Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio's newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.
Bone rattling thunder echoed through the Texas Hill Country on July 4 as heavy rains triggered catastrophic flash flooding along the Guadalupe River.
The fire department awoke residents of an RV park in Ingram, about 60 yards away from the water, by yelling on bull horns and knocking on doors.
Thomas Rux was one of them. In a panic, all he had time to think about was grabbing his keys and his wallet as he made his way to the entrance of the park. He had nowhere else to go, so he sat there.
His alarm company called him to alert him the door to his RV was breached. He watched his belongings float out of the park entrance and down the road. At that moment, he knew his trailer was lost to flood waters.
“If I would have stayed in bed, I wouldn’t have made it,” Rux said. He added that the RV park residents are alive thanks to the Ingram Fire Department. “It’s a heavy loss, but it's material things. I'm alive. There's a lot of people that weren't as lucky as us.”
The powerful flood waters killed more than 100 people. The extensive damage to many buildings and homes demonstrated the destructive power of water.
The slide-outs on the side of Rux’s RV were warped by the waters. Some of the windows were punched out, through which waters rushed into his home and damaged most of his belongings. Pieces of furniture, appliances and the walls inside the RV were covered with mud, rocks and tree branches.
Once Rux could return to his home and start trying to salvage anything he could, a stranger approached him and returned a picture of him and his daughter that had been swept away from his home by flood waters.
“My daughter gave me that picture in the frame of me and her. I almost started crying right there,” Rux said. “She saw my face so she knew it was me. She goes, ‘you might be needing this.’ I said, ‘Oh, thank you so much’ and gave her a hug.”
Rux said he doesn’t just feel blessed because he survived the flood but also because of the outpouring of support from his neighbors and community.
“There's a lot of good people, and there's a lot of help in this town,” Rux said. “Everybody is just so helpful; it's unbelievable. So, yeah, I'm going to be fine.”
Rux said he received support from Jimmy’s RV Repair in Ingram, Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid nonprofit, and cryptocurrency groups online that donated to a GoFundMe set up by his daughter.
Before Rux received support from people across the country, he said his neighbors were quick to step up and offer him a temporary living situation.
“I was homeless, and then I had a place to stay within three hours — it's amazing,” Rux said. “it's unbelievable, you know. Thanks to the Lord up above, you know he's taking care of me.”
Rux said after the flood, he wants to be with family, so he plans on relocating to Idaho to be with his son and four grandkids once he gets a new mobile home.
“I made it through this storm, so I'm going to get on with life, and hopefully down the road, I'll be in a position where I can help people,” Rux said.
