“All You Want to Do Is Just Find Something”: Search and Rescue Volunteer Recalls Responding to Flooding in Central Texas

On July 4, as floodwaters swelled the Guadalupe River and swept through central Texas, Amy Shoe was impatient to head into the field.

“Of course, we do not self-deploy,” explained Shoe, an assistant division lead at TEXSAR, a volunteer search and rescue organization that responds to emergencies throughout Texas. “We just needed the go.”

At around 2 p.m., Shoe’s team received notice to deploy on the banks of the river. Silt in the river and dams at close intervals created a challenging situation the first day, she recalled, but her team stayed in the field until past midnight.

One unusual element of their assignment stood out to her.

“There was not a rescue phase. It just went right to recovery,” she said. Generally, emergency responders like TEXSAR begin by trying to save lives, searching for people who have survived a disaster but are stranded or trapped – the rescue phase. Over a longer period, when the hope of rescue is past, the focus shifts to recovery: searching for the bodies of people killed and helping to bring closure to family members.

“I couldn’t wrap my head around it,” Shoe recalled. “This deployment was very different compared to, say, a hurricane.”

The number of the missing kept rising at a shocking rate, she remembered.

Today, the death toll from the Texas Hill Country floods stands at 138 people, many of them children. More than 38,000 homes are estimated to be damaged. While the area has long been prone to flooding, and a number of Texas-based search and rescue teams deployed in response to the July flooding, the scale and death toll are vast. Providers have reported increased mental health needs – including for first responders, who are often forced to confront disturbing sights and personal danger – and severe financial hardship among their patients.

Shoe’s deployment after the July floods lasted two weeks. She recalled breaking down in tears when finding a set of toddler-sized pajamas amid flood debris. “With your whole heart and soul, all you want to do is just find something, to bring closure,” she explained. “It just kills you when you can’t do that.”

At one point, she recalled a family approached her search party, asking them to check a big pile of debris that was from their destroyed home. Officials had told the family to stay away from the damage, but they were missing three people, including their daughter and grandson. “All they could focus on were those debris piles,” Shoe remembered. Her team found the family’s papers and identification among the wreckage, but not their loved ones.

Search and rescue, or SAR, teams are generally staffed primarily by volunteers who are extensively trained and drilled in responding to disaster situations. SAR volunteers are generally motivated by a desire to serve others, which keeps them going during the wearying and often dangerous process of rescue and recovery.

“Just to be around these people dedicating their lives and their time…to people having their very worst day, it’s very empowering,” Shoe explained.

In the field, she said, a responder’s focus is narrow. “None of us really went online because it just upsets you more, and you just want to focus on what’s in front of you,” she explained. But seeing a horizontal line high above her team’s heads, on the bark of the surrounding trees, where the water had risen – an official told them the waters reached 82 feet high in places – and the bodies of fish stranded far from the water, her team couldn’t help but be shocked.

“You can’t help but try to imagine the water being that high and going by,” she said.

The support from the community touched Shoe’s all-volunteer team. People from nearby communities brought food or supplies, or offered their homes up for visiting responders. Shoe recalled one man driving up in a vintage 1970s car and furtively opening the trunk of his car to reveal granola bars, other snacks and supplies. “He was just a cool cat,” she said, chuckling.

Over a long deployment, Shoe said, emergency responders rely on their teammates. “You start wearing down, you are tired, you do start getting emotional,” she said. Fellow searchers understand: “You have your own camaraderie.”

The sheer devastation of the floods made deployment especially difficult for Shoe. Her team found a number of victims, but it was hard to leave many people without closure.

Still, Shoe said, she’s grateful for the training and experience that enabled her to do this work.

“I searched things as best as I could, and I know there was no one [left behind] where I was,” she said.

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Direct Relief supported TEXSAR’s response to the flooding in central Texas with a $50,000 emergency grant for equipment and training, as well as field medic packs designed to equip first responders with the medicines and equipment needed for triage care.