The water level in the rain-swollen Guadalupe River was rising fast and the man calling the emergency dispatcher from a flooded home in the Texas Hill Country sounded desperate.
“No place for us to go,” James Wright said.
“Is it possible to get up on the roof?” the dispatcher asked.
Wright quickly checked.
“Get off the phone,” he was heard telling his wife Donna. “We need to get to higher ground or we will die.”
That was just one of the nearly 600 calls released this week from the catastrophic July 4 flash flooding that swamped Kerr County, killing more than 130 people and turning a national holiday into a tragedy.
James and Donna Wright survived the disaster.
But Kerrville Police Chief Chris McCall, who released the audio of the desperate calls in response to numerous requests from news organizations, warned that other calls are far more distressing.
"Some callers did not survive," McCall said.
“We ask that you keep them and their family members, loved ones and friends in your thoughts and prayers,” McCall said.
Twenty-eight of the victims had been at Camp Mystic, a Christian all-girls sleepaway camp on the river.
"We are missing a whole cabin of girls," an unidentified woman caller told a dispatcher in one of the 911 calls. "I think the only way you’re gonna be able to get here is helicopter."
But there was no saving 25 young campers from the waters that inundated Camp Mystic. Nor could anyone save the camp director and the two counselors who had been watching over them.
In another 911 call, a man later identified as Brad Perry told a dispatcher that he had climbed a tree to escape the floodwaters and that it was "starting to lean."
"I'm gonna die if I don't get a helicopter, is it possible?" Perry asked. "I’ve probably got five minutes left and I’m dead."
Perry also said he feared his wife, Tina, was dead.
"My wife got stuck between an RV and a tree," he said. "The RV and tree all got swept down the river; she's gone.”
In the end, Tina Perry survived, but her husband, a former volunteer firefighter, didn't.
The Kerrville Police Department said the calls were being released in compliance with Freedom of Information Act requests from eight media outlets, including NBC News.
The flooding was triggered by slow-moving thunderstorms that caused the Guadalupe River to rapidly rise, surging more than 20 feet within 90 minutes.
Kerr County was hardest hit by the deluge, but there was also flooding in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties.
Amid the unfolding calamity, some heroes emerged, among them Glenn Juenke, a security guard at Mystic who has been credited with saving dozens from the floodwaters. His 911 call was among the batch released this week.
"We need search and rescue, please," Juenke said. "We’re missing 20 to 40 people here since the flood. We’re out of power, hardly have any cell service."
Juenke pleaded with the dispatcher to summon the National Guard.
"It’s totally gone, the roadway is gone," he said. "The only way out here for search and rescue is going to be helicopter. We’re going to have a landing zone set up."
Dispatchers began fielding the 911 calls at 2:52 a.m. July 4, McCall said.
At the time, there were just two people staffing the Kerrville Police Department's 911 center, the primary answering point for all 911 calls in Kerr County, he said.
Over the next six hours, the center answered 435 calls to 911 as the disaster unfolded, McCall said. Just between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., it answered 106 such calls.
"I’m in a tree. I was in my camper at the campsite. … I had to get myself and my kids out but I was able to get to a tree," one woman said in a 911 call.
"You said it’s you and your two daughters?" the dispatcher asked.
"No, I only have one daughter with me. I don’t know if my son and my other, youngest daughter made it out," the woman said, before reiterating that they were in a tree.
McCall said the staffers who took the calls "showed incredible perseverance." After helping all they could, they "were faced with the difficult decision to disconnect and move on to the next call," he said.
McCall urged survivors and others still grappling with the immensity of the tragedy to seek help themselves.
"As our community continues to recover, please make sure you’re taking care of yourself emotionally," he said. "I’m proud of the strength and resiliency shown by our community in the wake of this tragedy, and the care and comfort we have shown for those lost.”
"Remember, Kerrville: We are stronger together," he said.
