CRYSTAL CITY, Texas \u2013 Crystal City resident Rebecca Bookout said family in Uvalde alerted her floodwaters there were heading toward her, but she said she didn\u2019t know it was coming the way it did.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe kept checking the Espantosa … it was really high,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But Bookout, who lives near the waterway, said instead of the Espantosa being the immediate threat Friday morning around 10 a.m., her neighbor called just in time to say the Nueces River was speeding her way.<\/p>\n
\u201cA wall of water (was) just coming towards us,\u201d Bookout said. \u201cAnd by the time we saw it within 10 minutes, it was a foot in our house, and I mean up to my chest outside. That\u2019s how quick it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bookout said she and her husband went into survival mode, waking up their daughters and getting them into a boat.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy parents live two houses down,\u201d Bookout said. \u201cI tried to walk them to my parents\u2019 house, and I was getting swept under the boat. So, I turned around and walked back.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she saw a Black Hawk helicopter but didn\u2019t know if it was there to rescue them or someone else, and called 911 asking for help to get her children out of the floodwaters.<\/p>\n
The Texas Army National Guard Alamo Dustoff Unit responded.<\/p>\n
According to a Joint Base San Antonio military online article, the Alamo Dustoff Unit is an air ambulance and medical evacuation unit operating as Company C, 2nd Battalion, 149th Aviation Regiment within the Texas Army National Guard, based at Martindale Army Airfield in San Antonio.<\/p>\n
Multiple social media posts report the Texas Army National Guard, along with the Texas Military Department and Texas A&M Texas Task Force 1, are working in tandem conducting rescues across Texas in response to the flooding event.<\/p>\n
Melaine Puente sent KSAT photos of the rescue. Puente said her husband, Sgt. Joey Puente, is the crew chief on the Black Hawk helicopter that rescued the Bookout family.<\/p>\n
In one of those photos, you can see Bookout\u2019s 4-year-old daughter smiling as she is holding a unit patch after being buckled in.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just made us feel so comfortable,\u201d Bookout said. <\/p>\n
She said her family, including her parents, were taken to the event center in Crystal City and were picked up by family.<\/p>\n
Once safe, Bookout said there were a lot of tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you sit down and it all sets in, they saved my family, especially my children,\u201d Bookout said.<\/p>\n
She said for that, she is appreciative beyond words.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t even know how to repay them,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m so grateful. I\u2019m still grateful and honored.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read also:<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CRYSTAL CITY, Texas \u2013 Crystal City resident Rebecca Bookout said family in Uvalde alerted her floodwaters there were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8648,4034,133255,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-378427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-crystal-city","tag-hill-country-floods","tag-july-2026-floods","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378427","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=378427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}