Early August, 1978. Kerrville, Texas. I watched a large mobile home float down the middle of the rampaging Guadalupe River on a record rise due to unprecedented rainfall in the previous few days.
Slow moving tropical storm Amelia came ashore in Texas the end of July, 1978, and stalled over the Texas Hill Country from August 1-4. Rain measured over 48 inches in some areas. Creeks and streams crested at record heights throughout the Hill Country.
My own home was only 23 feet above the water line and my family had evacuated to stay with friends on higher ground. The river in central Kerrville crested at 21 feet, so our home survived. But as a Kerrville police officer, I was on duty 12 to 16 hours a day with the entire force on overtime assisting with flood emergencies.
In all, 27 people lost their lives in the flooding. A mobile home park in Center Point was built in a wide meander on the banks of Verde Creek. The creek crested around midnight, cutting across the meander and washing away the entire trailer park with sleeping residents still in their mobile homes.
When the flooding subsided, the sheriff’s office put out a call for assistance in searching for the bodies of missing people downstream from the trailer park. Peace officers from throughout the area volunteered to help, myself included.
I will never forget the huge steel I-beams from the frames of mobile homes – wrapped like bent coat hangers around large cypress trees lining the creek banks. Mountains of driftwood and debris as large as houses had piled up where there were eddies or blockages on the banks. We dug through those piles trying to locate the missing people.
I thought I had found a body while pulling driftwood from one pile. I saw the back of a man’s head under some debris, dark skin with a stubble of hair visible. As I dug down to recover the body, however, it turns out all I had seen was a whole ham with the skin and hair stubble still on it. Apparently, it had been in somebody’s refrigerator or freezer that had broken open in the flood.
Moving debris from one pile, I jumped back in fright when I grabbed a log and saw a small alligator with its mouth ready to bite me only inches from my hand. It turns out it was only a rubber toy, but it was very detailed and looked quite real at first sight.
Another thing that made me jump was when I was pulling limbs from another debris pile and saw the most monstrous, bright red crawfish in the world ready to snatch my fingers off, only to realize an instant later that it was a cooked lobster which, like the ham, had washed out of somebody’s freezer or refrigerator.
Some of the bodies of missing people were never recovered, probably carried in the flood waters all the way to the Guadalupe and perhaps miles downstream to be deposited under mountains of driftwood to decompose undetected.
Whether it’s a hurricane, a tornado, a flood, a tidal wave, or some other massive natural disaster, clean up is part of the job of law enforcement.