We are safe

There is flooding all around us and our family ranch. It looks like maybe 30% of the ranch was under water at one point. My parents live up a ridge and are fine.

Camp Mystic (the camp with all the missing girls) is a camp my family had been going to for over 50 years. We know of at least one missing person who is a friend of a friend. A buddy of mine is out looking for bodies right now with the Texas State Guard. We will know more in a few days. Next of kin notification is tricky with the holiday weekend.

Flash floods are no louder than the storm raging all around. It’s tricky to tell the difference between wet ground and flooding ground at night. 30 feet of flooding in an hour is six inches of flooding every minute.

Now imagine you are a two minutes run from a cabin full of kids. By the time you get there, you are standing in a foot of water. If it takes two minutes to rouse and find the kids, there is now two feet of water. That is too much for the kids to walk through and yet not enough to swim through.

4 minutes later there is 4 feet of water. And that water is moving FAST.

5 minutes after that the water is over the heads of everyone. You must swim, against the tide, in the dark while dodging floating debris. Your head goes under the water, you come back up gasping for breath. Where was the shore? Where are the kids? That’s what it was like for the folks in the storm.

Flash floods are both a shocking and inevitable part of life when living in the Texas Hill Country. The storms here are intense and the water must go somewhere. But, 999 times out of 1000, nothing happens. It's that once in a thousand storm that gets you. That dry creek bed way down there is suddenly a raging river.

Please pray for the rescue workers looking for survivors.

Please pray for everyone who lost a loved one.

Please pray for everyone who lost a home.