← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The Texas Flood Disaster-Stories from on the Ground in the Hill Country
00:56:11
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- [00:00]
Ben Ferguson
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- [00:05]
Senator Ted Cruz
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Ben Ferguson
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- [01:25]
Ben Ferguson
Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you and it's so nice to have you with us on the program today. Sen. We're going to be covering yet again the horrific flooding in Texas and get people up to date on the latest information that you have right now.
- [01:41]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, five days into it, we have 109 people who've been killed in the flooding in the hill country of Texas. There are still a significant number of people that are missing. We know of at least 27 campers and counselors that were killed at Camp Mystic. Those numbers may grow. 109 is likely to grow. And I have to say, just having spent all day yesterday on the ground in the hill country, the devastation, I got to tell you, as bad as you think it is, it's worse. It is being on the ground in Camp Mystic. And later in this podcast, I'm going to walk you through exactly what is going on in Camp mystic, what the state is. It is the most horrific thing I've ever seen and it is. Look, I gotta say, the whole state of Texas, we are grieving, we're mourning, but the whole country is mourning everyone, particularly anyone who's a parent the nightmare of losing your child and losing your child to this kind of disaster. Going from joy and celebration dropping your kid off at summer camp to having incredible experience just days later being swept away by floodwaters. It is horrific. And we're hurting. We're hurting right now.
- [03:01]
Ben Ferguson
No doubt about it. We're going to give you that update on exactly where we are now in just a moment. I realize there are many choices when it comes to who you choose for your cell phone service and there are new ones popping up literally all the time. But here's the truth. There's only one that boldly stands in the gap for every American that believes that freedom is worth fighting for. And that company is Patriot Mobile. For more than 12 years now, Patriot mobile has been on the front lines fighting our got 3, 2, 1. Fighting for our God given rights and freedoms while also providing you exceptional nationwide cell phone service with access to all three of the main networks in the country. Don't just take my word for it. Ask the hundreds of thousands of Americans who made the switch and are now supporting causes they believe in simply by joining Patriot Mobile. Now, switching is easier than ever. You can literally activate in minutes from the comfort of your own home. And you get to keep your same cell phone number you have now. You get to keep your same phone or you can upgrade to a new one. And every time you make a call and every time you send a text and every time you pay your bill at no extra cost to you, they give back to organizations that support our first and our second amendment rights, protect the rights of unborn children and give to our veterans and our wounded warriors. So check out Patriot mobile. Patriot mobile's all U. S based support team is standing by to take your call and make the switch easy. So go to patriotmobile.com verdict that's patriotmobile.com verdict and if you use the promo code verdict you're going to get a free month of service on us patriotmobile.com verdict or 972patriot that's 972-patriot and make the switch today. So Senator, it's. We've had a lot that's happened since we put out that podcast yesterday. Usually we publish this show on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I know many are tuning in this morning that may have missed part of that. And we're going to talk about and play some of that for you in a moment. But catch us up to the latest briefings you've received in the last 24 hours.
- [05:09]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, look, I want to read you a story that was published in the Wall Street Journal and it was entitled A Texas Dad Tried to Kayak to his Daughters. The girls texted I love you and the story focuses on the harbor family that spent the holiday at a cabin they owned at Casa Bonita Cabin community near hunt, Texas. Around 3:30am on Friday, RJ harbor was awakened by pounding rain, thunder and lightning. Hours earlier, he'd received flash flood warnings for other areas, but not where he was staying. RJ, who was a 45 year old father and Dallas lawyer who'd been vacationing and going to summer camp in this area his whole life, thought the river might rise a little. He wanted to check on his two young daughters, 11 year old Brooke and 13 year old Blair. The girls were staying in a borrowed cabin closer to the river with their grandparents, Mike and Charlene Harbor. RJ said he thought he would also clear away a kayak, some fishing gear he was keeping by the river. He put his foot down on the floor of his cabin and felt about 4 inches of water. RJ turned to his wife who was laying in bed beside him, also awake. He told her, annie, the cabin's flooding. RJ could see the water rushing in through the front door. He tried to open the door, but he couldn't. He looked out the window and saw the water level was about 2ft below the window. We need to get out right now, RJ told Annie. They grabbed a few items, their cell phones and a bag. They hadn't unpacked by the time they jumped out the window. About two minutes later, the water had reached up to Annie's neck. The harborist hurried to another cabin nearby on slightly higher ground. They knocked on the door and woke the family. By the time the family came to the door, the water was almost at their door. They went to another cabin and woke with third family as well. RJ borrowed a kayak, a life vest and a flashlight. He started to kayak to the cabin where the couple's daughters and RJ's parents were staying. It was about a hundred feet below and he reached about halfway when RJ said a swell knocked him into a post. I shined a flashlight out there and I could see it was white water and I've kayaked enough to know that was going to be impossible. He could see an entire cabin had been detached from its foundation and was stuck against the side of the cabin where his daughters and parents were staying. There were cars floating at me and trees floating at me. I knew if I took even one stroke further it was going to be a death sentence. RJ Turned around to get his wife and the remaining families. They went to a home nearby on higher ground across Highway 39, where a family let them in about 3:45am that was when he checked his cell phone and he saw a text sent at 3:30am from his daughter Brooke. Receiving the text alone was a miracle in the area where he usually couldn't get cell serviced. It said I love you. Annie, 43, worked at St Rita's Catholic School, which both girls attended. Received texts from both Brooke and Blair Timestamped at 3:30am that said I love you. Their other grandfather, who lives in Michigan, received texts with love you and a photo of the girls with him. The harbors and the other families waited without power all night, hearing horrible sounds. The next morning they realized they had been hearing the cabins being ripped off their foundations and crashing apart. At sunrise, the water had finally receded enough for RJ to go back to the site. Only a half dozen of the community's 20 something cabins were still standing. The others had been ripped from the foundations, leaving only their tile floors. The cabin where Blair, Brooke and their grandparents had been staying was completely washed away. Blair and Brooks bodies were found and identified about a dozen miles from the cabin. Their grandfather's bodies was recovered on Monday. Their grandmother was unaccounted for as of Monday afternoon. Can you imagine, Ben?
- [09:53]
Ben Ferguson
No.
- [09:55]
Senator Ted Cruz
The last thing you hear from your child is a text I love you. As the cabin they're in is swept into the river and they're on their way to their death. This happened over and over and over again that night.
- [10:14]
Ben Ferguson
It is another reminder of just how quick things happen. It's a reminder of just how unprecedented this type of flooding was. It's a reminder, I think, to those trying to politicize this, how much this should never have been politicized and try to turn this into a talking point for politics. Because as I said yesterday, there is no one that was involved in this in those moments was thinking about if you're Republican or Democrat or rich or poor.
- [10:46]
Senator Ted Cruz
No. Pray for Texas. Pray for these parents, pray for these moms and dads, pray for these grandparents. Pray for these brothers and sisters. The agony, the pain, it is unreal. And we have Texans and Americans hurting tonight.
- [11:02]
Ben Ferguson
Amen to that. We do know that President Trump is planning on coming down to Texas and I think there's a lot of people that are going to want to see their president, their commander in chief down in Texas. The White House has said that, that they're going to be there and that's going to help, I think, with certainly some of the healing as well.
- [11:20]
Senator Ted Cruz
Absolutely. I'm very glad the president is coming. It's the right thing to do.
- [11:23]
Ben Ferguson
I want to go back to what many of you may have missed yesterday. Senator Cruz was down in the center, the epicenter of where everything happened. And for many of you, you may have missed it. What was said about that time down there on Monday and the time that was spent and the stor that were told and the families that were there. And if you missed it, I hope, by the way, that you'll take this show and share it wherever you can so others can hear exactly what happened in Kerrville, in the surrounding area and and how you can also help as well. So if you missed that yesterday, when we put this out on a day we normally don't publish, we wanted to play that for you again right now.
- [12:06]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, Ben, you and I are recording this at 12:36am Monday night. And I spent the entire day in Hill country starting at 6am this morning, and I visited with families who were grieving. I went to Camp mystic and saw firsthand the devastation. I will tell you, there are not words to describe just how much Texas is hurting. This is across the state and across the country, people are grieving. They're grieving for the moms and dads. This flooding, I'll tell you, in my 13 years in the Senate, I've seen a lot of natural disasters, hurricanes and tornadoes and wildfires, and it's always difficult. But this was something really different. What happened in the Hill country right now, the fatality count, it is over 100. It is expected to keep growing. They are still searching for and finding bodies right now. Camp mystic, we know of 27 kids and counselors who lost their lives in the flooding. There are an additional 10 more girls and one more counselor who are missing. And so there are search and rescue teams that are searching for them right now. Obviously, every hour, every day that goes by, the odds of a happy outcome go down. But we are certainly praying that those 11 girls are found safe and sound. You know, I want to tell folks a little bit about what has happened on the ground and where this is. So if you're not from Texas, the Hill country is in central Texas. It's the central part of the state, and it is, I think, the most beautiful part of the state. And I think most Texans agree with that. There are rolling hills. There are beautiful rivers. And in particular, Kerr county, there are about 40 summer camps. And there's a long tradition of Camps. It's an incredible tradition that goes back a hundred years where people went and formed these summer camps because the natural beauty was so extraordinary that it's an incredible place for girls and for boys to come and spend typically a month at a time. And camp mystic, it's 100 years old. It is a Christian girls camp. And I will tell you, Camp mystic is really an institution in Texas. It is. You see families from all across Texas who at the end of typically the month long camp session, there's a two day closing ceremony. And you'll see grandmothers and moms and daughters, three generations of Texas women that are there. And it is. Look, for me, this is not abstract. Our girls have gone to camp in Hunt in Kerr county for a decade now. And actually just last week, Heidi was there picking up Kathryn, our youngest daughter, from camp. And so this was literally a week ago that my daughter was there. She was at camp. They'd been there for a month. And I'll tell you, these camps are. They teach girls independence and responsibility and teamwork and. And the friendships that are formed are lifelong friendships. Catherine's best friend is a girl from the Rio Grande Valley who she would never have met going to school and growing up in Houston if it were not for that camp. And they are absolutely inseparable. Those sorts of friendships you see at the closing ceremony. You see women in their 70s and 80s with those same lifelong friendships. And when this flooding hit, it just devastated Camp mystic, and not just Camp mystic, but the entire region. It was the fourth of July weekend. And so you had thousands of thousands of people there celebrating by the riverbanks. And the Guadalupe river is this beautiful river that I have floated on and swam in dozens of times. It's a gorgeous river. It's wonderful. People love to swim in it, vacation in it, canoe in it.
- [17:08]
Ben Ferguson
And no, it's part of just the summers in Texas. And for people like you mentioned that are outside Texas, floating the river is just so much fun because you get, I mean, these basically, they used to be, back in the day, the inner tubes of tires. You get these floats now and you float with your best friends. I have a friend that actually met his future wife floating the Guadalupe River. I mean, it's just a community. It's a slow float. It's very safe. It is something that you do. We've stayed on that river before. We floated it, as you mentioned, countless times. And on the 4th of July, a lot of people go down there camping. You camp close the river, you bring your RV and you do that. And that's what people were doing. As you mentioned, it was a Fourth of July weekend.
- [17:53]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, and you mentioned RVs, the flooding. There were many RVs that were just swept into the river, and we don't have a count. So I started this morning by meeting with the mayor and the county judge and the county commissioners and Texas DPS and the sheriff and just getting a report from on the ground. And one of the challenging things, we have over 100 confirmed fatalities. There are a number of bodies that have been discovered, both adults and kids, that have not been identified yet. And bodies that have been in the water for an extended period of time can be difficult to identify visually. And so they're doing DNA swabs. You know, when this started happening, it was early in the morning on the Fourth of July. The National Weather Service put out an emergency warning just after 1am they put out another emergency warning just after 4am and the waters rose about 30ft in less than an hour. 30ft is a lot for an ordinary, calm river to rise suddenly. The flash flood was absolutely devastating. That now, when this was happening, within hours of the flooding occurring, I was on the phone speaking with, with Governor Greg Abbott. I spoke with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. I spoke with Nim Kidd, who is head of the Texas Department of Emergency Management. And I called President Trump, and I talked to President Trump on that first day, And I said, Mr. President, what is happening in Texas? This is bad. It is all indications are this is really, really serious. There could be a lot of fatalities. Information was just starting to come in, so it was hazy, but I said, this could be really, really bad. And President Trump, to his credit, he said, ted, whatever Texas needs, the answer is yes. Whatever federal assets you need, the answer is yes. And that I passed on to the state officials, to the local officials. And I'll tell you, Ben, within hours, I was hearing from families. I was hearing from parents whose daughters were at mystic and whose daughters were missing. And they were panicked, and they were saying, can you tell us anything? Do you have any information? And I was connecting them with the local sheriff, with emergency management. And look, you and I are both dads. It is difficult to imagine the panic, the fear, the bewilderment, everything those moms and dads were feeling as you get the news that your daughter is missing. And many of those parents just drove to Central Texas immediately, got in the car and drove. As I told you, we picked up our daughter last week from right there. And Catherine said to me, said, well, why would the dads drive There. And I said, sweetheart, that's just what you do if your child is lost. You just go. You'll move heaven and earth.
- [21:05]
Ben Ferguson
You'll do whatever you can. I mean, this is the same conversation I have with my boys and the ages here. You see these little girls that are missing and, and one of my wife's high school friend's daughter is one of those that lost her life. And having that conversation with your kids are the same age. My twins are six. They could have been at camp. And My oldest is 8. Could have been at camp. And you put yourself in that situation of just what would you do? And it's exactly what you just said. You just go. And there's been. I also want people to understand flooding in this region because I think there's been a lot of misinformation nationwide on this so that people understand the Hill country and kind of how it works. There's a lot of rock in the Hill country. And so when it rains, the water doesn't absorb into the land like it does in most places in the country. Like when we get rain in Houston or when I lived in Dallas, like, it rains and a lot of the water goes into the earth and you don't have this flash flooding, this massive quick flooding in the Hill Country. That's what you get when you get rain. But to be clear, in this part of the Hill country, they don't get a lot of rain. They can go hundreds of days without rain in this area. And so when it, you know, there's, there's a reality of like when it rains, the locals know that you're going to have some flooding in the low lying areas. And you kind of know where those areas are and where the bridges are and where the low areas are in the, in the roadways. This is something that no one had seen in their lifetime. There had never been flooding like this in Kerrville or in Comfort the way that we are witnessing it now. And so there are some people, I think, out there acting like, well, they should. You know, this is something that happened so common. I've seen comments like that. This was catastrophic. You witnessed it today.
- [22:57]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah, it was utterly unprecedented. I went up in a Coast Guard helicopter and I flew a significant portion of the Guadalupe River. And I will tell you, just looking at the devastation, you know, water, when you have a fast moving wall of water, nothing stands in its way. There were cars strewn everywhere. And by the way, when a car is being thrown and it crashes into a tree, it destroys the car. But there were thousands and thousands of trees that were just mowed over by the water, because when water hits a tree, water's a lot stronger than the trees. And the volume of. You saw houses just taken clean off their foundation and swept into the river. We were talking about RVs. A lot of people bring RVs or in mobile homes. And look, if you're going to a campsite, you know, it's a Fourth of July weekend. It's. It's a great weekend. And the problem is RVs and mobile homes are particularly vulnerable in a flood or tornado or other natural disaster. And so you just had multiple RVs swept into the river. They don't have a firm count. They don't know how many people they're looking for, because many of the visitors were not from Kerr county and were just there to celebrate the Fourth of July. Going down, flying that helicopter and just seeing the extent of the devastation was massive. And look, but I want to say this. There's so much grief in Texas. Our hearts are broken right now. And there are families from Houston, from Dallas, from Austin, from San Antonio, from every community in Texas. And there are campers who come from all over the country to come to Camp Mystic. But many of them are from cities in Texas, and many of them you and I know. We have multiple friends who've lost children. My street at home, around the oak tree in our front yard, we have a big green ribbon for the girls at Camp Mystic. And if you look at tree after tree just going up and down our street, there are green ribbons on tree after tree after tree. But I want to give some encouragement. Look, this is unbearably hard and painful for the state, but in the face of unspeakable pain, there's also unbelievable courage. And there were over 850 rescues from that river. We had early on when I got on the phone and I worked to make sure that there were federal assets there. We had over a dozen helicopters in the air. We had Coast Guard in the air. We had National Guardsmen in the air. Air. We had DPS in the air. We had game wardens on the ground, and they were rescuing people, pulling them out of harm's way. I met today with a Coast Guard swimmer. And by the way, Coast Guard swimmers are incredible. You know, I've analogized Coast Guard swimmers before to kind of a blend of Navy SEALs and California surfers. And I've gotten to know several of these Coast Guard swimmers. And Hurricane Harvey, I got to know them, and they're utterly fearless. These are guys that jump out of Helicopters into hurricane force winds and waters and just swim and rescue people. And they kind of, you know, often will be just sort of dudes, like surfer dudes, who are these incredibly fearless lifesavers. Well, I met this one Coast Guardsman who landed at Camp Mystic. He was on a Coast Guard helicopter. They landed him there, and he rescued 165 girls. And I talked with him. His name is Petty Officer Scott Ruskin. He's 26 years old. He's from New Jersey. And it was his first mission as a Coast Guard rescue swimmer. He's new to the Coast Guard. He did a lot of training, but they put him on the ground there, and it was the highest part of Camp Mystic. And then they brought in a whole series of helicopters to helicopter the girls out because all the roads were underwater, so you couldn't drive in and get the girls because the roads were completely submerged. And so he was there. He spent three and a half hours on the ground at Camp Mystic. Understand, there's torrential rains coming down. He's sitting there with girls, girls who are terrified, who are crying, who are screaming, who are scared. Some of them were singing hymns and he's trying to comfort them. They dropped him off and he was the one staying with them and trying to get the girls. They would come and land helicopters and they would load about 15 girls and they'd take them, take them to a safe place and they'd come back and pick up another load and another load and another load. So for three and a half hours, you know, when I, when I visited with him, and it's interesting, he's 26 years old, he has kind of short blonde hair and a mustache. And it's, you know, he's done some media interviews today. And one of them, he said, I'm just a dude. Which is sort of what I said about, like the. And he was saying, and he was kind of laughing and saying, like he talks to his commanding officer and sometimes says, hey, dude. He's like, oh, wait, wait, you're my commanding officer. Sorry. But it's. It's kind of just how swimmers are. It's sort of their culture. But he said he had just gotten off the phone with a mom and dad and a girl who, he said, and he said they were crying. And he was crying because they said, you saved my daughter's life. She said that when she was terrified, you held her hand and just held her hand as you put her on the helicopter and made her not be scared for a minute. And that heroism was happening over and over and over again.
- [29:19]
Ben Ferguson
It's incredible. It's the best part of the tragedy is just seeing how quickly people came together. You know, there's also another aspect of this, and I do want to just take a moment and set the record straight. There have been some people that have tried to use this tragedy to score political points. It makes me sad that there's people in the media and there's people on the left that are just that vile and partisan. We even saw a pediatrician that actually worked for my kids go to a pediatrician who said that basically the people deserve what they get because they voted for Donald Trump in this area of the country. Thank goodness it was exposed and she was fired today for that. It is sad to see this happen. And I even called her pediatrician's office and I said, hey, like this. I need to know that if there's an on call doctor, they're not going to give my kid bad care if they know what I do. And they said, watch our website, you'll be getting an update soon. Thank goodness they put out there that this doctor had been fired from this job as a pediatrician. And you look at these moments and it does make you sad. But I also think we need to be clear about the record here. There's a lot of rumors that this was all preventable, that this was somehow Donald Trump's fault. This was the fault of defunding of FEMA and different agencies, the National Weather Service, all that is a lie. They were staffed adequately. There were warnings that went out. Can we learn from this and do better? Absolutely. Could we put maybe a warning system on the riverbanks, something they've talked about seven years ago, but it was voted down because the costs and Kerr county, these are things that we can learn from. But the partisan politics of this and just watching people try to somehow blame Trump for this tragedy, it really makes me sad that this is still where we are in this way when something like this happens. I wish people could just learn this isn't political. This storm didn't care if you're Republican or Democrat or agnostic or Christian or Jewish or Catholic or anything. El they didn't care if you were rich or poor, black or white. Everybody that was in the line of this flooding life was in danger. That's what people should focus on and the help we can do to give them. Not trying to say, all right, how do we use this to make points?
- [31:52]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah, you see this unfortunately, frequently after natural disasters, after hurricanes or tornadoes or in this case, flooding that Partisans will try to attack their political opponents and score cheap points. And there are a bunch of folks online and both in the media and on the left that are just trying to attack Trump. And, you know, if there's a hurricane, the hurricane is Trump's fault. And in this case, the sort of talking point of the left was that Doge made reductions in different areas of government. And the National Weather Service, they say Doge gutted it. Now, we know that that is not the case. How do we know that? Number one, because the National Weather Service, in this case, put out two warnings. One, as I mentioned, just after 1:00am, one after 4:00am that was their job. We also know the National Weather Service for this region was headquarters in New Braunfels, which is another small town, not too far away from Kerrville, not too far away from Hunt. And the night of this flood, they not only had full staffing, they had three additional people, three extra people staffed that evening because they knew it was going to be a difficult weather event. So they deliberately staffed up. And look, I will say beyond that, the National Weather Service union, which has been very critical of the Doge reductions, as you would expect the union to be, they publicly said that the reductions through Doge had zero impact on the National Weather Service's ability to predict what happened here. And given that they're an entity that is naturally critical of those cuts, I think that speaks volumes. Now, you know, I spent the day, I did a lot of. Lot of interviews with a lot of reporters today, and many of them were saying, okay, well, and they would ask this question. Many of the reporters would say, well, isn't this all Trump's fault? And so I tried to say, look, stop politicizing a crisis that has broken the heart of our state. But as you noted, and listen, with any disaster, there's a natural order of events. The first phase is search and rescue. It is crisis, saving people's lives. And we have been in that phase. We're still in that phase looking for these 11 still missing girls. But that phase will soon come to an end. The next phase is rebuilding. And there are many people who have lost their homes, who've lost everything. And the rebuilding phase will take. It will take months, it may take years for some of these places to be rebuilt. But that's a process. That's a process that there will be local assistance and state assistance and federal assistance at the same time. When we get through the crisis period, there will naturally be a retrospective examination of what happened, what was the exact timeline, and what could have gone better. What lessons can be learned? And we've seen that, for instance, with the many hurricanes. You know, you and I both live in Houston. If you live on the Gulf coast, you have a lot of hurricanes. I will say, unfortunately, Texas has gotten really good with dealing with hurricanes because we have a lot of practice in it. So we've learned lessons. We've learned how to identify the most vulnerable areas, the most vulnerable populations when a hurricane is in the Gulf, to get them out of there, to try to minimize fatalities. And I think we can certainly learn lessons here. In particular, you're putting out warnings at 1am and 4am most people are sleeping at 1am and four a.m. and every one of us, if you and I.
- [35:33]
Ben Ferguson
Silence their phones or they have.
- [35:35]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah, yeah. And actually, with the kids, they don't have phones.
- [35:38]
Ben Ferguson
We knew people. Yeah. And by the way, there was people that we knew that were in Kerrville that received the notices on their phones. They woke up to them, and they didn't get them because they were asleep.
- [35:52]
Senator Ted Cruz
And the cell coverage, I will say, in that region is just lousy. Like, every time we go for camp pickup, it's very hard to get any cell coverage at all, just given the topography. There's not a lot of cell towers there. And it's also, you know, the campers are not allowed to have phones, and so they leave their phones at home. So it's just the counselors and adults that have phones. But look, Ben, if you and I could step in a time machine right now and go back to 2 or 3 in the morning on the 4th of July, we would run into those cabins and pull those girls out and get them out of there. Every one of us were just like, dear men, dear God, get them to high ground. And so it is perfectly reasonable to say, how can we improve the response from when an emergency warning gets out to make sure that it is heard. And I'll tell you, I spoke today with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. The Texas legislature is coming back for special session shortly. And I suggested to him this is something that should be on the call. The governor chooses that. But lieutenant Governor agreed that it made sense to look at an emergency warning system along the Guadalupe river, much like we have up in the Texas Panhandle. When there's a tornado, they have sirens that go off because a tornado, like a flash flood, you get very little warning. It can develop quickly, it can be devastating, and so they'll set off the alarms. I think it makes a lot of sense to consider putting in a warning system like that. So at least if you had a blaring alarm going off at 1 or 2 or 3 in the morning, it would wake the kids up and wake the counselors up and put them in a position to get the kids out of harm's way.
- [37:45]
Ben Ferguson
No, I couldn't agree with you more on that one. How does that, when you look at the response moving forward, final question on this, because there are people that say, hey, we want to make sure, as you just mentioned, this never happens again. Is this a cooperation within the state of Texas with the federal government? Does the state of Texas come first? There's a lot of people that ask that question. I'd love for you to answer it. Where does that start?
- [38:09]
Senator Ted Cruz
So it'll be at every level of government, it'll be the local level, it'll be at the state level, it'll be at the federal level. And I think at every level we're going to have discussions about what can we do, what makes sense, how do we keep people safe and look this level of devastation. We've never seen anything like it. But I want to go back to some of the signs of encouragement. I met with one family today, a mom and dad who had a young boy, a 14 year old boy who was at La Junta, which is another summer camp for boys. It's right down the river from mystic and La Junta also badly flooded and miraculously nobody was killed. But they said their 14 year old son was woken up about 3 in the morning and the counselors were telling him, come help us, let's get the little boys out of harm's way. And he said they were going and getting seven and eight year old boys, pulling them out of their cabin and having them swim through rushing water and rescue them. And I got to tell you this, mom and dad, they were there just hugging. I was hugging them and they had tears in their eyes and they were just. And first of all their son was alive. So I just said, praise God. But it was terrifying. And what I did say to the mom and dad, I said, look, this, this trauma, this experience will be with your son for the rest of his life. It will be with both of you for the rest of your lives. But I said, your son also has the experience of knowing for the rest of his life that as a 14 year old boy he helped save the lives of these younger 7, 8 and 9 year old boys. That there are boys and soon to be men living because of his heroism in a time of crisis. I heard another story of a counselor who was in A cabin. The cabin was filled up with water. His head was just barely sticking above the water where he could breathe. And with each hand, he was holding up a mattress with a camper on the mattress. And all three of them, the counselor and both campers survived. Those sorts of acts of heroism happened over and over again. There are stories of Eagle Scouts who were counselors rescuing young kids over and over and over again. That was happening repeatedly. But I'll tell you, Ben, the most difficult thing I did today is I went to Camp mystic, and I went and walked the grounds at Camp Mystic. And I think it may be the most horrifying thing I've ever seen in my life. You walk through, and actually, as you walk through, the river was calm and peaceful and beautiful. But it rose, and it rose suddenly. And I will say, the press, I think, has been less than clear and honest about how Camp mystic is set up, because they've described it as saying, well, the cabins for the young girls were down by the riverbank, and all of the other cabins were up high. That's not accurate. And walking the grounds, the cabins are all hundreds of yards removed from the riverbank. There's a lot of distance between the river and where the cabin is, and the cabins are all about the same elevation. There's some differences, but not massive differences in elevation between the cabins at Mystic. And I was talking with one of the longtime employees there who said there had been a flood decades before, and it had gotten up and crossed a little bit of the ground and had come to sort of the foundation of one of the buildings that was not a cabin, but one of the buildings closer to the river. But it had never gotten close to the cabins. So that's one thing to understand. People say, well, gosh, this is prone to floods, yes. But in the 100 years of camp mystic, there had never been a flood where the water had gotten to the cabins. And in this case, the water was eight feet deep in the cabins. Walking through and every building, you could see the water line. You could see the water line outside the buildings, and it was eight feet deep. And in the cabins, the water shattered the windows. It swept the furniture out. You looked in the cabins, and every one of the cabins, the furniture had been swept out. The windows were all shattered. And I gotta tell you, look there. There was one cabin. It's called the Bubble Inn, and it's a cabin at mystic where the youngest girls were. And outside the bubble inn were 16 white crosses. And on each one of those was a name of a little Girl. And they're names that we've read in the paper. They're names of little seven and eight year old girls, third graders who lost their lives. And one of the crosses was for Dick Eastland, the camp director who drowned trying to save the girls lives. And he had spent. He graduated from UT 50 years ago and had spent 50 years of his life running this camp for girls. And he was in his Suburban. They showed me where he drowned. It was a couple hundred yards from where I was standing in the river. He was trying to save the girls and the water swept him away and he drowned. And the 16 crosses reading those names. Two of those little girls go to. Go, go to school with my daughter. They're third graders at her school. The parents of one of those little girls lives a block away from me. And I'll tell you, I just knelt and wept. There were families there, Ben. There was a mom and dad who was kneeling in front of those crosses and they were kissing the cross. And I stood back. I didn't want to interrupt their grieving, but just watching them. The mom came to that cabin, the Bubble Inn, and she just broke down in tears. In front of every cabin, there were the children's belongings. There were trunks, there were electric fans. There were slippers and flip flops and crocs. There were teddy bears. There were stuffed animals everywhere. These were little girls. And many of them have their names on them. And there were moms and dads picking through the rubble looking for the girl's belongings. And I don't know which of those moms and dads lost a daughter. We know of 27 who were lost and there may be more. There are 11 that are missing and there were girls picking through the rubble. I don't know if those girls were campers themselves who had survived. I don't know if they're siblings who had lost a sibling. But everyone is walking around. Shell shock doesn't begin to describe it. Up on the field, there was a field that was basically a parking lot for the cars of counselors. And the waters had thrown the cars on top of each other. It was like they were matchbox. Cars just flipped over. You saw car after car after car stacked on each other, flipped on its side, flipped over, tossed around the dining hall. An entire wall of the dining hall had been ripped off. They had heavy wooden tables that filled the dining hall. Every one of them had been pulled out. And the bubble in which is where a large percentage of the fatalities occurred, the water swept in and just pulled those girls out. The windows, it seeing that. And I saw it first from the helicopter, and you could see all their belongings spread out. But then standing there and viewing it from the perspective of a dad, you know, I've helped my daughters pack their trunks.
- [47:49]
Ben Ferguson
I.
- [47:52]
Senator Ted Cruz
Can'T pick up. Every year you go and pick up your daughter's truck, and it's a joyful time. Our state is mourning right now. Ben.
- [48:08]
Ben Ferguson
I tell you, for everyone listening, and I say this, just pray for the people that are affected. Pray for the people in Texas. Pray for the families who are still without their loved ones. They're still trying to find them. Pray for the moms and the dads who are planning the funerals. As we know people personally that are doing that and getting ready for that this week. Pray for the moms. God, please pray for the moms.
- [48:37]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yes.
- [48:38]
Ben Ferguson
And anything you can do to help with all of the. There's so many different groups that are helping the people in Comfort and Kerr county, and there are people that need help, and we focus so much on the kids. But there's a lot of elderly people that have been affected by this. There a lot of people that lost their lives and all their belongings and help any way you can with all of the non profits that are getting involved, that are doing this. And we're going to keep you updated. But I would just say hug your baby.
- [49:09]
Senator Ted Cruz
And Ben, I want to say. Ben, I want to say three more things of encouragement. So in Hunt, there's a store that's kind of a focal point. It's called the hunt Store, and it's right at the junction of two of the highways. You go up one highway to go to one of the big camps. You go up another highway to go up to mystic and La Junta. And actually La Junta is right across the street from the Hunt Store. The Hunt Store. The flood utterly gutted it. It's just ripped out in a hollow shell. I went and stopped at the Hunt Store and just visited people who were there or gathering there. And they'd actually changed the sign where it said hunt store. And instead of hunt Store, they changed the sign to read hunt strong. And, you know, Heidi and Catherine were at the Hunt Store last week. I mean, it's. I've been there dozens of times. The owners were there. I just hugged them. And they were just like residents there who were just there mourning and grieving. And I'll tell you, there was set up. There was a giant barbecue truck. All right, so this is a story that is amazing that you're going to like It's a barbecue truck from Rockport. Rockport is a town down on the Gulf Coast. And Rockport, when Hurricane Harvey hit, it devastated the Gulf coast from Deep East Texas to South, all the way, really, to Corpus Christi. So that's a lot of. And Rockport is right in there. It's by Port Aransas and Aransas Pass. And Rockport was devastated by Hurricane Harvey. Well, these guys, and these are big old Texans with big old beards. They look like ZZ Top. And they said, well, you know, when Hurricane Harvey hit, there was a group from Hunt, Texas, little town in the Hill country, that came down to Rockport and set up a food truck and fed us when we had lost our homes. And so they got in a truck and drove up this giant smoker and griller, and they were just giving away free barbecue and it. And. And one of the things that's really cool. I was at. In Rockport several times after. After Hurricane Harvard, and I was in all the towns up and down the Gulf coast, but I was at that. Those food trucks. I don't recall visiting with someone and hearing that they were from Hunt down in Rockport. But you know what? In Rockport, they remembered that. And that's something we see happening, just Texans coming together. The Cajun Navy from Louisiana came and were there helping people out. That was incredible. And I just had a chance. I visited with a family, One dad who introduced me to two little boys. And he said, both of them lost some of their closest friends in the flood. And I just said, you know, little kids, and they're not much older than your boys. They shouldn't have to deal with death and loss at that age. But I'll tell you, in that same parking lot at the Hunt store, there was a car that had written on the back of it a Bible verse written in, like, shaving cream on the back window. And it was Isaiah 43:2 that says, when you go through deep water, I will be with you.
- [52:48]
Ben Ferguson
Amen.
- [52:49]
Senator Ted Cruz
That is. Look, you just asked folks to pray. Let me just underscore that. For the moms and dads who have a yearning, gaping hole in their heart, I think there is no pain, no agony like losing a child. And nothing will ever fill that hole. That pain will never go away. But they need love, they need support, they need friends, they need families to hug them, to hold them tight, to just give them a shoulder to cry on and to hold them up. And I got to tell you, this is a time for the church. One of the reasons Texas I think we are so resilient when facing natural disasters is because the church is strong in Texas. And you see church's step. I started the day actually by visiting with a number of chaplains who look, you want to talk about, it was brutal on the chaplains. When you're dealing with moms and dads who've lost their kids and they're just weeping. Even a chaplain, a man or woman of strong faith, I mean it rips your heart out to be with a parent who's lost a seven or eight year old daughter. And right down from the Hunt store there was a church that had a big sign. Free barbecue, lunch and dinner. All are welcome. And that's what the church should be doing, is helping and clothing and comforting and taking care of the needy. And the church should always be doing that, but especially in time of crisis. And I want to close this pod today, Ben, with something I saw on the Internet and it's a video that was recorded in a bus that was driving a bus full of campers from Camp mystic after this flooding. And it's a video recording and you can watch on X there's a video of it, an iPhone or that is going along and showing the video as they're driving along. And you can see the wreckage and the wreckage and the wreckage and everything. But the girls are singing hymns and mystic is a Christian camp. And these are girls that have just been through hell, have been terrified, have lost friends, Some of these girls have lost siblings. And I want to close this podcast by just listening to, to the voices of these girls saying, and I will tell you I have a hard time listening to them singing without being in tears. But I want you to hear them singing these hymns.
- [55:39]
Ben Ferguson
Me, I want to pass it on. I'll shout it from the mountaintops.
- [55:46]
Senator Ted Cruz
Praise God. I want my world to know the Lord of love has come to me I want to pass this. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Try and true with thanksgiving oh my God.
- [56:56]
Ben Ferguson
Caring for you.
- [57:03]
Senator Ted Cruz
The kingdom of.
- [57:05]
Ben Ferguson
God and his righteousness.
- [57:10]
Senator Ted Cruz
And all these things shall be added unto you.
- [57:15]
Ben Ferguson
Allelu alleluia. By every word that proceeds from the.
- [57:30]
Senator Ted Cruz
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