Workers for Mastermind Facility Services typically trim hedges and do outdoor maintenance at offices and apartment complexes around San Antonio. But on Sunday, a group of them were an hour away, near Kerrville, Texas, helping police officers cut and claw through fallen trees and debris at a riverside wedding venue ravaged by the recent flash flooding.
Search-and-rescue teams have been hoping against hope to find signs of life. But what they have encountered instead is painful silence and, in some instances, a trail of death. At one point, the workers, who came as volunteers, were worried that trapped inside the tangle of vegetation were the remains of someone who had been carried away by the surge of water that arrived on Friday. It turned out to be a false alarm.
The workers recognized that this was a physically and mentally arduous mission but, ultimately, not about them. Maybe they could help reunite a family, or at least provide a measure of certainty after days of dread. That is what mattered.
“You got to put your emotions aside,” said Christopher Rey, 35, one of the workers.
A sprawling and desperate search for missing people along the swollen Guadalupe River in Central Texas pushed forward on Sunday. Officials and search crews were acutely aware that the window for finding them alive was rapidly closing.
There have been astonishing stories of survival, feeding a sliver of hope that there was still a chance for rescues, even three days after the flooding began. Still, search crews were not only up against not only time, but also the unrelenting force of nature. The strength and fury of the floodwaters were evident in uprooted trees and razed homes and buildings.
The efforts were further hampered by more uncooperative weather. In Kerr County, which experienced the worst of the flooding and the highest death toll, phones blared on Sunday afternoon with fresh warnings as more rain fell. There was a “high confidence” of additional flooding, the alert said. “Move to higher ground.”
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