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<\/p>\nIn the face of catastrophic flooding in Texas, Boerne’s fire and rescue team undertook daring water rescues, saving many lives.<\/p>\n
KERR COUNTY, Texas \u2014 Long before daybreak last July 4, the pagers of first responders across the Texas Hill Country sounded the alarm about catastrophic flooding roaring down the Guadalupe River.<\/p>\n
In Boerne, the call for help was answered by six members of the fire department’s swift water rescue team and before the day was over, they pulled at least seven people back from the brink of death.<\/p>\n
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With the training and tools they needed to save lives, they headed north through a torrential rain with two rescue boats.<\/p>\n
They drove through Comfort, Texas, successfully, but high water on Highway 27 just west of town slowed them down as they carefully navigated their way through a tributary that overwhelmed the road.<\/p>\n
Reviewing KENS 5 video of their first rescue of the day, Lt. Joe Rodriguez said “We train with our boats. We train in swift water. We send firefighters to boat operator school, and we do all these different trainings, but nothing can replicate this.”<\/p>\n
On Carolyn Road East, witnesses said they could hear someone trapped in a tree in the raging water, begging for help.<\/p>\n
For the man who was fighting a current that defied description, Firefighter Andrew Creech said he had tried to escape the onslaught to get help for the rest of his family.<\/p>\n
“He had a pickup he was trying to get to so he could go out and find help, and the pickup got pulled downstream, and he got out of the pickup and ended up in that little tree,” Creech said.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez added, “He was pretty calm for what he was in. He was able to explain and point out where the rest of his family was, so we knew exactly where to go.”<\/p>\n
Struggling to maneuver to the frightened man, Rodriguez said driving a rescue boat is a challenge even for well-trained personnel.<\/p>\n
“Absolutely, it’s a lot of reacting. You somewhat go into autopilot mode and just react. That’s all you can do in this water,” Rodriguez said, adding, “There are a lot of things under the water that you’re unsure where things are.”<\/p>\n
Rodriguez and Creech manned the boat with Firefighter Jimmy Bond, and they all were on high alert for dangers seen and unseen as vehicles, RVs and parts of demolished buildings bobbed down river. Unseen material below the surface is always a threat as well.<\/p>\n
“Those could easily catch the prop on your boat and have catastrophic failure at that point, so trying to navigate through what’s coming down and what might be there is challenging,” Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
With the specialty boat bobbing wildly, the three men worked to stabilize the craft enough for the man in the tree to make a desperate leap to safety, and the shirtless and shoeless man was immediately placed in a vest to protect him for the dangerous trip to shore, which turned out to be a 60-second ride to the freedom of solid ground.<\/p>\n
Shivering as he left the water, someone handed the man a shirt.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez said flood water is so powerful it often rips clothing right off people.<\/p>\n
“Typically, we don’t find victims with very much clothing on because the water rips it right off,” Rodriguez said, adding it’s a fact that never occurs to most people.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think you know it until you’re in the water a few times,” Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez called this the easiest rescue of the day, even though the water was still rising at the time. With one soul safe, the three lifesavers immediately raced back into danger.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez said, “The family members that he pointed out, they’re on the second story balcony, waving us down.”<\/p>\n
Creech said guests from New Mexico, who were unfamiliar with the danger, found themselves overwhelmed, “There was an Airbnb on the other side down by the river that got flooded out so they couldn’t get out,” Creech said, adding “They woke up, heard the storm. Thought they were fine because it was a house that was lifted up on pillars, but the water just kept rising.”<\/p>\n
Rodriguez said three women and a baby were the next to be saved. “Obviously seeing the baby, that’s priority number one,” Rodriguez said, adding the women came out carrying diaper bags.<\/p>\n
“You never know what’s meaningful to people and what they view is valuable is different,” Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
The men agreed, life comes at you fast when the topic is flood water and they said being weather aware is especially important when traveling.<\/p>\n
“Knowing where your escape plan is and getting out before you think you have to is important. They had said “we stayed too long, but nobody expected this!” Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
Creech said with the women and child safe, they returned to the house on pillars once again and took the boat right up the stairs to get to men who had also been trapped on the balcony.<\/p>\n
“There was a porch with some stairs leading up to it and he put the boat on the stairs so that I could climb on the balcony with the people who were all waiting to be rescued,” Creech said, adding the grandfather of the group seemed especially relieved.<\/p>\n
“They were scared. The grandfather had an obvious sense of relief when we got there because he could offload some of that responsibility onto us, which is why we’re there,” Creech said.<\/p>\n
At the moment, the team had no idea that the next rescue upstream in Center Point, TX, would become the focus of attention across the entire nation, as they helped rescue a 22-year-old woman whose survival story eclipsed many others.<\/p>\n
“Once we get the boat loaded is when we get called for a rescue on River Road in Center Point for a female stuck in a tree and that was very fast-moving water,” Rodriguez said, adding “I don’t even think we were able to take a deep breath at this point.”<\/p>\n
The Boerne crew and another boat with Texas Game Wardens found Devyn Smith clinging desperately to a huge cypress tree across from Lions Park.<\/p>\n
The woman, who came to the area for holiday camping with her family, was swept about 15 miles downriver when water overwhelmed the camp and their car as they tried to drive to higher ground.<\/p>\n
When first responders arrived, the Guadalupe River had already crested, and the water level was on the way down.<\/p>\n
“She was 12 – 15 feet off the surface of the water at that point,” Rodriguez said, adding that the most impressive moment for him was when they needed help hauling their boat down a steep embankment to get to the river.<\/p>\n
“One of the biggest takeaways was everybody in the community came outside to help,” Rodriguez said, adding, “Our boats are pretty heavy with the motors and all of our gear, and it was slick going down the hill, but everybody who lived over there, and law enforcement helped us carry our boats down to the water and we couldn’t have got the boats in the water there.”<\/p>\n
Beyond bystanders jumping in, the next humbling thing, the team said, is the seamless ways they were able to partner with Texas Game Wardens, essentially putting their lives in the hands of people they had never met.<\/p>\n
“We put our boat in, looked at each other, ready to go, ready to go, and we went. We didn’t know them, they didn’t know us, but we trusted them and they trusted us, and we were able to do it, which is pretty incredible,” Rodriguez said, adding it speaks to the power of Texans and training.<\/p>\n
“Obviously they have a boat team. We have a boat team. We go to boat operator school. They go as well, but two different training programs that are out there,” Rodriguez said, grateful for all the loving, spirited effort it takes to make these miracles happen.<\/p>\n
And a miracle is what neighbors, standing on their deck watching the life-or-death effort, called what they witnessed.<\/p>\n
Watching the video shot by river resident Carl Jeter, Rodriguez said “I’ve seen parts of it,” as he narrated a play-by-play of what happened.<\/p>\n
“The game warden’s boat is up against the tree, and I’m what we call friction locking, which is just pinning his boat into the tree. And so, I’m having to maneuver my boat horizontally from where the water flow is coming, so I had a lot of debris trying to hit my motor and push me in different directions and that was difficult to maintain in that speed of water,” Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
With the water flowing at an estimated 120,000 cubic feet per second, Creech had to move from his boat into the game warden’s craft midstream.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez said, “We actually sent Andrew from our boat, into the game warden’s boat in the middle of the river as we’re doing this to help the game wardens and also to help stabilize the boat, since one of their members went up into the tree to help get her a life jacket.”<\/p>\n
Creech said, “She couldn’t climb back down, and we had to talk her into jumping from where she was to the boat and that took a little bit of finesse.”<\/p>\n
Creech said the woman, exhausted by hours clinging to the tree, put on a life jacket and jumped.<\/p>\n
“Anywhere was better than where she was at that moment, and she trusted us to make sure we were going to get her off that river and over to the bank, so she let go of the tree and she came right into the boat,” Creech said.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez said it was a three-step challenge.<\/p>\n
“So there were three separate things,” Rodriguez said “First the challenge of getting to her, with all the debris and trees and brush that we were navigating through. Then getting her into our boat and then the final thing is like, OK, we did those two, now we got to get her back.”<\/p>\n
Rodriguez said the way out was just as dangerous as the rest, “Going downstream at that speed and being able to be controlled is extremely difficult.”<\/p>\n
The first responders said the Jeter family surrounded Smith with love, taking her into their home while they continued with rescue work throughout a very long day.<\/p>\n
Seeing an extended play version of the video for the first time, Rodriguez said “This is new for me today. There’s a lot of reflection about how the operation went, immediately after. We made sure we reinforced the good points and cleaned up things that we could have done better for the next time, but it’s a little bit different seeing it on camera.”<\/p>\n
Recognizing the huge numbers of people who turned out to save lives that day, Rodriguez said he is honored that his team was able to do what they signed up for as first responders.<\/p>\n
“I’m just glad that we could get out there and help those people. We’ve got a strong team here, from the initial responses to the aftermath, we’re extremely lucky. We’ve got a good department. We’ve got a strong support system. So being able to have the ability to affect a positive outcome for people, I think that’s the most important thing,” Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
Of a lesson learned, Rodriguez said “This is a once in a lifetime flood, but even the smaller floods have devastation and can easily take a life, so definitely respect the water and respect the warnings that are out there.”<\/p>\n
The team said when water levels receded in the following days, the level of support from the community only increased.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez said, “As the days went on the amount of support from the community of Boerne, Kendall County, everyone coming together and the support that was given was pretty awesome to see.”<\/p>\n
As fire houses across the region filled with donations of water and food and supplies, they said it was overwhelming in a fabulous way.<\/p>\n
“The community came through. We were there when they needed us initially, and they were there for us over the long haul after,” Rodriguez said, adding that the support is still there.<\/p>\n
“Rafting down through Sisterdale, there’s teams from Tennessee. I mean, there were people from everywhere. The Boerne community, like the whole Hill Country came out when they were needed and I mean, there’s still people there now,” Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
It’s a point of pride, he said, to be a vital part of a strong Texas community.<\/p>\n
“We have support from our department heads, our chiefs, all the way up to our city manager who invest in us and want to give us the best tools possible to perform our jobs and best training possible to effectively do things like this,” Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
In a part of the country that is a powerful draw to visitors from everywhere, they said their commitment to everyone remains strong.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez said “Definitely respect the water and respect the warnings that are out there, but you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s why we’re here. If you don’t know and you’re in trouble, we’re going to come.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the face of catastrophic flooding in Texas, Boerne’s fire and rescue team undertook daring water rescues, saving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-361102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}