Texas residents and Camp Mystic staffer plead for help in newly released 911 audio from July floods

“We’re floating and my husband is missing — hello? We’re in Kerr County” said one woman before she was abruptly cut off.

The flooding killed at least 136 people statewide, including 117 in Kerr County alone. Most of them were from Texas, but others came from Alabama, California and Florida, according to a list released by Kerr County officials.

One woman called for help as the water neared her house near Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp for girls, where 25 campers and two teenage counselors died.

“We’re OK, but we live a mile down the road from Camp Mystic and we had two little girls come down the river. And we’ve gotten to them, but I’m not sure how many others are out there,” she said in a shaky voice.

Many residents in the hard-hit Texas Hill Country have said they were caught off guard and didn’t receive any warning when the floods overtopped the Guadalupe River. And Kerr County leaders have faced scrutiny about whether they did enough right away. Two officials told Texas legislators this summer that they were asleep during the initial hours of the flooding, and a third was out of town.

Using recordings of first responder communications, weather service warnings, survivor videos and official testimony, The Associated Press assembled a chronology of the chaotic rescue effort. The AP was one of the media outlets that filed public information requests for recordings of the 911 calls to be released.

In one heartbreaking call, a woman staying in a community of riverside cabins told a dispatcher the water was inundating their building

“We are flooding, and we have people in cabins we can’t get to," she said. "We are flooding almost all the way to the top.”

The caller speaks slowly and deliberately. The faint voices of what sounds like children can be heard in the background.

Dispatchers advised many of those who were trapped to get to their rooftops or run to higher ground. In some calls, children could be heard screaming in the background.

“There is water everywhere, we cannot move. We are upstairs in a room and the water is rising,” said a woman who called from Camp Mystic.

The same woman called back later.

“How do we get to the roof if the water is so high?“ she asked. “Can you already send someone here? With the boats?”

She asked the dispatcher when help would arrive.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” the dispatcher responded.

Associated Press reporters Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Ed White in Detroit; Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; and Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey, contributed.