Texas dad refused to let go of ‘his babies’ during flood — and all were swept away, witness says

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 in 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.

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She received a possible flash flood warning notification shortly afterward, she said.

“About 2:30 [a.m.], I couldn’t sleep. I went all the way to the edge of the water, and I looked down at the river, and it was fine,” she said.

“I called the sheriff’s department at that time, and they had no information how the river levels were. I asked them, ‘Do I need to evacuate?’ and they said, ‘We have no information right now, we don’t know.’ “

An hour later, she and her husband were woken by the lights from the rescue team at the park.

“My husband and I ran down. By then, the first level of the RVs were already washing away. The river went up about 10 feet at that time. A family of five was stranded because they were the ones closest to the river. Their RV was floating away. It was pitch black, it was so dark,” she said.

The couple started banging on the doors of RVs to wake up the occupants and get them to safety.

Eight bodies were recovered from her property Sunday, while two girls were stuck underneath rubble, and the RV park next door had 40 missing people, she said.

Exposed wires, mangled vegetation and smashed up cars now line the river where the RVs once stood after the Guadelupe River rose an astonishing 27 feet in just 45 minutes.

Guillen called for a better warning system in future to enable people to get to safety.

“I don’t understand why we don’t have alarms blaring in every single property or every mile down the road,” she said. “But something needs to change. Hopefully I’ll never get to see this in my lifetime.”

Despite that, she doesn’t blame authorities for the once-in-a-lifetime event.

“I think they did the best they could with what they had. The river flooding authorities not having a budget enough to have censors and alarms installed — that’s the part that should have been changed. Without having a budget or resources, their hands are tied as well,” she said.

“Nobody ever remembers a flood this bad. I have friends who are 90 years old and they don’t remember a flood that bad.”