After another Texas flood, faith helps traumatized first responders endure

KERR COUNTY, Texas (RNS) — A 20-foot-tall white cross still stands in front of the Center Point, Texas, fire station, the words “Letters to Heaven” written just above a mail slot at its base to accept notes addressed to campers and counselors killed in the flood at Camp Mystic last July.

A year ago, volunteer firefighter Razor Dobbs scoured the Texas Hill Country region for victims of a devastating early morning flood. Around 3 a.m. Thursday (July 16), he found himself in a similar situation: standing before an elderly couple reluctant to evacuate their Center Point-area home as rain pounded, thunder crashed and the Guadalupe River inched closer to their back door.

Dobbs, familiar with the damage floodwater can inflict on the human body, refused to allow the couple to share the fate of the more than 130 people who were killed in deadly floods a year ago. He threw open their back door and pointed: “That’s the river.”

“The fear that came over me,” he recounted later, thinking of the couple who eventually heeded his advice to flee. “I know what y’all are going to look like if you don’t get out of here. I’ve seen what all of y’all are going to look like.”

Two destructive…