Matthew Stone’s house looks the same as the others on Guadalupe Street, a few blocks from downtown Kerrville, Texas. There’s one difference, though: Mr. Stone’s porch sits a few inches higher than his neighbors’. That small advantage caused the flash flood on July 4 to leave him alone, haunted but dry.
“I heard people screaming for help” as the torrent carried them downstream in front of his home, Mr. Stone, 44, recalled.
Though Kerrville, a city of 25,000 that has become a hub for search and recovery work along the Guadalupe River, largely escaped the worst of the flood’s damage, some parts of the city were devastated. The city water plant sustained significant damage, meaning that residents will have to rely on well water for at least the next few weeks. And on the streets nearest to the river, dozens of houses were destroyed. Police officers evacuated 200 people from homes and vehicles, according to Sergeant Jonathan Lamb of the Kerrville Police Department.
On the riverbank by Mr. Stone’s house, five bodies were found by Tuesday, and another was retrieved on Wednesday afternoon. Many people remain missing from at least one campground at the edge of the city. Early on July 4, parks employees evacuated a different riverside campground where tents, RVs and cabins were inundated soon afterward, city officials said on Tuesday.
In one harrowing rescue, a police officer wrapped a length of garden hose around his waist to serve as an anchor. Two other officers, holding onto the hose, waded into the surging water and rescued two people who were trapped and clinging to a tree.
“Folks, I don’t know how many lives our K.P.D. team saved in an hour in Kerrville,” Sgt. Lamb said at a news conference on Wednesday. “This tragedy could have been so much worse.”
Beyond the low-lying areas, much of Kerrville was bustling this week, with traffic jams on Sidney Baker Street, the main drag, and long lines at Gibson’s Discount Center, a hardware store on Main Street. City residents joined with volunteers from as far away as Arkansas and Oklahoma to help shovel muck from homes throughout Kerr County and carefully search through tangled debris for the missing.
“We’ve been itching to help,” said Susie Carpenter of Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, who drove five hours to Kerrville to spend three days removing carpet and cutting drywall from houses and other flooded buildings on Guadalupe Street.
Inside Gibson’s, Candy Isaacks was in her usual spot behind the checkout counter on Wednesday afternoon, less than a week after the police banged on her door on Guadalupe Street, warning her to evacuate. She had bought a pack of stickers that said “Bless Your Heart” and given them to a customer to distribute to neighbors in Kerrville.
“I love my community, and I love my customers,” Ms. Isaacks said. “People here have been so awesome.”
In smaller riverside towns in Kerr County, including Ingram and Hunt, the devastation caused by the flood was overwhelming. Every building, it seemed, had walls blown out, or toppled trees poking out of windows, or big orange X’s spray-painted on the walls — the marks of rescuers who had searched there for survivors. At least 95 people died in the county during the flooding, and many more are still unaccounted for.
“We were tremendously lucky,” Mr. Stone said of his family and neighbors.
Kerrville, the county seat, is known informally as the capital of Texas Hill Country — it’s where vacationers staying up and down the river get groceries and other supplies, and where people weary of big cities, including many retirees, move for a slower life. Locals whose families have been there for generations play football at Tivy High School, ride in Friday night rodeos, and know all the best spots to fish and swim.
The city’s founders made wise use of the terrain, plotting out the city’s downtown on high ground above the river.
Normally, Kerrville draws thousands of visitors for its popular “Fourth on the River” Independence Day celebration, held at a park overlooking the Guadalupe. This year, though, the city was transformed on the holiday into a central staging point for emergency responders of all kinds.
The parking lot at Tivy High sits on ground that is nearly as high and as far from the river as one can find in Kerrville. On Tuesday afternoon, the lot was filled with white RV’s and trailers from state disaster relief agencies, and with fire trucks from neighboring towns.
The school suffered a crushing loss: Its boys’ soccer coach, Reece Zunker, and his wife, Paula, were killed in the floods, and their two young children are still missing. The family had been vacationing by the river in nearby Hunt.
Closer to the river, in the parking lot of a furniture store on Junction Highway, a black R.V. idled. Its side was painted with the words, “Billy Graham Rapid Response Team.” Down the road, in front of Walmart, sat three white trailers with bathrooms for emergency workers.
Everywhere in Kerrville, pickup trucks pulled trailers loaded with Shop-Vac vacuums and small front loaders.
Mason Mullins aimed his small front-end loader at a pile of twisted trees in the gully behind Guadalupe Street. He’d been working for two hours, moving debris uphill from the river bank to the road.
“I brought this because it’s the biggest piece of equipment I own that I can pull behind my truck,” said Mr. Mullins, 30, who owns a land-clearing company in Leon Springs, a suburb of San Antonio.
“We’re in the heavy equipment stage now,” Mr. Stone said as he watched Mr. Mullins work.
For Mark Miller, the heavy equipment consisted of an airplane. From his home in Mena, Ark., he flew his four-passenger Cessna 182 on Monday to Ardmore, Okla., where he picked up two search and rescue dogs and their handlers, all of them volunteers for a nonprofit called Gideon Rescue Co. They then flew two and a half hours to Kerrville, where the teams fanned out across the valley, searching for scents that would lead them to remains.
By Wednesday they had found the bodies of several people, Mr. Miller said, including an infant, and were out again, looking for two girls who had been missing from Kerrville since the flood.
“It’s getting pretty late to find anyone alive,” said Mr. Miller, 67. “We’re just holding out hope to God that we can find these two little girls.”
RickyRay Robertson has lived along the Guadalupe River in Kerrville for 20 years. He is accustomed to floods occasionally lapping against the foundation of his gazebo, which stood on a bluff behind his house.
This time was different. Mr. Robinson heard a wall of water blasting over the Nimitz dam, a few hundred yards upriver. As the water rose, it plucked sheds, an R.V. trailer and two storage containers from behind the house and pushed them against trees, and Mr. Robinson heard the eerie sound of metal twisting in the dark. With his mother safe in a house on higher ground across the street, he went running for the cabin in his backyard.
“I told my mom, ‘I’m getting my cat and my gun and I’m getting out of here,” said Mr. Robinson, 62.
In the end, he escaped the flood by driving uphill across a neighbor’s yard. The water filled his home to the roofline.
By Tuesday afternoon, the water had receded from his badly damaged house, and the Guadalupe River was bubbling calmly, back in its normal course.
The gazebo was gone. Mr. Robertson did not care. For him, the obvious thing to do was to begin helping his neighbors. He carried a case of water to a house two doors away where volunteers were positioning enormous fans to start drying out the walls. He invited the volunteers and all his neighbors to return on Friday, when he promised to grill them all an enormous supper of barbecued pork.
And he directed Mr. Walker’s rescue group to the riverbank behind his house, which was still nearly impassable with broken trees and nests of trash. They used their dogs to search the area, but found nothing.
“It’s horrible and it’s wrong,” Mr. Robertson said. “Here I am, safe and dry, and we’re talking about finding bodies.”
Meredith Honig contributed reporting from Austin
Christopher Maag is a reporter covering the New York City region for The Times.
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