COMFORT, Texas – A wall of water, a church camp, and the story of loss and survival. The 1987 Guadalupe River flooding draws chilling parallels to the Fourth of July floods in the Hill Country.
Kathryn McCay-Sylvester is one of the 33 survivors of the 1987 flood and said the recent floods brought back a lot of memories.
“It is so eerie the way that it’s so similar,” said McCay-Sylvester.
McCay-Sylvester is originally from the Dallas area and now lives in Tennessee. She and her brother were at a church camp of Pot O’ Gold Ranch when the floods occurred.
“It rained all night,” McCay-Sylvester recalled. “Then the next morning, we left earlier than we were supposed to.”
She said the campers were loaded up on the bus and told to “hurry up.” Several busses and vehicles had been able to pass through before the water rose.
McCay-Sylvester said she was in the last bus that was not able to turn around and her brother was in the van behind it.
“The water started rising and it got to like the steps of the bus and [the bus driver] was like, ‘okay, we got to get off,’” said McCay-Sylvester. “We got off and we started holding hands and it was about waist deep."
She recalls the water rising quickly and everyone had to start swimming.
“We quit holding hands at that point and we all just started swimming to trees because there was no way we were going to get back to the shore,” said McCay-Sylvester. “Like they described in the current flood, we saw it too. It was a wall of water."
At one point, she thought she wasn’t going to survive.
" I just went under, and I just was turning somersaults and all I remember is just white. Like that’s all I remember. It’s just like, I’m not going to make it," said McCay-Sylvester. “But I was also thinking in the back of my head, where’s my brother? I don’t want to leave my brother. So that’s, and then when I thought about that and I just came up and grabbed a limb and started making my way up a tree."
She said she held onto the tree for four hours until someone from the Coast Guard came down on a rope to bring her to safety.
Her brother also survived.
The Hill Country flood not only brought up the past for McCay-Sylvester but brought up feelings of anger.
“It stirs up a lot of emotions with me and something needs to change," said McCay-Sylvester. “It’s not anybody’s fault. I just think that we need to do better.”
KPRC 2 has learned Kerr County officials discussed a flood warning system for years, but it never came into fruition.
During the most recent flood in Texas’ hill country, the city of Comfort had wailing sirens alerting people to get out. Everyone in Comfort survived the flood, according to the city’s fire chief.
“All I’m asking is for safety protocols,” said McCay-Sylvester.
10 teenagers died in the 1987 Guadalupe River flood. One of them was never found. July 17 will mark 38 years since that flooding.
McCay-Sylvester has a podcast called Family Secrets: Picking up the Pieces which details more of her story.
