A Texas flood survivor has recalled the blood-curdling screams of families trapped in RVs, pounding on windows as raging floodwaters swept them away.
Lorena Guillen, owner of the Blue Oak RV Park in Ingram, near San Antonio, went door-to-door in the early hours of Friday morning, frantically trying to wake residents as water surged around them.
But as the flood rose foot by foot, she watched helplessly as vehicles floated by with families still inside, ‘screaming’ for help and ‘banging against the windows.’
Blue Oak, once a popular site for RVs and stay-in cabins, has been obliterated — all that remains are the bare slabs where cabins once stood.
Haunting photos of Camp Mystic devastation emerge after camp confirms 27 are dead
Survivor recalls moment RV park residents were swept away by raging Texas floods
Lorena Guillen, owner of the Blue Oak RV Park in Ingram, went door-to-door in the early hours of Friday morning to wake her residents as the Guadalupe River rapidly started rising foot-by-foot.
But as Guillen was leading evacuation efforts in her small community, she saw cars float past her with families stuck inside.
‘It was pitch black, so all you could see was the lights floating and people screaming and banging against the window and honking,’ she told The Wall Street Journal.
She said the storm came essentially out of nowhere and arrived so quickly that water levels were up 10 feet in just one hour.
The businesswoman claims she called the Kerr County Sheriff’s department around 2am to ask if she needed to evacuate, but was told they had no information.
By 3.30am everyone at Blue Oak was forcibly leaving their homes.
She told WSJ: ‘It was just raining, you know, like nothing. We did have a warning, a flash flood warning, but this…is very, very normal for the Hill Country.’
All 33 RVs in her community were eventually washed away by the deadly storm.
Guillen revealed in previous interview with WOAI-TV that all of her residents except one family-of-five made it out of the floods safely.
Texas floods death toll tops 100
The Texas floods death toll rose to 104 overnight.
The toll includes 27 who had been staying at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian camp that was housing about 750 people when the floodwaters struck.
Kerr County, through which the Guadalupe River runs, was the hardest hit, with at least 84 people killed including 28 children, according to the local sheriff’s office.
Kendall County, which sits around 18 miles from downtown San Antonio, reported six deaths Monday.
Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said Monday he couldn’t give an estimate of the number of people still missing, saying only ‘it is a lot’.
Officials also warn the final death total will almost certainly continue to rise.
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Stricken Texas floods survivor recalls seeing people ‘die’ in worst way… as new photos of Camp Mystic emerge: Live updates
