AM Show Hr 3 | Grace, Grief, and Hard Lessons from the Flood

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time time, time, time, Luck and load. The
Michael Varie Show is on the air.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
The Kerr County City Manager is doing a press conference
right now. I don't know what the updates are, but
let's dip into there and see.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
The volunteers to get off to make sure that they
don't become victims themselves. Those operations involve nineteen different local
and state agencies. In addition to conducting primary and secondary searches,
they will be conducting welfare checks on areas in north
Kerr County impacted by power outages. And when you say
search and rescue operations, that is boat walking on the ground, dogs,

(01:05):
drones again, keep personal drones out of the air, helicopters.
We do have other assets that are continuing to search
as well. As of present, CAPE Hub, which is a
Kerville Public Utility Board, is reporting continued power outages between
Hunt and Ingram along the South Fork of the Guadaloupe
River and Hunt. In the South Fork area, there are

(01:25):
approximately forty down power lines and significant infrastructure damage. Cape
pub has brought in additional utility personnel to help with restoration,
but it's not possible at this time when the power
is going to be restored. There are some substations along
with those power lines that we are still trying to
get access to just from debris build up or then

(01:45):
being completely wiped out, so we do not again we
do not have an estimated time on when those are.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Going to be fixed.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
We continue to have substantial number of requests for volunteers
as I said before, and donation opportunities. We are asking
those who want to volunteer to contact the Salvation Army
in Kerrville by phone at eight three zero four six
five four seven nine seven or in person at eight

(02:11):
five five Hayes.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Street in Curveville.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Monetary donations can be made on the Community Foundation of
the Texas Hill Country's website at www dot communityfoundation dot net.
They have a Kerr County Relief Fund set up on
that site, and I will now turn it over to
the mayor, Joe Herring.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Thank you for being here.

Speaker 4 (02:39):
I need to tell my community and those families who
are waiting, this will be a rough week. Primary search
continues and we remain hopeful every foot, every mile, every
bend of the river, our work continues. You need to

(03:00):
know that we have been blessed with help from the
community from the state and the nation. We have trained
experts who are helping in this effort. If you want
to volunteer, it is important that you contact Kervill's Salvation

(03:21):
Army and register. Dalton gave that number, but I'm going
to give it again. Eight three zero, four, six, five,
four seven nine seven. We need focused and coordinated volunteers,
not random people just showing up and doing what they do.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
We need to work together.

Speaker 4 (03:45):
As Dalton said, donations have been flowing in from around
the world to the Community Foundation.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Again.

Speaker 4 (03:53):
That website is community foundation dot net. Please follow the
kergl A City of Kervill's Facebook page for updates.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
They're accurate.

Speaker 4 (04:04):
We take a lot of time to make sure we
send out information that will be helpful not only to
residents but those who are visiting. I've said this one
hundred times and I will say it again. We need
your prayers. We need your prayers.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Thank you. And now, Senator Ted Cruz, Okay, you know,
I thought that's a pretty strong way for the mayor
to start the press conference, to say this is going

(04:44):
to be a rough week. Because it is. Because it
is the moment you went from rescue to converting to recovery.
I got an email from a first response this morning
who said every time he sees something like this, all

(05:07):
he can think about are the first responders and the
PTSD menu will suffer as a result, having suffered it himself.
And he said, you just can't imagine how devastating this
experience is, what it does to your mindset, what it does,

(05:32):
you can't ever unsee, undo, and just one after the
other after the other. We're not wired for this. We're
wired to heal people, wired to help people. We're not
wired to simply turn away when we've lost them, and
in this case it's children. I just you know this.

(05:54):
Christina approached, I said, I wouldn't see anything, but I
have to state approbes. Who was at Bluefish Pediatrics, part
of the memorial Hermann group has apparently been fired. That's
what they say on their website, or maybe she will

(06:16):
claim she resigned. She said such horrible things. I don't
mind somebody being a liberal. I actually think it's healthy.
You need different political opinions. You need an Elon to
question things. You need a Thomas Massey to question things.
You need to Ran Paul to question things. You even

(06:39):
need a few goofballs to say stupid stuff just so
the marketplace of ideas has every shelf with an offering. Now,
I want to make good policy, but I am not
for silencing an opinion. What she did, however, was dance
on the graves of those little girl and say that

(07:03):
the people of the Hill Country have now fed around
and will f O, which is find out that's fafo,
f around and find out. And she did that as
we were just getting reports of the first deaths, and

(07:25):
most of those girls were missing. And she's a pediatrician,
for all she knows it's one of her patients that
is out there. She has every right, defensible right to
say whatever she wants, the most awful, hainous, evil, hurtful

(07:47):
thing imaginable. That's the kind of country I want to
live in. And we have every right to respond by
simply exposing what she has said to a broad audience
of mommies, to say that could be your kid, that

(08:08):
could be your kid missing and the doctor you're paying
to what do you think that woman looks out for
a child's best interest. I hope this haunts her for
the rest of her life, and I hope every person
seeking to do something like that.

Speaker 5 (08:21):
Thanks twice now the Michael Berry Show, Michael Berry Showy.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Lordly Home. This is a story I didn't have a
chance to play for you in the last segments. It's
by Ken's KNSTV. The woman who was rescued. This is
one of the good news stories.

Speaker 6 (08:44):
There's one miracle story that a woman who was swept
away up there ended up here. Let's get right to
that video so you can see what happened at around
eight o'clock this morning, after the girl was swept all
the way from Ingram all the way to Center Pointe, Texas.
The homeowner here says he went out on his deck

(09:04):
and he saw and he heard, rather he heard somebody
screaming for help. And when he came out on his deck,
he had to look way across the river, and when
he did, he looked into the trees and he saw
this woman being sheltered by a huge cypress tree. One
limb had already been ripped off and another was about
to be ripped off. But she had been in the

(09:27):
tree for several hours at that point already, because she
was swept out of her campground, out of her tent
at four o'clock in the morning, and so he heard
her screaming. He came out here. He started calling back
to her. He said, I hear you, I see you.
He called for help. He didn't have any luck getting
response from nine to one one, so he actually went

(09:48):
down the street flagged down. A law enforcement person said, hey,
there's a girl in a tree over here. They sent boats.
They sent a couple of boats. They had to figure
out a way to get the boats down two river level,
and of course the river was still high at that point.
They got to her and she had to drop into
the boat because by the time the boat got here,

(10:10):
the water had receded ten or twelve feet. They say,
she jumped from that tree and face planted into that
rescue boat and they were able to bring her back
to shore. Now, the tragedy here is that this young
lady was swept away with family members when she left here.
She didn't know the fate of her family members, her mom,

(10:31):
her dad, and other relatives that were swept away. They
tried to get away in a car and they were
swept away from far upstream in Ingram, Texas. So the
homeowner here says that after they got this girl out
of the boat, they brought her up here into the house.
The firefighters, the paramedics checked her vitals. She had a
few bumps and bruises, and they said that was amazing

(10:52):
because she had gone over four dams and been dropped.
She told them the story of fighting refrigera raiders, dodging
recreational vehicles as she traveled down that long twenty mile stretch,
of being wiped away. So when she got here, she
was checked out by the paramedics. She had a few
bumps and bruises, few scrapes, but the medics had to

(11:15):
go on, the rescue personnel had to go on. So
they left her here in this home with the lovely
neighbors who heard her call for help and responded. And
these kinds of hero stories are being reported and being
repeated throughout the whole country. And if there's any hope
at all that somebody could still be out there in
the floodwater as the waters continue to recede and as

(11:38):
property owners began to check their property, that's the hope
of it all, that the missing people are out there somewhere,
and that somebody will hear their cry for help, and
that some of these people who are missing will still
be recovered.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
May not be going into the water and making the
recovery yourself was simply being a person who makes a
call could save a life. The same network, same state,
k E n STV. The homeowner talks about seeing the
girl true miracles.

Speaker 7 (12:06):
There's no other way to explain it.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
We heard her screaming, I did.

Speaker 7 (12:10):
We We had gone away from the house for a
little while try because we were afraid the water was
coming in our house, and I waited till it was stabilized,
and I knew, so I waited back over. I came
up on the deck and she saw me. So she
started to scream out loud, and I thought she was
in the water going down the river. And I finally

(12:31):
looked and was able to spot her in the tree,
and so, you know, I began to holler back to her,
you know, hey, I see you. We'll get your help,
and I called nine one one. Waited about twenty minutes,
nobody showed up, and I got in my vehicle, drove
down the road to where I knew there were going
to be authorities, and I found a DPS agent and

(12:53):
he then videoed and our called in and sent some
folks over here.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
But it still took a while, so they brought a boat.

Speaker 7 (13:02):
They did. We had a little bullhorn. We were hollering
back and forth at her to let her know how
were just hang on, hang on, hang on, because she
was desperate, I mean desperate.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
And then then you learned she came all the way
from hunt Ingram.

Speaker 7 (13:15):
After after they were able to pluck her out, we
brought her into our house and gave her a shower,
clothed there because it had stripped all of her clothing off,
and gave her something to drink, gave her a nap,
and then we had a long talk with her. We
called her her grandmother in corpus Uh because she's also missing.

(13:38):
Her parents were with her at the time.

Speaker 8 (13:40):
And uncle as well.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, sister and uncle.

Speaker 6 (13:44):
So they were at a campground and the water came
up at did you say four o'clock?

Speaker 8 (13:48):
She told us that roughly four am. They started noticing
the water coming up her her, her mom and dad
got in their car to try and go up the
hill to get out of the water. The car was overtaken,
the water installed out. They had to open the sunroof,
climbed through the sunroof, and then she said they were
able to get on a tree. Her mom and her

(14:08):
were clinging to each other. The dad was behind holding
onto them. Water would have been pushing at their back,
she said. It just kept overtaking them, and eventually they
got swept away. She said, the dad, they lost him immediately.
Her and her mother were able to hang on to
each other for a while. Then they got taken under
in some sort of a rapid of some kind. They
got separated. She said. They were screaming back and forth

(14:31):
coming down the river for a period of time. Then
she lost her mom. Wow, she said. She said that
she had clung to a handful of trees. They were small,
would ended up getting pushed over and overtaken, and somehow
she ended up here.

Speaker 7 (14:46):
And so you found the strength to climb in the tree.

Speaker 6 (14:49):
And you said that she went into the water at four,
but you didn't see her until.

Speaker 7 (14:54):
Eight o'clock, a little after eight o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 6 (14:57):
So her adventure was already four hours old when you saw.
And then it took a while for the boat to
get there exactly.

Speaker 7 (15:03):
And they're from Midlands, so they have no idea about
these things. It's you know, it's a new experience for
them since she came under a couple of bridges, one
of them would have had to have been on Sydney
Biker and she could see cars passing by.

Speaker 5 (15:20):
The Michael Berry Show Michael Berry's Show.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
President Trump is looks like going to visit Kerk County
on Friday. He signed the disaster declaration yesterday for Kirk County.
I think there are going to be some other counties
as well because the flooding is more extensive than just

(15:50):
Kerr County. Asked why he was not visiting sooner, he said,
we would just be in the It's the same thing
that happened to George W. Bush in New Orleans where
he was flying over in a previously scheduled flight and

(16:15):
chose not to touch down. People who wanted to attack
George Bush would have attacked George Bush. Period into story
once you understand that you give no credence to anything
people say. A presidential visit, especially on short order, requires

(16:37):
so many resources on the ground local The Secret Service
doesn't have those resources already in place. That would mean
that sheriff's deputies and other officials would be pulled out
of their jobs performing their tasks to get the route

(16:59):
and the security place for the president to visit, and
that is a selfish thing to do, and the President's
not going to do it. I understand that there will
be two responses to that. One is frustration, because you
want the gravity of the moment. You want to know
that the president showed up. These children mattered. They're going

(17:24):
to know they mattered. Their families are going to know
they mattered. Before this is over, everyone is going to
know that those little girls mattered. There will be no doubt.
By the time this is done, the memorials will be glorious,
something to behold. I will not watch it on the

(17:44):
air or around anyone else, because I'm sure I'll be blubbering.
The precious innocence of little girls at summer camp. I mean,
I don't know what else is more precious. I don't

(18:05):
know you could find something, you could script, something more
precious to society than that. Beaumont father ty Baden. I
assume it's Baden, could be Badon or Badon if it's
a good French name. Walk to the banks of the Guadaloupe,
desperately searching for his twenty one year old daughter, screaming
her name, Joyce Catherine This was one of the most

(18:29):
powerful stories I saw, and I stayed glued to everything
and text messages and everything else over the weekend. He
told CNN that he would keep the faith because that's
all I can do. This is a father's love.

Speaker 9 (18:42):
Just beyond this ledge that went down towards the edge
of the river, we heard a man calling out Joyce, Catherine,
Joyce Catherine. Happened several times, and we kind of follow
the voice, and that's where we met Ty Baden. He
is a father of twenty one year old Joyce. Catherine.
Baden and his daughter had come out here to spend

(19:03):
the July fourth weekend with three other friends and a
home just along the river, and they lost contact with
the group around four am early Friday morning. Ty Baden
has spent the morning walking. By the time we met him,
he'd already walked along about a mile, had come across
the body of another young victim and called it into
nine one one. And this is a father desperately searching

(19:26):
for his twenty one year old daughter in hopes that
he would stumble upon a miracle. Your daughter was here
with two.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Friends, three three friends. Hey, and he's four of them?

Speaker 8 (19:38):
Correct?

Speaker 10 (19:38):
Greg and she and the young man they went to
elementary school and high school together. And the young one
of her friends Ella Khil that's her boyfriend, hayden Is.
They went into school through high school, so they've known
each other a long time. The other girl, her name
is Louise. I can't remember her last name right now.
She is Ella's roommate at UTSA. So we've never met

(20:01):
her parents, but God bless her and we prayed that
all four of them are still alive, all four of
them missing.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yes, yes, they're all missing.

Speaker 10 (20:10):
And you know it's it's been four o'clock, yes, yesterday
morning that we were told that. You know, they were
on the phone with Aidan's dad who they owned the house,
but there was a very nice house no longer there,
and Aiden said, hey, you.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Know, I've got to go. I gotta help Ella and Reese.

Speaker 10 (20:29):
So he gave the phone to Joyce Catherine George Kenna
said they just got washed away, and then a few
seconds later the phone went dead and that's that's all
we know.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
So we presume that she got washed away as well.
And if you go.

Speaker 10 (20:43):
Back to where the house is, it's it's not a
good sign. And that's why I was telling you my
son and I were walking and I thought it was
a mannequin. It was a little boy about eight or
ten years old, and he was dead.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
So we just saw that this morning.

Speaker 10 (20:58):
Yes, so we you know, we're just walking and doing
the same thing we were doing. Look, you know when
we stumbled across him. Hopefully we can find our children,
our daughter and her friends alive. So anyway, I ask
you if he would pray, and whoever watches this thing.

Speaker 7 (21:17):
Ray.

Speaker 10 (21:18):
We got together and picked up our son and came
over here and we waited around at a center and
God bless them.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
They're doing a great job.

Speaker 10 (21:27):
It's in Ingram, Texas at the elementary school, and they're
kind of like the place where all the survivors are brought.
And we were hoping that we would hear our daughter
and friends' names called, but they never did call. So
we said this morning, we're going to come out and
try to find them ourselves.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
I mean, you're.

Speaker 9 (21:43):
Walking through this mess hoping for a miracle.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
Man, keep the faith. That's all we can do. So
that's all I got.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Ed.

Speaker 8 (21:59):
Thank you.

Speaker 7 (22:00):
What is about your daughter?

Speaker 10 (22:02):
Yes, he's a beautiful girl. And I think I sent
you a picture, just a wonderful girl. Couldn't ask for
a better daughter.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
All from school. It was just easy, you.

Speaker 10 (22:19):
Know, No no Shenanigans or anything like that. I mean,
she was a normal girl and would have fun. But yes,
we loved her dearly.

Speaker 9 (22:32):
And Frederica, what just I found gut wrench, you know.
As we were winding down the interview there, as he
continued to search, he told me about how he read
a book years ago about a father during World War
Two whose child had been in a house that had
been bombed, and that the father spent days and days
combing through the rubble trying to search for his son

(22:55):
and never gave up. And after days of combing through
the rubble, the man during World War two found his kid.
And he just told me, he goes, I hope I'm
that guy today.

Speaker 6 (23:08):
You know.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
What's what's amazing with something like this is it makes
you realize what's important. It makes you realize you see
a guy who's lost his child, and you realize he
would give every worldly possession to have her back. He

(23:33):
would give his could give his own life, and that
really is a reminder of how better to live your life.

Speaker 5 (23:43):
The Michael Berry Show Michael Berry show.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
My wife finds the most adorable thing about little kids
when they are at that age where they lose their
front teeth and so they talk. They got it whistlin.
She thinks, if she finds a kid who has lost
their front teeth, you can't pull her away from them,
because she just loves to watch them talk. She thinks

(24:12):
it's the cutest thing ever. And one of the kids
interviewed this weekend, little boy, he had lost his front
teeth and he was talking like this, and he was
talking all big stuff, and it just it really hit home.
These are just little babies. I mean, these are just

(24:34):
precious little children losing their teeth, hoping for the next
superhero movie, thinking about being a princess, you know, whichever
sex they or whatever age are at. Just the things
that little kid being overly dramatic, I mean.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
Just.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
The things that little kid do that boy, oh boy,
how much their parents are going to miss with them gone.
A story from NBCDFW. I thought we'd for the close
of the show try to be a little more positive.

Speaker 11 (25:17):
Yeah, yeah, I think while it was going on, I
kind of felt like a sense of numbness saying it
out loud is making me realize what actually happened and
how bad it actually is.

Speaker 12 (25:32):
Just days after being dropped off to start a much
anticipated July term at Camp Mystic, thirteen year old Stella
is now processing the rains that ravaged the beloved camp
and claim the lives of so many children. Her sixth
summer at Mystic, Stella was on the Cypress lakeside when
storms awoke her cabin early Friday morning, on higher ground
and out of view of the Guadalupe side. It wasn't

(25:55):
mental helicopters began buzzing overhead, she realized something was truly wrong.

Speaker 11 (26:00):
I think it's the uncertainty that really shook up our cabin.

Speaker 12 (26:04):
Eventually they were told campers wad looping and a bit
evacuated due to flooding, but had no idea the scope
of the crisis.

Speaker 11 (26:12):
Eventually, when we got that news, we were all like
hysterical and praying a lot in the whole cabin was
like really really terrified, but not for.

Speaker 12 (26:24):
Ourselves, worry for those on the other side. It wasn't
until military trucks arrived to evacuate their camp late Friday
did they get a first glimpse of the devastation.

Speaker 11 (26:33):
You'd see kayaks like in trees, and it was kind
of horrific because we had no idea. Some people saw
a couple of trunks and just like in the debris.
And then there was first responders in the water pulling
out like girls like sheets. I saw someone holding like

(26:54):
a cloth from the water, and there were huge trees
ripped out of the ground and like their roots, and
it didn't look like Camp Mystic anymore.

Speaker 12 (27:04):
Their thoughts remain with those grievy and those still waiting.

Speaker 13 (27:08):
We are just so happy that she is safe and
we are with her and we have her, So that's
we are just grateful to be some of the fortunate ones.
So there's a sense of relief and an equal sense
of just awareness of that's not everybody's story, and that's

(27:34):
just two kind of competing emotions.

Speaker 12 (27:37):
Touched by the outpouring of support for the Camp Mystic community.

Speaker 13 (27:40):
We hope that all the folks who are still missing
loved ones are feeling that outpouring of love.

Speaker 12 (27:50):
They are comforted by words often echoed by camp leaders.

Speaker 11 (27:54):
A bell is not a bell until you ring it.
A song is not a song until you sing it.
The love in your heart was not put there to stay.
Love is not love until you give it away. It
really showed me how much of an impact Can't Mystic
has had on our lives, and how amazing of a
place it is, and how horrible it is to see
it like this, because that's not cant Mystic.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
There is a a real dilemma as to how to
properly relate to the rescues, to the survival. And I

(28:40):
believe that you should rejoice. I choose to rejoice. I
think that we are a complicated species with the higher
level of thinking and processing and coping, and we can

(29:01):
say I feel awful devastated for this family over here,
and I feel jubilant for this family over here. I
think that's how you cope. I don't think there has
to be any shame in celebrating the rescues the survival.

(29:27):
Al writes, I'm seventy eight years old. I lost my
elder son twenty three years ago. I know loss. One
story from this tragedy has me crying each time I
think about it. Blair and Brooke Harbor, sisters who drowned
and were washed fifteen miles from Curville, found with their
hands locked together and I'm crying now thinking of the

(29:51):
heroism of Blair, the older sister with a life grip
on her little sister's hand, determined to save her sister Angels.
Nothing makes me prouder than when Michael t is protective
of his little brother. Nothing makes me prouder that he

(30:15):
cares so much for him. That story, which I had
heard before, it's just I mean, is there anything more
beautiful than to imagine she was going to hold onto
her little sister and save her little sister till the
very end. That doesn't mean they never fought, pulled their pigtails,
once stole the other's toothbrush, but to think when it

(30:37):
came down to it. Stephen in Nantucket, Massachusetts rights, My
wife and I are heartbroken. Our home was in the
Texas Hill Country for the last five years. We started
off in Spring Branch, the other Spring Branch close to
the Guadaloupe, fell in love with the river and two
being Then came the three year drought. The river dried

(30:59):
up to trickle for three years. Kenyon Lake also was
at record lows. People discovered unknown caves that were once underwater.
Then we lived in Comfort, next town south of Kerrville.
My job was driving dump trucks all through the hill country.
It breaks our hearts now two thousand miles away, wishing
we were there to help our neighbors. One of our

(31:20):
elders at church took the microphone from our pastor here
in New England and just started leading the church in
prayer for Texas, a very compassionate, heartfelt prayer. This whole
tragedy is in the hearts and prayers of many across America.
God bless Texas. Amen, we will get through this, and

(31:46):
we will see the heroism of it all, and we
will be better for it all. Sweet the something.

Speaker 11 (32:04):
That scene

Speaker 5 (32:07):
All the red line