Newly released 911 calls reveal doomed kids’ screams, panic as Texas floods swept through Camp Mystic and beyond
Hundreds of 911 recordings from the July 4 flood that devastated Texas have just come to light, offering a chilling window into the last moments experienced by those trapped at the well‑known Camp Mystic. The audio captures frantic pleas, the echo of children’s screams amid roaring water, and the heart‑breaking rush of relief workers fighting for survival.
In some of the most harrowing calls, a desperate firefighter named Bradly Perry is heard telling dispatchers, “The tree I’m in is starting to lean, and it’s going to fall. Is there a helicopter close?” He was told that “I’ve probably got maybe 5 minutes left.” Those five minutes passed before the helicopter arrived, and Perry was among the 137 Texans who lost their lives that day.
The recordings, released by Kerr County and state officials, come from a period when just two dispatchers were on duty as floodwaters surged. They juggled dozens of calls, often hanging up to help the next caller. When asked about the chaos inside Camp Mystic—a Christian retreat for the children of Texas’s political elite that suffered 27 deaths—dispatchers could hear a woman say, “There is water everywhere, we cannot move. We are upstairs in a room, and the water is rising.” Later, she asked, “How do we get to the roof if the water is so high? Can you already send someone here? With the boats?” The dispatcher could only respond, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Another caller, living a mile downstream, called in a shaky voice to report rescuing two campers swept from the camp. She explained, “We’re OK, but we live a mile down the road from Camp Mystic, and we had two little girls come down the river. And we’ve gotten to them, but I’m not sure how many others are out there.”
Camp Mystic, once staffed by former First Lady Laura Bush, lost 25 campers and three staff members in the flood. The site was one of many along the Guadalupe River that was carved away by the sudden deluge. A counselor from another nearby camp, hearing children scream in the background, pleaded, “There’s water filling up super fast, we can’t get out of our cabin, but how do we get to the boats?”
The speed of the rising waters was made starkly clear by the calls themselves. Families were forced to move from ground level to upper floors, attics, and even roofs all within 30 to 40 minutes. Dispatchers had only a few breaths of time to aid each caller before moving on. In one heartbreaking moment, a woman described an elderly friend whose house was flooded up to his head. The man stopped speaking when the phone line cut out, leaving the caller in silence.
These new recordings give a raw, sobering picture of the panic, the courage, and the tragedy that defined the July 4 floods across Texas. They remind us of the human toll behind the headlines and of the resilience of those who fought against the relentless surge of water.
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