A community responds

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 8th of July.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up, heartbreak in Texas.

Until this weekend, Kerrville was best known as the “Capital of the Texas Hill Country”, a vibrant town with a thriving art scene, home to the Kerrville Folk Festival, nestled along the scenic Guadalupe River. A favorite summer getaway.

REICHARD: But on July 4th, that river turned deadly—rising fast, spilling over its banks and sweeping away homes, businesses, and lives. More than 90 people didn’t make it out—campers, tourists, and locals. Here’s WORLD’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER: Early Friday morning Kirk Marchand was sitting on his covered porch in Kerrville, Texas. It was raining hard. As he read his Bible he could hear an unusual sound:

MARCHAND: I heard what I thought were fireworks in the distance. And I thought that's strange. Suddenly I realized I was hearing trees snap in the river which is about a mile from our home.

The day before, the national weather service issued a flood warning along the river. The area has a lot of limestone, so excess rain water fills the river basin quickly.

Early Friday morning—about 1 a.m.—the weather service sent out a flash flood alert for Kerr county, triggering automatic emergency alerts on mobile devices and weather radios. Marchand missed those overnight, but Friday morning:

MARCHAND: I glanced at my phone and sure enough, all the alerts were there from late the night before and earlier that morning indicating that flooding and potentially catastrophic flooding was occurring in the Guadalupe River…

By 7 a.m., the sheriff’s office began evacuating residents.

The Guadalupe river floods frequently, in fact, it is one of the deadliest rivers in all of Texas. But last weekend, the flood waters rose much quicker than usual, in some places more than 30 feet in less than an hour. There was little time to respond. Local resident Scott Walden says he’s never seen anything like it.

WALDEN: We couldn't tell if the water is going to continue to rise. So I said we need to get out of the house. So I grabbed my wife and we literally jumped in the water and it swept us down to about 200 feet down that way. And there’s a great myrtle tree there we grabbed hold of and waited for rescue.

Walden and his wife are just one of more than 850 high water rescues since Friday.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined Governor Greg Abbott on Saturday, pledging federal assistance and encouraging everyone to lend a helping hand.

NOEM: We were created to serve people. God created us to serve each other, and now is a wonderful time to go find somebody you can help...

Volunteers continue to comb the riverbanks, hoping to find survivors. Jessika James feels compelled to help out:

JAMES: You know, I've got two babies at home…You know, they're home safe, and there's people out there that they're missing their children or their family members. I feel like it's the least I could do to help. So, yeah… It's what I would want if my kids were missing. So, yeah.

Meanwhile, Governor Greg Abbott set aside Sunday as a statewide day of prayer.

ABBOTT: Your prayers have made a difference. We ask for continued prayers as we continue our efforts to locate everybody who has been affected by this…prayer matters…

Many Kerrville churches took that call seriously, spending time Sunday morning calling out for God’s mercy and attempting to bring comfort to those hurting.

DOMINGUEZ: Jesus we come before you, broken. Some of us with what feels like nothing…but we know that with you we have everything. Jesus, give us hope.

WAY: God we thank you for not being with us on the mountaintop but walking with us in the valleys. God, touch those who are brokenhearted today. Those who are still wondering and missing loved ones, Father we pray that you would be merciful to them.

CAIN: Heavenly Father. We come to you today and ask that Your Word would speak to us, that you would comfort, encourage, challenge and even change us, and we lift these things up in Jesus' name. Amen.

Kerrville resident Kirk Marchand attends Christ Church Presbyterian. He says Sunday’s service was a challenging one.

MARCHAND: We love and trust in a good God. And so we all wrestle with something like this. There's also a bit of an uneasiness in the sense of how are we to wrestle with this?

Pastor Billy Crain spoke from Psalm 20:

CRAIN: There is nothing more important we can do than to ask the Lord to act. You are not wasting your time, to stop and to pray, to lift up the grieving and the hurting, to pour out to the Lord your own broken heart and ask him to do something.

MARCHAND: You have a range of emotions through something like this. And the first one, of course, is you just, you just want to do something. You want to help. But the other emotion is a sense of guilt. When something like this happens, it's like, well, you know, couldn't we have done something? How could we allow this to happen to folks in our Valley?

Marchland says that right now, his church is doing what it can to stay out of the way as the rescue and recovery efforts continue…but the outpouring of material aid has been overwhelming…

MARCHAND: Everything from, you know, waters to diapers to restaurants, cooking food. And all of that is, of course, welcomed by all the first responders and officials that are taking care of that.

He says local officials have actually asked people to stop bringing donations into the area for the time being while they figure out what’s actually needed moving forward. Marchand is confident that the material needs will be met, as he says: “it’s Texas after all…” But he adds, healing is going to be a long time coming.

MARCHAND: Entire families were lost in this. And of course, my heart aches as a grandparent for these families from all over the country who had children at these camps and what they're going through. So praying for them, for the peace of Christ to touch them in what is arguably probably some of the hardest moments they'll ever experience in their lives.

For WORLD, I’m Paul Butler with additional reporting from Mary Muncy.

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