The Rescue at Camp Mystic

I remember I woke up and I was sitting on my friend's bed and the water had like pushed a tree that fell down her window and it all just kind of spooked us. My favorite thing about camp is probably all the friends and my cabin mates. Some of my favorite activities are horseback riding and I was on the dressage team and I really like dance and camp craft. My favorite part about coming to camp was probably like getting to see all my friends and all the people I usually don't get to see. I enjoy like getting to just come out. It's just different than like a regular city. She's always ready and packed and always on to me about how I need to get moving. She definitely sits inside the window and is just peering out and it's almost like you can feel the excitement. She's not going to let you know, but yeah, you know it's there. Phone rang and usually when you hear that particular ring from the phone, like your heart jumps, realizing, hey, we're about to get launched and ops, he said, hey, I think we've got some request for agency assist. It's up in Kerrville, kind of near the Guadalupe in the hill country and when he said that, I knew that there could be flooding up there. We were trying to think if we needed any building entry tools, chainsaws, axes, and then we got word kind of right before we left, like, hey, there's actually just a big campsite that's full of people. We got the call that said there might've been some stranded campers. We were thinking like a campground. We weren't thinking of a large scale of, you know, 600 plus girls. As we start getting further and further north towards the big storm, which was currently kind of over the Kerrville area, that's when it started getting spicy. Got up there, got a point that ATC gave us and we just did circles in the air, just talking together as a crew and trying to figure out what our next step was, as well as waiting to see if we could get that hole within the weather cell so we could make our approach to Kerrville. I remember I woke up and I was sitting on my friend's bed and the water had like pushed a tree that fell down her window and it all just kind of spooked us. It was kind of like the water when it's so dirty that when you step out of it, it dries and it's like super itchy and gross and cold. It was like rushing water too, so you were kind of getting like pushed away and like you had to, you had to use a lot of strength to get through it. This picture came through and it was of the girls walking through the water to Rec Hall. I was like, oh wow, okay, there's a lot of water because I knew where Rec Hall was and it's really far from the river. If the water got to a point like where we had to get out of there, like I was thinking what I could do to like stay above the water or if there's anything I could climb onto or if there's anything like nearby that's floating. She was formulating her own plan and the fact that she could stay calm and kind of like work through what her best route was gonna be to try to stay alive was amazing to me. Well, when I got out to get in a truck because they drove us, it was about ankle deep and I remember like we pulled up on the side of the building and we got out and it was like knee deep and we just like ran inside. So when we went into the balcony, it was very small and there were lots of cabins trying to squish in there. So we were all like this and we just waited it out the whole time. She said it was so dark in there that they would get splashes from the water and the water would go up and then down a little bit and up and down a little bit and all the girls were just really nervous shining a flashlight on the water to see how high it's really going to get. She sat below the window and she said there was no use in screaming so she sat under the window and plugged her ears with her fingers and closed her eyes and she said she just hoped and prayed for several hours. We did our first flyby. We saw no one and they heard the helicopters and they came outside of their cabins. They just trailed out like almost like the river itself. Once we decided to put me down on scene, I knew I was not going to be getting in that water alone, especially without a team and my main goal being on scene at Mystic was just going to be triaging all the survivors down there. They're coming on board. Some of them are excited to get into a helicopter and they're ready to go and they're kind of smiling looking around and others are just, they're crying, they're scared, I mean you're getting into a big military helicopter and they're not used to that. For all the rides, I made sure I looked back, I gave them a smile, you know, gave them a thumbs up. I was telling a bunch of my cabin mates that were scared that I'd been on a helicopter before and that it's really fun and it's cool because you can look out and see all the land and everything. My assessment on scene was, hey, I just want to kind of keep these people huddled up, keep them together, keep them out of the two separate landing zones that the Army kind of had established and just kind of maintain the survivors and keep them safe until we can properly get them all evacuated out of there. You're so grateful, but you're very aware that there are people around who are not getting to go home with their daughters that day, so I just kind of wanted to get her and get her home. Well, and I know what those crews put on the line, I mean they put their personal safety and their life on the line to come get our girls and I'm very grateful for that. I'm grateful that the girls didn't have to spend a minute longer than they absolutely did in this, you know, room where they were wet, tired, cold and just wanted their parents, you know. You know, looking back and thinking about this, like, yes, this is exactly what I wanted to do. I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else. Never expected to triage 165 people alone, be left on scene during a flood, not really something we trained for, but it's definitely something that we are responsible for and something we're willing to do as a rescue swimmer. My wife likes to say that I'm a hero and I just wanted to be there for them. Truly and really the heroes and some of the bravest of people I've seen, I mean, these are teenagers, these are little girls, right? They were the brave ones, you know, they are the heroes of the situation to be able to have gone through all of that, you know, the camp counselors who were breaking doors, breaking windows, you know, throwing folks out to get them to safety so that they could go and some of them ended up losing their lives in the process, but saving many more.