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July 9, 2025 56 mins

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends affected by this tragedy. If you wish to help please click on the link provided: Kerr County Flood Relief Fund 

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome. It is Verdict with Center, Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson
with you, and it's so nice to have you with
us on the program. Today, Senator, We're going to be
covering yet again the horrific flooding in Texas and get
people up to date on the latest information that you have.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Right now, well five days into it, we have one
hundred and nine people who've been killed in the flooding
in the Hill Country of Texas. There are still a
significant number of people that are missing. We know of
at least twenty seven campers and counselors that were killed
at Camp Mystic. Those numbers may grow. The one hundred
and nine is likely to grow. And I have to say,

(00:39):
just having spent all day yesterday on the ground in
the Hill Country, the devastation, I got to tell you,
as bad as you think it is, it's worse. It
is being on the ground and Camp Mystic. And later
in this podcast, I'm going to walk you through exactly
what is going on in Camp Mystic, what the state is.

(01:02):
It is the most horrific thing I've ever seen, and
it is look, I got to say, the whole state
of Texas we are grieving we're mourning, but the whole
country is morning. Everyone particularly had anyone who's a parent,
the nightmare of losing your child, and losing your child
to this kind of disaster, going from joy and celebration

(01:24):
dropping your kid off at summer camp to have an
incredible experience just days later being swept away by floodwaters.
It is horrific and we're hurting. We're hurting right.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
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(03:22):
make the switch today. So, Senator, we've had a lot
that's happened since we put out that podcast yesterday. Usually
we published a show on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I
know mini are tuning in this morning that may have
missed part of that, and we're going to talk about
and play some of that for you in a moment.
But catch us up to the latest briefings you've received
in the last twenty four hours.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Well, look, I want to read you a story that
was published in the Wall Street Journal and it was
entitled A Texas dad tried to kayak to his daughters.
The girls texted I love you, and the story focuses
on the Harbor family that spent holiday at a cabin
they owned at cassabidneda cabin community near Hunt, Texas. Around

(04:05):
three thirty a m. On Friday, R J. Harbor was
awakened by pounding rain, thunder and lightning. Hours earlier. He'd
received flash flood warnings for other areas, but not where
he was staying. R J, who was a forty five
year old father and Dallas lawyer who had been vacationing
and going to summer camp in this area his whole life,
thought the river might rise a little. He wanted to

(04:27):
check on his two young daughters, eleven year old Brook
and thirteen year old Blair. The girls were staying in
a borrowed cabin closer to the river with their grandparents,
Mike and Charlene Harbor. R J said he thought he
would also clear away a kayak and some fishing geary
was keeping by the river. He put his foot down

(04:49):
on the floor of his cabin and felt about four
inches of water. RJ turned to his wife, who was
laying in bed beside him, also awake. He told her Annie,
the cabin's flo flooding. RJ could see the water rushing
in through the front door. He tried to open the door,
but he couldn't. He looked out the window and saw
the water level was about two feet below the window.

(05:12):
We need to get out right now, RJ told Annie.
They grabbed a few items, their cell phones in a
bag they had no unpacked. By the time they jumped
out the window, about two minutes later, the water had
reached up to Annie's neck. The Harbors hurried to another
cabin nearby on slightly higher ground, then knocked on the
door and woke the family. By the time the family

(05:34):
came to the door, the water was almost at their door.
They went to another cabin and woke a third family
as well. RJ borrowed a kayak, a life vest, and
a flashlight. He started to kayak to the cabin where
the couple's daughters and RJ's parents were standing. It was
about one hundred feet below and he reached about half
way when RJ said a swell knocked him into a post.

(05:58):
I shined a flashlight out there, and I could see
it was white water, and I've kayaked enough to know
that was going to be impossible. He could see an
entire cabin had been detached from its foundation and was
stuck against the side of the cabin where his daughters
and parents were staying. There were cars floating at me

(06:22):
and trees floating at me. I knew if I took
even one stroke further, it was going to be a
death sentence. RJ turned around to get his wife in
the remaining families. They went to a home nearby on
higher ground across Highway thirty nine, where a family left
them in about three forty five am. That was when

(06:44):
he checked his cell phone and he saw a text
sent at three thirty am from his daughter Brooke. Receiving
the text alone was a miracle in the area. Where
he usually couldn't get cell serviced. It said I love you.
Annie forty three, worked at Saint Rita's Catholic School, which

(07:07):
both girls attended, received texts from both Brook and Blair,
time stamped at three thirty a m. That said I
love you. Their other grandfather, lives in Michigan, received text
with love you and a photo of the girls with him.
The Harbors and the other families waited without power all night,

(07:30):
hearing horrible sounds. The next morning, they realized they had
been hearing the cabins being ripped off their foundations and
crashing apart. At sunrise, the water had finally receded enough
for r J to go back to the site. Only
a half dozen of the community's twenty something cabins were
still standing. The others had been ripped from the foundations,

(07:55):
leaving only their tile floors. The cabin where Blair, brook
and their grandparents and been staying was completely washed away.
Blair and Brooks bodies were found and identified about a
dozen miles from the cabin. Their grandfather's bodies was recovered

(08:15):
on Monday. Their grandmother that was unaccounted for as of
Monday afternoon. Can you imagine ben No. The last thing
you hear from your child is a text I love
you as the cabin they're in is swept into the

(08:37):
river and they're on their way to their death. This
happened over and over and over again that night.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
It is another reminder of just how quick things happen.
It's a reminder of just how unprecedented this type of
flooding was. It's a reminder, I think, to those trying
to put aside this, how much this should never have
been politicized and try to turn this into a talking

(09:07):
point for politics, because as I said yesterday, there is
no one that was involved in this in those moments
was thinking about if you're a Republican or Democrat or
rich orpore No.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
Pray for Texas, Pray for these parents, Pray for these
moms and dads, Pray for these grandparents, Pray for these
brothers and sisters. The agony, the pain, it is, it
is unreal and and and we have Texans and Americans
hurting tonight.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Aim into that. We do know that President Trump is
pointing on coming down to Texas, and I think there's
a lot of people that are going to want to
see their president, their commander in chief down in Texas.
That White House has said that that they're going to
be there, and that's going to help I think with
certainly some of the healing as well.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
Absolutely, I'm very glad the President is coming. It's the
right thing to do.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
I want to go back to what many of you
may have missed yesterday. Senator Cruz was down in the center,
the epicenter of where everything happened, and for many of you,
you may have missed it what was said about that
time down there on Monday, and the time that was spent,
and the stories that were told, and the families that

(10:16):
were there, And if you missed it, I hope, by
the way, that you'll take this show and share it
wherever you can so others can hear exactly what happened
in Kerrville in the surrounding area and how you can
also help as well. So if you missed that yesterday,
when we put this out on a day we normally
don't publish, we wanted to play that for you again

(10:37):
right now.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
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 missed it and saw firsthand the devastation. I

(10:59):
will 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 natural disasters, hurricanes and tornadoes and wildfires, and it's

(11:24):
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.
They are still searching for and finding bodies right now,

(11:48):
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 and so there are search and rescue teams that
are searching for them right now. Obviously, every hour, every
day that goes by the the the the odds of

(12:12):
a happy outcome go down. But but we are certainly
praying that that those those eleven girls are are are
found safe and sound.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
You know.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
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, is 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,

(12:50):
there are beautiful rivers and and in particular Kerr County. Uh,
there are about forty summer camps. 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

(13:14):
an incredible place for girls and for boys to come
and spend typically a month at a time. And Camp
Mystic is it's one hundred years old. It is a
Christian girls camp. And I will tell you Camp Mystic
is really an institution in Texas. It is you see

(13:43):
families from all across Texas who at the end of
typically the month long camp session that there's a two
day closing ceremony, and you'll see grandmothers and moms and daughters,
three generations of Texas women that are there, and and
and it is look for me, this is not abstract.

(14:06):
Are 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 week ago that that my daughter was there.
She was at camp that had been there for a month.

(14:27):
And I'll tell you these camps are that they teach
girls independence and responsibility and teamwork and and the friendships
that are formed are lifelong friendships. Catherine's best friend, uh
is Is is a girl from UH from the Rio

(14:50):
Grand Valley who she would never have met going to
school and grown up in Houston if it were not
for that camp. And 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 same
lifelong friendships. And when this flooding hit, it just devastated

(15:14):
cam't 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 beautiful river
that I have have floated on and swam in dozens
of times. It's a gorgeous river. It's wonderful. People love

(15:36):
to swim in it, vacation in it, canoe in it, and.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
No, it's it's it's part of just the summers in Texas.
That and for people I 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 inner tubes of tires. You get
these floats now and you float with your best friends.
I have a friend that act actually met his future

(16:01):
wife floating 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 camp close the river, you bring your RV and
you do that. And that's what people were doing. As

(16:22):
you mentioned, it was a fourth of July weekend.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Well, and you mentioned r vs the 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

(16:45):
of the challenging things. We have over one hundred confirmed fatalities.
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 be difficult to identify visually, and
so they're doing DNA swabs. You know, when this started happening,

(17:08):
it was early in the morning on the 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 ordinary calm river to rise suddenly. The flash

(17:32):
flood was absolutely devastating. That 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, and I

(17:55):
called President Trump and I talked to President Trump on
that first day and I said, mister President, what is
happening in Texas. This is bad. It is all indications
are this is really really serious. There could be a
lot of fatalities. Information was just starting to come in,

(18:16):
so 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, I was hearing from families.

(18:38):
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 emergency management, and look, you and
I are both dads. It is difficult to imagine the panic.

(19:02):
The fear, the bewilderment, everything those moms and dads were
feeling as you get the news that your daughter is missing,
and and 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 (19:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
And Catherine said to me, said, well, why would the
dads drive there? And I said, sweetheart, that's just what
you do. If you're if your child has lost, you
just go. You you'll move heaven and Earth.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Just do whatever you can. I mean, it's the same
conversation I have with my boys. And in the ages here,
you know, you see these little girls that are missing,
and what if my wife's high school friend's daughter is
one of those that lost your life, and and having
that conversation with your kids or the same age. My
twins are six, they could have been at camp, and

(20:00):
my oldest is eight, could have been at camp. And
you put yourself in that situation of just what would
you do, and 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 nationwide on this so that people
understand the Hill Country and kind of how it works.

(20:21):
There's a lot of rock in the Hill Country, and
so when it rains, the water doesn't absorb into the
land like it does in most places in the country,
like when we get rain in Houston or when I
lived in in Dallas, like it rains and a lot
of the water goes into the earth, and you don't
have this flash flooding, this massive, quick flooding in the

(20:43):
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 there's a reality of like
when it rains, the locals know that you're gonna have
some flooding and the low lying areas and you kind
of know where those areas are and where the bridges

(21:04):
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 they should, you know, this is something that happened
so common. I've seen comments like that this was catastrophic.

(21:27):
You witness it today.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
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

(21:51):
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

(22:12):
just taking clean off off their foundation and swept into
the river that we were talking about. RV's 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 urvs and mobile homes are particularly vulnerable in

(22:33):
a flood or tornado or other natural disaster, and 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

(22:54):
just seeing the extent of the devastation was massive. And look,
but but I want to say this this, there's so
much grief in Texas. Our hearts are broken right now.

(23:17):
And and they're families from from Houston, from Dallas, from Austin,
from San Antonio, from every community in Texas and there,
and they're they're campers who come from all over the
country to come to Camp Mystic, but many of them
are from cities in Texas and 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

(23:40):
front yard, we have a big green ribbon for the
girls that can't Mystic. 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 but
I want to I want to give some encouragement look,
this unbearably hard and painful for the state. But in

(24:07):
the face 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

(24:30):
the air. 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 Coastguard swimmer, and by the way,
Coastguard swimmers are incredible. You know, I have analogized Coastguard

(24:52):
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 of,

(25:13):
you know, offen O'll be just sort of dudes, like
surfer dudes, who are these incredibly fearless life savers. Well,
I met met this one coastguardsman who landed at Camp Mystic.

(25:34):
He was on a Coastguard helicopter. They 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 Coast Guard. He did a lot

(25:55):
of training, but they put him on the ground there
and it was the highest part part of Camp Mystic.
And then they 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 CA can't mystic understand there's torrential rains

(26:19):
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 they would load about

(26:41):
fifteen girls and they'd take them, take them to a
safe place, and they'd come back and pick up another
load and another load, 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 said, I'm just a dude, which is sort

(27:05):
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 the phone with a mom and dad and

(27:26):
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 made her
not be scared for a minute.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
And I.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
That heroism was happening over and over and over again.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
It's incredible. It's the best part of the tragedy is
just seeing how quickly people came together. You know, there's
also another aspect of this, 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 it makes me

(28:15):
sad that that that there's people in 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 where my kids go to, a pediatrician who
said that basically, the people deserve what they get because
they voted for Donald Trump in this area of the country.

(28:36):
You know, Thank goodness, it was exposed and she was
fired today for for that. It is it is sad
to see this happen. And I even called her pediatricians
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 they know

(28:57):
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
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,

(29:18):
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 on the on the river banks.
So they've talked about seven years ago, but it was

(29:39):
voted down because the 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 storm didn't care if you're

(30:03):
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 (30:24):
Yeah, you see this unfortunately frequently after after natural disasters,
after hurricanes or door 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 there
are a bunch of folks online and both in the
media and and and on the left that are just

(30:44):
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 is not the case.
How do we know that? Number One, because the National

(31:05):
Weather Service in this case put out two warnings, one,
as I mentioned, just after one am, one after four am.
That that was their job. We also know the National
Weather Service for this region was headquarters in New Bronfils,
which is another small town not too far away from Curville,
not too far away from Hunt Hunt, and the night
of this flood, they not only had full staffing, they

(31:29):
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 to be, they publicly said that

(31:51):
the reductions through does 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 the day, I did a lot of a
lot of interviews with a lot of reporters today and

(32:12):
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 faulten? 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 disaster,
there's a natural order of events. The first phase is

(32:35):
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 that phase will soon come to an end.
The next phase is rebuilding. And then there are many
people who have who have lost their homes, who've lost everything,

(32:56):
and 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 that's
a process. That's a process that there will be local
assistance and state assistants and federal assistants at the same time.
We will when we get through the crisis period, there

(33:16):
will naturally be a retrospective examination of what happened, what
was the exact timeline, and what could have gone better,
what lessons can be learned, And we've seen that, for instance,
with the many hurricanes. You know, you and I both
live in Houston, if you live on the Gulf coast,
you have a lot of hurricanes. I will say, unfortunately,

(33:36):
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 particular the the you know, you're

(33:58):
putting out warnings at one am and four am, most
people are sleeping at one am and four am, and
and every one of us, if you and I, yeah, yeah,
and actually with the kids of the kids, they don't
have people.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
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 (34:25):
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 not a lot of cell towers there. And and
it's also you know, the campers are not allowed to

(34:47):
have phones, uh and 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 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.

(35:08):
Every one of us. We're just like 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
the Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, the Texas Legislator's coming back

(35:30):
for special session shortly, and I suggested to him 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

(35:52):
because a tornado like a flash flood, you get very
little warning, it can develop quickly, it could be devastating,
and so they'll set off the alarm. 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

(36:14):
position to get the kids out of harm's way.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
No, I couldn't agree with you more in that one.
How does that 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
never happens again. Is this the cooperation within the state
of Texas with the federal government? Does the State of
Texas come first? There's a lot of people that ask
that question. I'd love for you to answer it. Where

(36:39):
does that start?

Speaker 2 (36:41):
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.

(37:05):
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 Lahunta also badly flooded,

(37:30):
and 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
and 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

(37:51):
rescue them. 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 and first of all, their
son was alive, so I just said, Praise God. But
but it was, you know, terrifying, and and and what
I did say to the mom and dad, I said,

(38:13):
look that this this trauma, this experience will be with
your son for the rest of his life. It will
be with 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
that as a fourteen year old boy, he helped save
the lives of these younger seven, eight nine year old boys,

(38:34):
That that 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

(38:55):
hand he was holding up a mattress with a camper
on the on the ma attress, 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. But I'll

(39:19):
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, as you

(39:39):
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, the camps for

(40:02):
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.

(40:22):
There's some differences, but not massive 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 had come to sort of the foundation of

(40:45):
one of the buildings that 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 Mystic, ever been a flood where the water had
gotten to the cabins. And in this case, the water
was eight feet deep in the cabins. Walking through and

(41:11):
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 windows were all shattered. And

(41:34):
I got to tell you look there there was one cabin.
It's called the bubble in, and it's a cabin at
Missic where the youngest girls were. And outside the bubble
in were sixteen white crosses, and on each one of

(41:59):
those was a 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 and one of the crosses was for
Dick Eastland, the camp director who drowned trying to save

(42:21):
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,
and the water swept him away and he drowned. And
the sixteen crosses reading those names. Two of those little

(42:48):
girls go to school with my daughter. They are third
graders at the school. The parents of one of those
little girls lives a block away from me. And I'll

(43:08):
tell you, I just knelt and wept.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
There.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
There were families there. Ben There was a mom and
dad who was kneeling in front of those crosses, right
and they were kissing, kissing the cross and I stood back.
I didn't want to interrupt their grieving, but just watching them.

(43:43):
The mom came to that cabin the bubble in and
she just broke down in tears. In front of every
cabin there were the children's belongings. There were trunks. There
were electric fans. There were slippers and flip flops and crocs.

(44:10):
There were teddy bears. There were stuffed animals everywhere. These
are little girls, and many of them have their names
on them. And there were moms and dads picking through
the rubble looking for their girls belongings. And I don't

(44:31):
know which of those moms and dads lost a daughter.
We know of twenty seven who were lost, and there
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

(44:53):
don't know if they're siblings who had lost a sibling.
But everyone is walking around. Shell shock doesn't begin to
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

(45:18):
top of each other. It was like they were matchbox cars,
just flipped over. You saw a car after car after
cars stacked on each other, flipped on its side, flipped
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

(45:40):
of them had been pulled out in the bubble in
which is where a large percentage of the fatalities occurred.
The water swept in and just pulled those girls out
the windows it seeing that, and I saw it first

(46:03):
from the helicopter and you could see all their belongings
spread out. But then standing there and abeling it from
the perspective of a dad. You know, I have help
my daughters pack their trunks. I've you know, can't pick

(46:25):
up every year. You go and pick up your daughter's
trunk and it's a joyful time. Our state is more
morning right now, Ben.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
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 and they're still trying
to find them. Pray for the moms and the dads
who are planning the funerals. Is we know people personally

(47:02):
that 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 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

(47:23):
that 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. But I would just say, hug your babies.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
And Ben, I want to say, Ben, 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, go up
another highway to go up to Mystic and Lahunta, and

(48:02):
actually Hunta's right across the street from Hunt Store. The
Hunt Store. The flooded. The flood utterly gutted it. It's
just ripped out and hollow shell. I went and stopped
at the Hunt Store and just just visited people who
were there gathering there and they'd actually changed the sign
where it said Hunt Store and instead of Hunt Store,

(48:25):
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
owners were there. I just hugged them and they were

(48:46):
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 going to like. It's
a barbecue truck from Rockport. Rockport is a town down
on the Gulf Coast and Rockport when Hurricane Harvey hit,

(49:07):
it devastated the Gulf Coast from from deep East Texas
to 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 MS Pass and Rockport was
devastated by Hurricane Harvey. Well, these guys, and these are
big old Texans with big old beards. They looked like

(49:28):
zz 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

(49:49):
smoker 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 Harvard. I was
in all the towns up and down the Gulf Coast,
but I was at those food trucks. So I don't
recall visiting with someone and hearing that they were from

(50:10):
Hunt down in Rockport. But you know what, in Rockport,
they remember 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.

(50:32):
One dad who introduced me to two little boys and
and he said both of them lost some of their
closest friends in 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

(50:55):
that same 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 to two
that says, when you go through deep water, I will

(51:16):
be with you.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
Amen.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
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

(51:41):
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

(52:05):
strong in Texas and you see, you see church 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

(52:28):
a parent 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,

(52:51):
but especially in time of crisis. 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 cat Mystic after this flooding, and it's a video

(53:15):
recording and you can watch on x there's a video
of it. It's an iPhone or 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

(53:35):
just been through hell and been terrified, have lost friends,
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

(53:56):
in tears. But I watch you to hear them. Take
at these the hips or bound.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
I'll shot it from the mountaintop, says, I want my
world to know the Lord of Love has come to me.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
I want to pass it on. I'll shot it from
the mountaintops, praise Scott. I want my world to know
the Lord of has come to me. I want to
pass as Grand God.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
Erman ho and and you.

Speaker 4 (54:40):
Wednays hoby hm oh you see oh uh uh. Anyways

(55:05):
you know me. I know rand to be a sap
she every oh try and tru three days you I'll
be sae if she oh, okay, t five and it's right,

(55:40):
chest man.

Speaker 3 (55:43):
And all these things, she'll be out of un to you,
are they all ladys? So long the fie, oh bye,
every one, the proceeds from the mountain.

Speaker 4 (56:03):
Not are living
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