Slater shares surreal experience in Central Texas flooding
Staying on for a second session as a camp counselor left Pilot Point's Lizzy Slater with an indelible memory.
The camp for preteens to teenagers, roughly a mile upstream from Camp Mystic, was cut off by the Central Texas flooding that resulted in the death of 87 people in Kerr County, with 160 still missing as of Tuesday evening, according to the Kerrville Daily Times.
'The only difference between us and Mystic is … that we were on a big hill that, of course, we complained about throughout the term,' Lizzy said.
But those hills and the accompanying stairs were what kept the camp safe.
Flood waters from the Guadalupe River, which rose to 29.45 feet in Hunt, according to the Kerrville Daily News, cut the camp where Lizzy was working off from the roadway and required the counselors to keep their campers in the cabins.
Because they were uphill from the flooding, the cabins were not in danger.
Thanks to power outages and limited access to the outside world, the camp was largely insulated from the devastation happening further downstream.
'We were stinky, sweaty, tired, just bored, but that was a miracle of things to deal with when I could have been dealing with [much worse],' Lizzy said. 'We just had no idea. There was one kid who snuck in a radio … with a long antenna.'
With that radio, the camper was picking up some of the news.
'She was hearing things on the radio, like campers missing, Mystic evacuated, all these things,' Lizzy said. 'We were just like, ‘Shut it down,’ and so we had no idea what was really true, what was going on. … We stayed kind of oblivious and bubbled but for good reason.'
Many of the campers had friends or family at nearby camps, so the staff wanted to keep them as calm as possible.
It wasn't until the staff and campers piled onto buses provided by Ingram ISD that they started to see the damage firsthand.
'It just kind of looked like something you would see in an apocalyptic movie,' Lizzy said. 'You would see a child's playset 30 feet up into a tree or you'd see children's clothes hanging in a tree, and you would just kind of only imagine why it was up there. An entire house or car flipped up onto its side. You don't usually see a barn flipped upside down. … You couldn't really speak.'
The campers sang some of the camp songs as the ride progressed and distracted each other.
After getting the kids to their families, Lizzy and her friends made their way back to camp to clean up.
Lizzy feels both lucky and guilty about her experience in the flooding.
It didn't fully hit her until around 2 a.m. Sunday.
'It hit me, and I just broke down crying and that whole day … every time I closed my eyes, I could see what I saw and it would just break my heart,' Lizzy said.
As a mother, Shannon Slater said the experience was 'probably the hardest thing I've gone through as a parent.'
Lizzy wasn't set to work through July initially.
She had returned to the camp for the second term because she loved the experience in May and June so much.
As reports of flash flooding came through about Kerrville on Friday morning, Shannon started paying attention.
Not all of the information shared was accurate, and that caused her distress while she waited for word from Lizzy herself.
'I just would always tell people, 'Don't post something [on social media] if you don't know it,'' Shannon said.
She and her husband, David, had limited contact and information about Lizzy's circumstances.
One of Lizzy's fellow counselors had taken the night off, so she communicated with Shannon, reassuring her that the cabins were on high ground.
That, paired with a single social media post the camp managed to release with no cell service and no power, helped give Shannon hope.
'But still, I was not going to be OK until I heard her voice,' she said.
As news came in of some of the deaths and destruction in the area, Lizzy made contact with her parents.
'I could tell Lizzy knew a little bit, but she really didn't know what was going on around and they were basically trapped up there until they could get them,' Shannon said. 'So they helicoptered twice water and supplies to them until they could get them.'
Shannon and David made their way, but they, too, were blocked by flash flooding in Marble Falls.
When they made it to Kerrville, Lizzy wasn't there because she had gone back to the camp, but they were soon reunited.
Having their daughter safely home when other families are in mourning for theirs is a complicated experience.
'I am so grateful, I am so relieved, so thankful, joyful that my daughter is here and she's alive and she lived through that and she was really protected,' Shannon said. '… Simultaneously, I have feelings of grief and loss and pain and hurt for those families that either lost someone or they're still searching.'
They are all holding to their faith in this trying time.
'Where we were placed made the difference, and it just makes me feel guilty that that's the case for me,' Lizzy said. 'One slight change, and it could have been a different— this would be a different interview.'
