Two sisters who died in the Texas flood sent family members heartbreaking final texts before dying with their hands locked together.
The catastrophic flash floods in Texas have claimed the lives of more than 100 people over the Fourth of July weekend.
28 of those victims were children in Kerr County.
As much as 10 inches of heavy rain fell in just a few hours overnight, causing the banks of the Guadalupe River to burst at around 4 a.m.
Many homes and vehicles were destroyed and swept away during the rainfall, equivalent to months’ worth of rain.
The devastating floods also swept through Camp Mystic, where young girls and camp counselors died.
Many of the girls who are still missing are younger and had been sleeping just yards away from the river.
The younger girls had been sleeping on the low-laying ‘flats’ in the cabins, with the older girls sleeping in cabins on higher ground.
Two sisters, Blair, 13, and Brooke Harber, 11, had been staying at the Casa Bonita cabin community near Hunt, Texas, with their grandparents, Mike and Charlene Harber.
The cabin was located along the river.
12 hours after the floods began, the two young sisters’ bodies were found in Kerrville, nearly 15 miles from the cabin. They were holding hands.
Their dad, RJ, and mom Annie had been staying in a different cabin nearby.
They were awoken by the noise of water at 3:30 a.m. and managed to escape by jumping out of the window, as water inside the cabin had reached neck level.
RJ then kayaked toward the cabin where his children and parents were staying but was knocked into a post by the floods.
He shined a flashlight towards the cabin, seeing that it was detached from its foundations.
The father told The Wall Street Journal: “I shined a flashlight out there, and I could see it was white water, and I’ve kayaked enough to know that that was gonna be impossible.
“There were cars floating at me and trees floating at me. I knew if I took even one stroke further, it was gonna be a death sentence.”
RJ and his wife managed to flee the campsite, making it to safety, where they discovered text messages from their daughters.
Heartbreakingly at 3.30 a.m., both Blair and Brooke had sent their parents and grandfather, who lived in Michigan, texts that read ‘I love you.’
The girls’ grandparents, Mike and Charlene, are currently still missing, but in a GoFundMe page set up to help the family, RJ’s sister Jennifer shared that they believe both are dead.
Questions are being raised about whether adequate flood warnings were provided and why people weren’t evacuated ahead of the devastation.
Judge Rob Kelly, the top elected official in Kerr County, told CBS News that the severity of the flooding was unexpected.
“We had no reason to believe that this was gonna be any, anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever.”
