
just pray for the people that are affected. Pray for
the people in Texas. Pray for the families who are
still without their their loved ones. They're still trying to
find them. Pray for the moms and the dads who
are planning the funerals as we know people personally that
(37:34):
are doing that and getting ready for that this week.
Pray for the moms. God, please pray for the moms. Yes,
and anything you can do to help with all of that.
There's so many different groups that are helping the people,
and Comfort and Kirk County and and and there are
people that need help. And we focus so much on
the kids, but there's a lot of elderly people that
(37:54):
have been affected by this. There are a lot of
people that lost their lives and all their belongings, and
and and help any way you can with with all
of the nonprofits that are getting involved, that are that
are doing this, and and we're going to keep you updated.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
But I would just and Ben, I want to say,
Ben I want, I want to say three more things
of encouragement. So in Hunt, there's a store that's kind
of a focal point. It's called the Hunt Store, and
and it's right at the junction of two of the highways.
You go up one highway to go to one of
the big camps. You go up another highway to go
(38:32):
up to Mystic and Lahunta And actually Hunta's right across
the street from the Hunt Store. The Hunt Store, the flooded,
the flood utterly gutted it. It's it's just ripped out
in a hollow shell. I went and stopped at the
Hunt Store and just just visited people who were there,
were gathering there, and they'd actually changed the sign where
(38:53):
it said Hunt Store and instead of Hunt Store, they
changed the sign to read Hunt Strong. And you know,
Heidi and Catherine were at the Hunt Store last week.
I mean it's I've been there dozens of times. The
(39:14):
owners were there. I just hugged them and they were
just like residents there who were just there mourning and grieving.
And I'll tell you there was set up. There was
a giant barbecue truck. All right. So this is a
story that is amazing that you're gonna like. It's a
barbecue truck from Rockport. Rockport is a town down on
the Gulf Coast and Rockport when Hurricane Harvey hit, it
(39:39):
devastated the Gulf Coast from from deep East Texas to
south all the way really to Corpus Christie. So that's
a lot of and Rockport is right in there. It's
by Port Ramsas and Rass Pass and Rockport was devastated
by Hurricane Harvey. Well, these guys, and these are big
old Texans with big old beards. They look like z
(40:00):
Top And they said, well, you know when when Hurricane
Harvey hit. There was a group from Hunt, Texas, little
town in the in the hill country that came down
to Rockport and set up a food truck and fed
us when we had lost our homes. And so they
got in a truck and drove up this giant smoker
(40:21):
and griller and they were just giving away free barbecue
and one of the things that's really cool. I was
at in Rockport several times after Hurricane Harven. I was
in all the towns up and down the Gulf Coast,
but I was at that those food trucks. So I
don't recall visiting with someone and hearing that they were
(40:41):
from Hunt down in Rockport, but you know what, in Rockport,
they remembered that. And that's something we see happening, just
Texans coming together. The Cajun Navy from Louisiana came and
and we're there helping people out. That was incredible, And
I just had a chance. I visited with a family.
(41:03):
One dad who introduced me to two little boys and
he said both of them lost some of their closest
friends of the flood, and I just I said, you know,
little kids, and they're not much older than your boys.
They shouldn't have to deal with with death and loss
at that age. But I'll tell you, in that same
(41:27):
parking lot at the Hunt store, there was a car
that had written on the back of it a Bible
verse written in like shaving cream on the back window,
and it was Isaiah forty three too that says when
you go through deep water, I will be with you, amen.
(41:52):
That is Look, you just asked folks to pray. Let
me just underscore that for the moms and dads who
have a yearning, gaping hole in their heart, I think
there is no pain, no agony like losing a child,
and nothing will ever fill that hole. That pain will
(42:13):
never go away. But they need love, they need support,
They need friends, They need families to hug them, to
hold them tight, to just give them a shoulder to
cry on and to hold them up. And I got
to tell you this is a time for the church.
One of the reasons Texas I think we are so
resilient when facing natural disasters is because the church is
(42:36):
strong in Texas and you see, you see church a step.
I started the day actually by visiting with a number
of chaplains who, look, you want to talk about It
was brutal on the chaplains when you're dealing with moms
and dads who've lost their kids and they're just weeping.
Even a chaplain of a man or women of strong faith,
I mean, it rips your heart out to be with
(42:59):
a and who's lost a seven or eight year old daughter.
And right down from the Hunt store there was a
church that had a big sign free barbecue, lunch, and dinner.
All are welcome. And that's what the church should be doing,
is helping and clothing and comforting and taking care of
the needy, and that the church should always be doing that,
(43:22):
but especially in time of crisis. And and I want
to close this pod today, Ben with something I saw
on the internet, and it's a video that was recorded
in a bus that was driving a bus full of
campers from Catmestic after this flooding. And it's a video
(43:46):
recording and you can watch on x there's a video
of it's it's an iPhone or so that is going
along and showing the video as they're driving along and
you can see the wreckage and the wreckage and the
wreckage and everything. But the girls are singing hymns and
Mystic is a Christian camp. And these are girls that
have just been through hell, have been terrified, have lost friends.
(44:10):
Some of these girls have lost siblings. And I want
to close this podcast by just listening to the voices
of these girls singing. And I will tell you I
have a hard time listening to them singing without being
in tears. But I want you to hear them singing
(44:31):
these hymns wounds.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
I'll sort of from the mountain tops say, I want
my world to know the Lord has come to me.
I want to pass it on. I'll sort it from
the mountaintops, raise Scott. I want my world to know
the Lord of them has gone to me. I want
(44:57):
to pass as Gardron.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Tell me like, oh my god, oh my god.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
We ti and shoe mid nays get hoppy, hm oh
(45:27):
see that, uh uh anyone, as you know, I mand
me a section, oh try and te red days.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
I'll be.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
Say shoe me ooh you okay, down my five and
it is right chest masses and all these things shall
be out up to you all lady, our lady, be you.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
So long.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
And the five friend oh by three where the seeds
from them mount the God all that lady
Welcome. It is Verdict was Center Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson
with you. Traditionally you hear the show on Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday. We are coming to you on Tuesday. After
the just tragic flooding in Texas the centers. You've been
down there with the people in Currville and the surrounding
area's comfort. This is action an area that I spend
(00:24):
a ton of time with my family at the Ranch,
and it has hit very close to home for us.
We also have friends who lost a daughter in this
flooding at the Christian camp that so many have talked
about and you've seen in the media, and it is
just so sad and devastating to know that there are
(00:47):
people that are going to be going to that little
girl's funeral on Friday, and to see what it has
done in Houston to people that knew so many that
we were there. You were down there, and it is
obviously sad, but it is also encouraged to see so
many people coming together, so many Texans coming together, so
many people rallying around these families, and it's just horrific time.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well, Ben, you and I are recording this at twelve
thirty six am Monday night, and I spent the entire
day in the Hill Country starting at six am this morning,
and I visited with families who were grieving. I went
to Camp Mystic and saw firsthand the devastation. I will
(01:30):
tell you, there are not words to describe just how
much Texas is hurting. This is across the state and
across the country. People are grieving. They're grieving for the
moms and dads, this flooding. I'll tell you, In my
thirteen years in the Senate, I've seen a lot of
(01:51):
natural disasters, hurricanes and tornadoes and wildfires, and it's always difficult.
But this was something really different what happened in the
Hill Country. Right now, the fatality count it is over
one hundred. It is expected to keep growing.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
They are still searching for and finding bodies right now,
can't Mystic. We know of twenty seven kids and counselors
who lost their lives in the flooding. There are an
additional ten more girls and one more counselor who are missing,
and so there are search and rescue teams that are
(02:35):
searching for them right now. Obviously, every hour every day
that goes by the the the odds of a happy
outcome go down, but we are certainly praying that that
those those eleven girls are found safe and sound. You know,
(03:00):
I want to tell folks a little bit about what
what has happened on the ground and where this is.
So if you're if you're not from Texas, the Hill
Country is in central Texas. It's the center central part
of the state and and it is I think the
most beautiful part of the state. And I think most
most Texans agree with that. Uh. There are rolling hills, Uh,
(03:22):
there are beautiful rivers, and in particular Kerr County, there
are about forty summer camps. And and there's a long
tradition of camps. It's an incredible tradition that goes back
one hundred years where people went and formed these summer
camps because the natural beauty was so extraordinary that it's
(03:45):
it's it's an incredible place for girls and for boys
uh to come and spend typically a month at a time.
And and Camp mystic Is it's one hundred years old.
It is a Christian girl camp. And I will tell
you Camp mystic Is is really an institution in Texas. Uh.
(04:08):
It is you see families from all across Texas who
at the end of of typically the month long camp
session that that there's a two day closing ceremony and
you'll see grandmothers and moms and daughters, three generations of
(04:32):
Texas women that are there, and and and it is
look for me, this is not abstract. Our girls have
have gone to camp in Hunt in Kirk County, UH
for a decade now. And and and actually just last
week Heidi was there picking up Catherine, our youngest daughter
from camp. And and and so this was literally a
(04:53):
week ago that that my daughter was there. She was
at camp that had been there for a month. And
I'll tell you these camp are they teach girls independence
and responsibility and teamwork. And the friendships that are formed
(05:13):
are lifelong friendships. Catherine's best friend is a girl from
the Rio Grand Valley who she would never have met
going to school and grown up in Houston if it
were not for that camp. And they are absolutely inseparable.
Those sorts of friendships you see at the closing ceremony.
You see women in their seventies and eighties with those
(05:37):
same lifelong friendships. And when this flooding hit, it just
devastated camp Mystic, and not just Camp Mystic, but the
entire region. It was the Fourth of July weekend, and
so you had thousands of thousands of people there celebrating
by the river banks. And the Guadalupe River is this
(05:58):
beautiful river that I have have floated on and swam
in dozens of times. It's a gorgeous river. It's wonderful.
People love to swim in it, vacation in it, canoe
in it, and.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
No, it's it's it's part of just the summers in Texas.
That and for people like you mentioned that are outside Texas,
floating the river is just so much fun because you
get I mean these basically they used to be back
in the day, the intertubes of tires. You get these
floats now and you float with your best friends. I
have a friend that actually met his future wife floating
(06:33):
the Guadalupe River. I mean, it's just a community. It's
a slow float, it's very safe. It is something that
you do. We've stayed on that river before, we floated it,
as you mentioned countless times. And on the Fourth of July,
a lot of people go down there camping. You can't
close the river. You bring your rv H and you
do that, and that's what people were doing. As you mentioned,
(06:54):
it was a fourth of July weekend.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Well, and you mentioned RV's the flo flooding. There were
many RVs that were just swept into the river, and
we don't have a count. So I started this morning
by meeting with the mayor and the county judge and
the county commissioners and Texas DPS and the sheriff, and
just getting a report from on the ground. And one
of the challenging things. We have over one hundred confirmed fatalities.
(07:21):
There are a number of bodies that have been discovered,
both adults and kids, that have not been identified yet,
and bodies that have been in the water for an
extended period of time can be difficult to identify visually,
and so they're doing DNA swabs. You know. When this
started happening, it was early in the morning on the
(07:42):
fourth of July. The National Weather Service put out an
emergency warning just after one am. They put out another
emergency warning just after four am, and the waters rose
about thirty feet in less than an hour. Thirty feet
is a lot for an order ordinary calm river to rise. Suddenly,
(08:02):
the flash flood was absolutely devastating. Now, Now, when this
was happening, within hours of the flooding occurring, I was
on the phone speaking with Governor Greg Abbott. I spoke
with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. I spoke with Nim Kidd,
who is head of the Texas Department of Emergency Management,
(08:26):
and I called President Trump and I talked to President
Trump on that first day and I said, mister President,
what is happening in Texas? That this is bad. It
is all indications are this is really really serious. There
could be a lot of fatalities. Information was just starting
(08:47):
to come in, so it was it was hazy, but
I said, this could be really really bad. And President Trump,
to his credit, he said, ted, whatever Texas needs, the
answer is yes. Whatever federal assets you need, the answer
is yes. And that I passed on to the state officials,
to the local officials, and I'll tell you, Ben, Within hours,
(09:07):
I was hearing from families. I was hearing from parents
whose daughters weren't mystic and whose daughters were missing and
they were panicked, and they were saying, can you tell
us anything? Can you do you have any information? And
I was connecting them with the local sheriff, with with
emergency management. And look, you and I are both dads.
(09:31):
It is difficult to imagine the panic, the fear, the bewilderment,
everything those moms and dads were feeling as you get
the news that your daughter is missing. And many of
those parents just drove to Central Texas immediately got in
the car and drove. As I told you, we picked
up our daughter last week from right there.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
And Catherine said to me, said, well, why would the
dads drive there? And I said, sweetheart, that's just that
what you do if you're if your child has lost,
you just go. You'll move heaven and.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Earth it, just do whatever you can. I mean, this
is the same conversation I have with my boys. And
in the ages here, you know, you see these little
girls that are missing, and one of my wife's high
school friend's daughter is one of those that lost your life.
And having that conversation with your kids or the same age.
(10:28):
My twins are six, they could have been at camp,
and my oldest is eight, could have been at camp.
And you put yourself in that situation of just what
would you do, and you're it's exactly what you just said.
You just go. And there's been I also want people
to understand flooding in this region, because I think there's
been a lot of misinformation, uh nationwide on this, so
(10:49):
that people understand the Hill Country and kind of how
it works. There's a lot of rock in the Hill Country,
and so when it rains, the water doesn't absorb into
the land. It does in most places in the country,
like when we get rain in Houston or when I
lived in Dallas, Like it rains and a lot of
the water goes into the earth, and you don't have
(11:10):
this flash flooding, this massive, quick flooding in the Hill Country.
That's what you get when you get rain. But to
be clear, in this part of the Hill Country, they
don't get a lot of rain. They can go hundreds
of days without rain in this area. And so when
it you know, there's a reality of like when it rains,
the locals know that you're gonna have some flooding in
(11:31):
the low lying areas, and you kind of know where
those areas are and where the bridges are and where
the low areas are in the roadways. This is something
that no one had seen in their lifetime. There had
never been flooding like this in Kerrville or in comfort
the way that we are witnessing it now. And so
there's some people I think out there acting like, well
(11:52):
they should, you know, this is something that happened so common.
I've seen comments like that this was catastrophic. You witness
it today.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, it was utterly unprecedented. I went up in a
Coastguard helicopter and I flew a significant portion of the
Guadalupe River, and I will tell you just looking at
the devastation. You know, water, when you have a fast
moving wall of water, nothing stands in its way. There
(12:22):
were cars strewn everywhere, and by the way, when a
car is being thrown and it crashes into a tree,
it destroys the car. But there were thousands and thousands
of trees that were just mowed over by the water
because when water hits a tree, water's a lot stronger
than the trees. And the volume of you saw houses
(12:43):
just taking clean off their foundation and swept into the
river that we were talking about r vs. A lot
of people bring ur vs or in mobile homes and look,
if you're going to a campsidey, you know it's a
Fourth of July weekend, it's a great weekend. And the
problem is r v's and mobile homes are particularly vulnerable
in a flood or tornado or other natural disaster, and
(13:07):
so you just had multiple RVs swept into the river.
They don't have a firm count, they don't know how
many people they're looking for because many of the visitors
were not from Kirk County. And we're just there to
celebrate the Fourth of July. Going down flying that helicopter
and just seeing the extent of the devastation was massive.
(13:35):
And look, but I want to say this this, there's
so much grief in Texas. Our hearts are broken right now.
And their families from from Houston, from Dallas, from Austin,
from San Antonio, from every community in Texas and there,
(13:55):
and they're they're campers who come from all over the
country to come to Camp Mystic, but many of them
from cities in Texas, and many of them You and
I know we have multiple friends who've lost children. My
street at home, around the oak tree in our front yard,
we have a big green ribbon for the girls. I
(14:15):
can't miss it. And if you look at tree after tree,
just going up and down our street, they're green ribbons
on tree after tree after tree. But I want to
I want to give some encouragement. Look, this is unbearably
hard and painful for the state, but in the face
(14:39):
of unspeakable pain, there's also unbelievable courage. And there were
over eight hundred and fifty rescues from that river. We
had early on when I got on the phone and
I worked to make sure that there were there were
federal assets. There went over a dozen helicopters in the air.
(15:01):
We had Coast Guard in the air, we had National
guardsmen in the air, we had DPS in the air,
we had Game wardens on the ground, and they were
rescuing people, pulling them out of harm's way. I met
today with a Coast Guard swimmer, and by the way,
Coast Guard swimmers are incredible. You know. I have analogized
(15:23):
Coastguard swimmers before to kind of a blend of Navy
seals and California surfers, and I've gotten to know several
of these Coast Guard swimmers and Hurricane Harvey, I got
to know them, and they're utterly fearless. These are guys
that jump out of helicopters into hurricane force winds and
waters and just swim and rescue people. And they kind
(15:44):
of you know, often will be just sort of dudes,
like surfer dudes, who are these incredibly fearless life savers. Well,
I met met this one one Coast guardsman who landed
at Camp Mystic. He was on a Coastguard helicopter. They
(16:07):
landed him there and he rescued one hundred and sixty
five girls and I talked with him. His name is
Petty Officer Scott Ruskin. He's twenty six years old. He's
from New Jersey and it was his first mission as
a Coast Guard rescue swimmer. He's due to the Coastguard.
He did a lot of training, but they put him
(16:28):
on the ground there and it was the highest part
part of Camp Mystic, And then they brought in a
whole series of helicopters to helicopter the girls out because
all the roads were underwater, so you couldn't drive in
and get the girls because the roads were completely submerged.
And so he was there. He spent three and a
half hours on the ground at Camp Mystic. Understand there's
(16:49):
torrential rains coming down. He's sitting there with girls, girls
who are terrified, who are crying, who are screaming, who
are scared. Some of them were singing hymns and he's
trying to comfort them. They dropped him off, and he
was the one staying with them and trying to get
the girls that they would come and land helicopters and
(17:11):
they would load about fifteen girls and they'd take take them,
take them to a safe place. They'd come back and
pick up another load, and another load and another load.
So for three and a half hours, you know, when
I visited with him, and it's interesting. He's twenty six
years old. He has kind of short blonde hair and
a mustache, and it's you know, he's done some media
interviews today and one of them he said, I'm just
(17:34):
a dude, which is sort of what what I said
about like the and he was saying and he was
kind of laughing and saying like like he talks to
his commanding officer and sometimes says, hey, dude, He's like,
oh wait, wait, you're a commanding officer. Sorry, But it's
it's kind of just how swimmers are. It's sort of
their culture. But he said he had just gotten off
(17:55):
the phone with a mom and dad and a girl
who he said, and he said they were crying and
he was crying because they said, you saved my daughter's life.
She said that when she was terrified, you held her
hand and just held her hand as you put her
in the helicopter, and and and made her not be
scared for a minute. And I that heroism was happening
(18:17):
over and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
It's it's incredible. It's the best part of the tragedy
is just seeing how quickly people came together. You know.
There there's also another aspect of this, and and I
do want to just take a moment and set the
record straight. There have been some people that have tried
to use this tragedy to score political points. I I
(18:45):
it makes me sad that are that that there's people
on the media, and there's people on the left that
are just that vile and partisan. We even saw, you know,
a pediatrician that actually worked with Mike kids go to
a pediatrician who said that basically, the people deserve what
they get because they voted for Donald Trump in this
(19:06):
area of the country. You know, Thank goodness, it was
exposed and she was fired today for that. It is
it is sad to see this happen. And I even
called her pediatrician's office, and I said, hey, like this,
I need to know that if there's an on call doctor,
they're not going to give my kid bad care if
(19:27):
they know what I do. And they said, watch our website.
You'll be getting an update soon. Thank goodness. They put
out there that this doctor had been had been fired
from this job as a pediatrician. And you look at
these moments and it does make you sad, But I
also think we need to be clear about the record here.
There's a lot of rumors that this was all preventable,
(19:49):
that this was somehow Donald Trump's fault, this was the
fault of defunding of FEMA and different agencies and National
Weather Service. All that is a lie. They were staffed adequately.
There were warnings that went out. Can we learn from
this and do better? Absolutely? Can we put maybe a
warning system on the river banks? So they've talked about
seven years ago, but it was voted down because the
(20:11):
costs and Kirk County that these are things that we
can learn from. But the partisan politics of this and
just watching people try to somehow blame Trump for this tragedy,
it really makes me sad that this is still where
we are in this way when something like this happens.
I wish people could just learn this isn't political. This
(20:33):
storm didn't care if you're a Republican or Democrat, or Agnostic,
or Christian or Jewish or Catholic or anything else. They
didn't care if you were rich or poor, black or white.
Everybody that was in the line of this flooding life
was in danger. That's what people should focus on and
the help we can do to give them, not trying
to say, all right, how do we use this to
make points?
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah, you see this unfortunately frequently after natural disaster, after
hurricanes or or tornadoes or in this case, flooding, that
that that partisans will try to attack their political opponents
and and and and score cheap points. And and there
are a bunch of folks online and both in the
media and and and on the left that are just
(21:16):
trying to attack Trump. And and you know, if there's
a hurricane, the hurricane is Trump's fault. And in this case,
the the sort of talking point of the left was
that that Doge made reductions in different areas of government
and the National Weather Service, they say Doge gutted it. Now,
now we know that that that is not the case.
How do we know that? Number one, because the National
(21:36):
Weather Service in this case put out two warnings, one
as I mentioned, just after one am, one after four am.
UH that that was their job. We also know the
National Weather Service for this region UH was headquarters in
New bron Foals, which is another small town not too
far away from Curville, not too far away from Hunt
and and and the night of of of of this flood,
(21:58):
they not only had full staff, they had three additional people.
Three extra people staffed that evening because they knew it
was going to be a difficult weather event, so they
deliberately staffed up. And lookie, I will say beyond that,
the National Weather Service Union, which has been very critical
of the DOZE reductions, as you would expect the union
(22:18):
to be, they publicly said that that the reductions through
DOGE had zero impact on the National Weather Service's ability
to predict what happened here. And given that they're they're
an entity that is naturally critical of those cuts, I
think that's that speaks volumes now, you know. I spent
(22:39):
the day, I did a lot of a lot of
interviews with a lot of reporters today, and many of
them were saying, okay, well, and they would ask this question.
Many of the reporters would say, well, isn't this all
Trump's fault? And so I tried to say, look, stop
politicizing a crisis that has broken the heart of our state.
But as you noted and listen, with any disag aster,
(23:00):
there's a natural order of events. The first phase is
is search and rescue. It is crisis saving people's lives.
And we have been in that phase. We're still in
that phase looking for these these eleven still missing girls.
But but but that phase will soon come to an end.
(23:23):
The next phase is rebuilding. And then there are many
people who have who have lost their homes, have lost everything,
and the and the rebuilding time phase will will take
It will take months, it may take years for some
of these some of these places to be rebuilt. But
but that's a process. That's a process that there will
be local assistance and state assistants and federal assistants at
(23:43):
the same time. We will when we get through the
crisis period, there will naturally be a retrospective examination of
what happened, what was the exact timeline, and what could
have gone better, what what lessons can be learned and
we've seen that. Uh, for instance, with the many hurricanes.
You know, you and I both live in Houston. If
(24:04):
you live on the Gulf coast, you have a lot
of hurricanes. I will say unfortunately, Texas has gotten really
good with dealing with hurricanes because we have a lot
of practice in it, and so we've learned lessons. We've
learned how to identify the most vulnerable areas, the most
vulnerable populations when a hurricane is in the Gulf, to
get them out of there, to try to minimize fatalities.
And I think we can certainly learn lessons here, in
(24:26):
particular the the you know, you're putting out warnings at
one am and four am. Most people are sleeping at
one am and four am, and every one of us,
if you and I, yeah, yeah, and actually with the
kids of the kids they don't have we knew people.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah. And by the way, there was people that we
knew that were in Curville that received the notices on
their phones. They woke up to them and yeah, they
didn't get them because they were asleep.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
And the cell coverage, I will say, in that region
is is just lousy. Like every time we go for
can't pick up you. It's very hard to get any
cell coverage at all, just just given the topography, there's
not a lot of cell towers there. And it's also
you know, the campers are not allowed to have phones,
(25:21):
and so they leave their phones at home, so it's
just the counselors and adults that have phones. But look, Ben,
if you and I could step in a time machine
right now and go back to two or three in
the morning on the fourth of July, we would run
into those cabins and pull those girls out and get
them out of there. Every one of us. We're just like,
(25:41):
dear God, get them the high ground. And so it
is perfectly reasonable to say, how can we improve the
response from when an emergency warning gets out to make
sure that it is heard. And I'll tell you I
spoke today with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, tech legislator's coming
back for special session shortly, and I suggested to him
(26:04):
this is something that should be on the call. The
governor chooses that, But Lieutenant Governor agreed that it made
sense to look at an emergency warning system along the
guadally Loopy River, much like we have up in the
Texas Panhandle. When there's a tornado, they have sirens that
go off. Because a tornado, like a flash flood, you
(26:25):
get very little warning. It can develop quickly, it could
be devastating, and so they'll set off the alarms. I
think it makes a lot of sense to consider putting
in a warning system like that. So at least if
you had a blaring alarm going off at one or
two or three in the morning, it would wake the
kids up and wake the counselors up and put them
in a position to get the kids out of harm's way.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
No, I couldn't agree with you more in that one.
How does that when you when you look at the
response moving forward? Final question on this, because there are
people that say, hey, we want to make sure, as
you just mentioned this ever happened again. Is this a
cooperation within the State of Texas with the federal government?
Does the State of Texas come first? There's a lot
of people that asked that question. I'd love for you
(27:09):
to answer it. Where does that start?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
So it'll be at every level of government. It'll be
the local level, it'll be at the state level, it'll
be at the federal level, and I think at every
level we're going to have discussions about what can we do,
what makes sense, how do we keep people safe? And look,
this level of devastation, We've never seen anything like it.
(27:36):
But I want to go back to some of the
signs of encouragement. I met with with one family today,
a mom and dad who had a young boy, a
fourteen year old boy, who was at Lahunta, which is
another summer camp for boys. It's right right down right
down the river from Mystic and Lhunta also flooded, and
(28:01):
miraculously nobody was killed. But they said their fourteen year
old son was woken up about three in the morning
and the counselors were telling him, come, come help us,
Let's get the little boys out of harm's way. And
he said they were going and getting getting seven and
eight year old boy, pulling them out of their cabin
and having them swim through rushing water and rescue them.
(28:23):
And I got to tell you this, Mom and dad,
they were there just just hugging. I was hugging them,
and they had tears in their eyes and they were
just and and first of all, their son was alive.
So I just said, praise God. But it was, you know, terrifying,
and and what I did say to the mom and dad,
(28:44):
I said, look that this this trauma, this experience, will
be with your son for the rest of his life.
It will be with both of you for the rest
of your lives. But I said, your son also has
the experience of knowing for the rest of his life.
That is a fourteen year old boy he helped save
the lives of these younger seven, eight, nine year old boys.
(29:05):
That there are there are boys and soon to be
men living because of his heroism in a time of crisis.
And that I heard another story of a counselor who
was in a cabin. The cabin was filled up with water.
His head was just barely sticking above the water where
he could breathe, and with each hand he was holding
(29:28):
up a mattress with a camper on the on the mattress,
and all three of them, the counselor and both campers survived.
Those sorts of acts of heroism happened over and over again.
There's stories of Eagle Scouts who were counselors rescuing young
kids over and over and over again. That was happening repeatedly.
(29:50):
But I'll tell you, Ben, the most difficult thing I
did today is. I went to Camp Mystic, and I
went and walked to the grounds at Camp Mystic, and
I think it may be the most horrifying thing I've
ever seen in my life. You walk through and actually
(30:10):
as you walk through, the river was calm and peaceful
and beautiful, but it rose, and it rose suddenly. And
I will say the press, I think has been less
than clear and honest about how Camp Mystic is it
is set up, because they've described it as saying, well,
(30:33):
the camps for the cabins for the young girls were
down by the river bank and all of the other
cabins were up high. That's not accurate. And walking the grounds,
the cabins are all hundreds of yards removed from the
river bank. There's a lot of distance between the river
and where the cabin is and the cabins are all
about the same elevation. There's some differences, but not massive
(30:55):
differences in elevation between the cabins at Mystic. And I
was talking with one of the longtime employees there who
said there had been a flood decades before and it
had gotten up, it had gotten up and crossed a
little bit of the ground and it had come to
sort of the foundation of one of the buildings that
(31:17):
was not a cabin, but one of the buildings closer
to the river. But it had never gotten close to
the cabins. So that's one thing to understand. People say, well, gosh,
this is prone to floods. Yes, but in the one
hundred years of Camp missed It, there'd never been a
flood where the water had gotten to the cabins. And
in this case, the water was eight feet deep in
(31:39):
the cabins. Walking through and every building you could see
the water line, you could see the water line outside
the buildings, and it was eight feet deep. And in
the cabins the water shattered the windows, it swept the
furniture out. You looked in the cabins and every one
of the cabins, the furniture had been swept out, the
(32:03):
windows were all shattered. And I got to tell you, look,
there was one cabin, it's called the bubble in, and
it's a cabin at missed It where the youngest girls were.
And outside the bubble in were sixteen white crosses, and
(32:30):
on each one of those was the name of a
little girl, and their names that we've read in the paper,
their names of little seven to eight year old girls,
third graders who lost their lives when one of the
crosses was for Dick Eastland, the camp director who drowned
(32:51):
trying to save the girls' lives. And he had spent
he graduated from ut fifty years ago and had spent
fifty years of his life running this camp for girls.
And he was in his suburban. They showed me where
he drowned. It was a couple of hundred yards from
where I was standing. In the river. He was trying
to save the girls in the water swept him away
and he drowned. And the sixteen crosses reading those names.
(33:18):
Two of those little girls go to school with my daughter.
There are third graders at our school. The parents of
one of those little girls lives a block away from me.
(33:39):
And I'll tell you, I just knelt and wept. There
were families there. Ben There was a mom and dad
who was kneeling in front of those crosses, and they
(34:03):
were kissing, kissing the cross and I stood back. I
didn't want to interrupt their grieving, but just watching them.
The mom came to that cabin, the bubble in and
she just broke down in tears in front of every cabin.
(34:27):
There were the children's belongings. There were trunks, there were
electric fans, There were slippers and flip flops and crocs.
There were teddy bears. There were stuffed animals everywhere. These
are little girls, and many of them have their names
(34:47):
on them. And there were moms and dads picking through
the rubble looking for their girls belongings. And I don't
know which of those moms and dads lost a daughter.
We know of twenty seven who were lost, and there
(35:10):
may be more. There are eleven that are missing. And
there were girls picking through the rubble. I don't know
if those girls were campers themselves who had survived. I
don't know if they're siblings who had lost a sibling.
But everyone is walking around. Shell shock doesn't begin to
(35:34):
describe it. They're up on the field. There was a
field that was basically a parking lot for the cars
of councilors, and the waters had thrown the cars on
top of each other. It was like they were matchbox cars,
just flipped over. You saw car after car after cars
(35:55):
stacked on each other, flipped on its side, flip the
over tossed around the dining hall. An entire wall of
the dining hall had been ripped off. They had heavy
wooden tables that filled the dining hall. Every one of
them had been pulled out in the bubble in which
is where a large percentage of the fatalities occurred. The
(36:20):
water swept in and just pulled those girls out the
windows it seeing that, and I saw it first from
the helicopter and you could see all their belongings spread out.
But then standing there and viewing it from the perspective
(36:46):
of a dad. You know, I have helped my daughters
pack their trunks. I've you know, can't pick up every
year you go and pick up your daughter's trunk and
it's a joyful time. Our state is more mourning right now, Ben.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
I tell you, for everyone listening and I say this,
just pray for the people that are affected. Pray for
the people in Texas. Pray for the families who are
still without their their loved ones. They're still trying to
find them. Pray for the moms and the dads who
are planning the funerals as we know people personally that
(37:34):
are doing that and getting ready for that this week.
Pray for the moms. God, please pray for the moms. Yes,
and anything you can do to help with all of that.
There's so many different groups that are helping the people,
and Comfort and Kirk County and and and there are
people that need help. And we focus so much on
the kids, but there's a lot of elderly people that
(37:54):
have been affected by this. There are a lot of
people that lost their lives and all their belongings, and
and and help any way you can with with all
of the nonprofits that are getting involved, that are that
are doing this, and and we're going to keep you updated.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
But I would just and Ben, I want to say,
Ben I want, I want to say three more things
of encouragement. So in Hunt, there's a store that's kind
of a focal point. It's called the Hunt Store, and
and it's right at the junction of two of the highways.
You go up one highway to go to one of
the big camps. You go up another highway to go
(38:32):
up to Mystic and Lahunta And actually Hunta's right across
the street from the Hunt Store. The Hunt Store, the flooded,
the flood utterly gutted it. It's it's just ripped out
in a hollow shell. I went and stopped at the
Hunt Store and just just visited people who were there,
were gathering there, and they'd actually changed the sign where
(38:53):
it said Hunt Store and instead of Hunt Store, they
changed the sign to read Hunt Strong. And you know,
Heidi and Catherine were at the Hunt Store last week.
I mean it's I've been there dozens of times. The
(39:14):
owners were there. I just hugged them and they were
just like residents there who were just there mourning and grieving.
And I'll tell you there was set up. There was
a giant barbecue truck. All right. So this is a
story that is amazing that you're gonna like. It's a
barbecue truck from Rockport. Rockport is a town down on
the Gulf Coast and Rockport when Hurricane Harvey hit, it
(39:39):
devastated the Gulf Coast from from deep East Texas to
south all the way really to Corpus Christie. So that's
a lot of and Rockport is right in there. It's
by Port Ramsas and Rass Pass and Rockport was devastated
by Hurricane Harvey. Well, these guys, and these are big
old Texans with big old beards. They look like z
(40:00):
Top And they said, well, you know when when Hurricane
Harvey hit. There was a group from Hunt, Texas, little
town in the in the hill country that came down
to Rockport and set up a food truck and fed
us when we had lost our homes. And so they
got in a truck and drove up this giant smoker
(40:21):
and griller and they were just giving away free barbecue
and one of the things that's really cool. I was
at in Rockport several times after Hurricane Harven. I was
in all the towns up and down the Gulf Coast,
but I was at that those food trucks. So I
don't recall visiting with someone and hearing that they were
(40:41):
from Hunt down in Rockport, but you know what, in Rockport,
they remembered that. And that's something we see happening, just
Texans coming together. The Cajun Navy from Louisiana came and
and we're there helping people out. That was incredible, And
I just had a chance. I visited with a family.
(41:03):
One dad who introduced me to two little boys and
he said both of them lost some of their closest
friends of the flood, and I just I said, you know,
little kids, and they're not much older than your boys.
They shouldn't have to deal with with death and loss
at that age. But I'll tell you, in that same
(41:27):
parking lot at the Hunt store, there was a car
that had written on the back of it a Bible
verse written in like shaving cream on the back window,
and it was Isaiah forty three too that says when
you go through deep water, I will be with you, amen.
(41:52):
That is Look, you just asked folks to pray. Let
me just underscore that for the moms and dads who
have a yearning, gaping hole in their heart, I think
there is no pain, no agony like losing a child,
and nothing will ever fill that hole. That pain will
(42:13):
never go away. But they need love, they need support,
They need friends, They need families to hug them, to
hold them tight, to just give them a shoulder to
cry on and to hold them up. And I got
to tell you this is a time for the church.
One of the reasons Texas I think we are so
resilient when facing natural disasters is because the church is
(42:36):
strong in Texas and you see, you see church a step.
I started the day actually by visiting with a number
of chaplains who, look, you want to talk about It
was brutal on the chaplains when you're dealing with moms
and dads who've lost their kids and they're just weeping.
Even a chaplain of a man or women of strong faith,
I mean, it rips your heart out to be with
(42:59):
a and who's lost a seven or eight year old daughter.
And right down from the Hunt store there was a
church that had a big sign free barbecue, lunch, and dinner.
All are welcome. And that's what the church should be doing,
is helping and clothing and comforting and taking care of
the needy, and that the church should always be doing that,
(43:22):
but especially in time of crisis. And and I want
to close this pod today, Ben with something I saw
on the internet, and it's a video that was recorded
in a bus that was driving a bus full of
campers from Catmestic after this flooding. And it's a video
(43:46):
recording and you can watch on x there's a video
of it's it's an iPhone or so that is going
along and showing the video as they're driving along and
you can see the wreckage and the wreckage and the
wreckage and everything. But the girls are singing hymns and
Mystic is a Christian camp. And these are girls that
have just been through hell, have been terrified, have lost friends.
(44:10):
Some of these girls have lost siblings. And I want
to close this podcast by just listening to the voices
of these girls singing. And I will tell you I
have a hard time listening to them singing without being
in tears. But I want you to hear them singing
(44:31):
these hymns wounds.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
I'll sort of from the mountain tops say, I want
my world to know the Lord has come to me.
I want to pass it on. I'll sort it from
the mountaintops, raise Scott. I want my world to know
the Lord of them has gone to me. I want
(44:57):
to pass as Gardron.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Tell me like, oh my god, oh my god.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
We ti and shoe mid nays get hoppy, hm oh
(45:27):
see that, uh uh anyone, as you know, I mand
me a section, oh try and te red days.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
I'll be.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
Say shoe me ooh you okay, down my five and
it is right chest masses and all these things shall
be out up to you all lady, our lady, be you.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
So long.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
And the five friend oh by three where the seeds
from them mount the God all that lady
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