An 11-year-old from San Diego is speaking out after surviving the catastrophic flood in Central Texas, which took the lives of dozens of people, including several campers.
Kaelan Kubena says he is grateful to be home safe with his family, but worried about the others still missing.
Kubena was in Central Texas attending Camp La Junta, an all-boys summer program that focuses on outdoor activities.
There were about 400 campers who were impacted by the intense flash flooding.
The 11-year-old tells NBC4 that the heavy rain kept most of the boys in his cabin awake early Friday morning.
Camp counselors rushed into their cabin to get them to higher ground in a safer area when their campground started to flood, around 4 a.m. on July 4.
“We looked outside and we just saw like an ocean out there,” said Kubena. “It’s just like completely destroying everything, so we went onto the back lane, which is like just more elevation after that and we sat there like safely for about two hours.”
Camp La Junta is located on the banks of the Guadalupe River, which surged by nearly 30 feet in less than two hours, sweeping away buildings and trees.
“We saw like a whole cabin just floating down and that’s when we knew like those things were getting actually real out there. Like we were starting to realize that this was a real natural disaster crisis,” said Kubena.
Camp Mystic is the sister camp to La Junta, where many of the girls from the camp are still missing.
Kubena says he has a friend with a sister who was attending Camp Mystic and fortunately saved, but another friend’s family member is still missing.
Search and rescue missions continued into Sunday night as several campers were still reported missing.