KERRVILLE, Texas—As the rain fell, the Guadalupe River rose dramatically in the inky darkness before the July 4 dawn, swelling into a monster that swallowed everything in its path.
It indiscriminately claimed the lives of little girls at Christian camps, elderly couples in RVs, and lifelong residents along the river.
More than 100 people, including 36 children, are dead in Kerr County alone, with more than 160 still missing, according to local officials.
But even in the darkest of moments when hope faded for many, small victories played out in the neighborhoods around this Texas town of some 25,000 souls.
In the frantic hours after the floodwaters rose to catastrophic levels, a police officer saw dozens of people stranded on roofs and waded out to bring them to safety, fellow Kerrville officer Jonathan Lamb said during a recent press conference.
Another officer who was off duty tied a garden hose around his waist so he could reach two people holding onto a tree above raging waters, according to Lamb.
Likewise, neighbors were saving neighbors.
A miraculous turn of events played out behind Doug Robertson’s Kerrville property, perched about 30 feet above the river.
Robertson could hardly believe his eyes when he spotted a man clinging to the backyard fence behind his wife’s office, stripped of clothing, barely able to call for help as the water rose rapidly.
“Help! Help! I’m here. Please help me!” the man cried out on the security video footage.
“He’s in shock. He can’t move,” Robertson told The Epoch Times. “He got washed off the bridge in his car.
“He didn’t have a stitch of clothes on him. So that tells you how powerful that water was.”
The man’s rescue by Robertson and his son—with an assist from his landscape crew—was documented on security camera footage at about 6:10 a.m. as water poured into the driveway, reaching dangerous levels.
Robertson, who runs a landscaping business, crossed the Francisco Lemos Bridge after stopping at Whataburger at about 4:35 a.m. before work, he said. While doing paperwork, he kept hearing police sirens and stepped outside to investigate about 15 minutes later.
He said he saw the police cars and noticed that a nearby park was closed, so he checked the backyard behind the property and saw the water.
Robertson said he called his wife and told her to wake up his sons, who were visiting for the holiday. When they arrived along with his landscaping crew, they started moving backyard furniture to higher ground.
That’s when they heard a faint cry for help and spotted a man, perhaps in his 40s, clinging to the fence.
Robertson’s son Ryan, who is 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 215 pounds, tied a rope around his waist and waded out toward the man as the others anchored the rope, ready to drag them back to safety.
“I’m yelling at him to jump over,” Robertson said of the man.
“It’s just pouring up and behind him. It is roaring like you cannot even believe.”
The man jumped into the water, and Ryan grabbed him as the workers tugged on the rope. At one point, rescuer and victim both went underwater, but they popped back up before being pulled to safety.
“We’re all just screaming, ‘We got him, we got him! You’re good, dude, you’re good!” Robertson recalled. “My son gave him his shorts, because the guy was naked.”
They tried calling 911, but no one from the overwhelmed police department responded.
The man didn’t appear to be injured, but Ryan took him to the hospital to get checked out, Robertson said.
No one got the man’s name during the adrenaline-fueled rescue. They never heard anything more about the victim or his ordeal, he said.
Robertson said he has lived in the area since 1969 and has never seen anything like the flooding they witnessed that morning.
But to save just one person amid so much despair was important, he said.
“It makes you darn grateful,” Robertson said. “It is a story of light in a lot of devastation.”
