Hope and Despair in Small Town Texas

This text appeared in the ‘Top Story’ email newsletter sent on July 12, 2025.

President Donald Trump met with victims and local officials a week after a perfect storm caused a Texas river to rise 26 feet in 45 minutes in the predawn hours of July 4, leaving death and destruction in its wake.

Trump promised to help the small Texas town of Kerrville and the surrounding area rebuild as it mourned its dead, which included 96 victims, 36 of whom were children.

“As we grieve this unthinkable tragedy, we take comfort in the knowledge that God has welcomed those little, beautiful girls into his comforting arms in heaven,” Trump said during his July 11 visit.

The death toll throughout Central Texas stood at 120, with more than 160 still missing as recovery crews from across the country showed up to search the Guadalupe River mile by mile.

Many of the young victims were girls who were staying at Camp Mystic, a longtime Christian summer camp.

People living in the area felt compelled to volunteer as a way of showing solidarity with their community.

On July 7, local volunteer Alli Robertson was walking with a group on the banks of the river in Comfort, Texas, looking for the deceased.

“They found two bodies right down here yesterday,” Robertson told The Epoch Times, pointing to an area near the Interstate 10 bridge near Comfort, Texas.

In the search area, the powerful floodwaters had tossed a white pickup truck like a toy into a nest of debris piled up against trees, some a century old, that had withstood the deluge.

Zachary Clark’s RV, parked on his 48-acre property along the Guadalupe near Comfort, was washed clean away.

The power of the water, which he estimated was about 28 feet high at the bridge, was unimaginable, he told The Epoch Times.

Holding his 5-year-old son in his arms, Clark said he could only imagine what the parents of the dead children were going through.

“You couldn’t put a word to it,” he said. “There’s not one that exists.”

Faith drew the town folk together.

All around town, people could be seen hugging each other and holding hands, bowing their heads in prayer.

The sun beat down on Kerrville resident Lillian Sanchez as she knelt in the dirt using a handsaw to remove a tangle of tree roots at the Guadalupe Keys RV Resort on July 7.

A wasteland of destruction surrounded her and some 50 volunteers.

Using chainsaws and heavy equipment, they were trying to restore some semblance of order to the chaos left by floodwaters.

Sanchez said the recent flood has revealed the true spirit of her hometown, which has resisted the temptation to turn the tragedy political.

In small towns such as Kerrville, everyone knows someone who was killed or is still missing, she said.

But even in the darkest of moments when hope faded for many, little victories were won in this Texas town of some 25,000 souls.

A miraculous turn of events played out before sunrise on July 4 behind Doug Robertson’s Kerrville property, some 30 feet above the river.

Robertson, who runs a landscaping business, heard police sirens while doing paperwork at the office early that morning.

When he stepped outside to investigate, he saw the rising water in the backyard and called his wife to wake up his sons visiting for the July 4th holiday.

While moving outside furniture to higher ground, the men heard a faint cry.

Robertson could hardly believe his eyes when he spotted a man clinging to the backyard fence, 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, as could be heard on security video footage shared by Robertson.

“He’s in shock. He can’t move,” Robertson said. “He got washed off the bridge in his car.”

His 26-year-old son, Ryan Robertson, tied a rope around his waist and waded out toward the man as landscape workers who had arrived at the scene anchored the rope.

His son grabbed the man after he jumped into the water as the workers tugged on the rope. At one point, rescuer and victim 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.