KERRVILLE, Texas — A stricken dad clinging to a tree while holding “his babies” during the floods refused to toss the kids to residents, and they were all soon swept away, a shattered local said Monday.
“My husband was in the water trying to ask them, ‘Please throw me your baby!’ The man was holding tight to his babies, and he just got swept away,” said Lorena Guillen, owner of the Blue Oak RV Park in Kerr County, the region hardest hit by the state’s catastrophic flooding last week.
The tragic dad, John Burgess, who lived in Liberty, Texas, is among the confirmed dead, KWTX reported.
His wife, Julia, and two young sons are still missing, while the couple’s daughter, who was staying at a nearby summer camp, is safe.
The family had come to the RV park for the July 4 holiday, Guillen said.
“The kids were so excited to be here,” she said.
Guillen said all 28 of the RVs at the packed park that fated morning were destroyed — and she’ll never forget the screams of terror that accompanied them being washed away.
“We heard people screaming throughout the night,” she said. “The cabins from the RV park next door came floating, and they were getting smashed against the trees.
” ‘Help me! Help me!’ — that was the main thing. You heard a lot of screaming, it was just too much,” Guillen said.
The RV park owner recalled closing local Howdy’s Bar, her other business, around 12:45 Friday morning just as it started to rain hard.