KERRVILLE, Texas — Melvin and Melinda Harris were asleep in their grape-color motor home when they heard banging on the door.

“Get out! It’s flooding!” Melvin Harris, 65, recalls the neighbors yelling in the early hours of Friday.

He’s seen floods before, but this was different. The Guadalupe River had soared so much that by the time he and his wife came out of the motor home the water was waist-deep. According to state officials, the river swelled more than 26 feet in less than an hour.

“I never even thought of getting it that damn high,” Harris told NPR. “It scared me to death, and I’m not scared of nothing.”

Still covered in mud, he described how the water flipped his motor home. His cars were washed away. Everything around them was destroyed.

And many died. According to state authorities, as of Sunday afternoon, at least 68 people (40 adults and 28 children) have died in Kerr County. Ten others were killed in nearby counties. Dozens are known to be missing.

“We had friends that were camped up the road here and they didn’t make it. So, this has been very devastating,” Harris said. “I don’t know that this place will ever recover from what happened … But I’m not ever going to live this close to water ever again.”

Harris and his wife are now homeless — they moved here two years ago after Harris retired. This is all they had. And now it’s gone.

Many remain unaccounted for

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has said the state will continue looking for victims until everyone is found, including the missing campers who were at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian camp.

Search and rescue operations continue 24 hours a day, according to Abbott. Hundreds of state workers from different agencies are assisting, as well as the Texas National Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard.

Parts of Camp Mystic were washed away. The area around the summer camp was destroyed — boulders in the middle of the road, huge trees uprooted and homes decimated.

Volunteers have started to comb the areas by the Guadalupe River to search for bodies.

And the family members of the missing — from the camp and elsewhere — continue to grow weary.

Tanya Powell’s 21-year-old daughter Ella Rose Cahill has been missing since Friday. She was at a home in nearby Hunt, Texas, with her boyfriend and some friends for the Fourth of July weekend.

“Definitely the worst day of my life,” Powell told NPR outside a reunification center.

As of Sunday afternoon, her daughter had not been found.

‘Straight out of a horror movie’

Ryan Dale was at his apartment with his three kids when the Guadalupe River started to surge Friday morning.

By the time he came out of his apartment, around 6 a.m., the river was about 100 yards from his apartment, he said. Fifteen minutes later, the water was lapping over the fence of his apartment building.

“I could just hear people screaming and it scared me, you know?” Dale said as tears came down. “It’s hard to see. It really is.”

Dale grabbed his kids and started running away, seeking higher ground. They were all safe.

“It was terrifying,” Dale said. “It looked straight out of a horror movie.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/07/07/texas-hill-country-reels-as-death-toll-rises-due-to-floods/