Texas sheriff gives hands-on tour of search, cleanup effort in Kerr County

INGRAM, Texas - Six days after the massive flood in the Texas Hill Country, first responders say there is still a lot of debris that has not been sifted through. 

FOX 4’s Steven Dial rode along the Guadalupe River in Ingram with the sheriff of Andrews County, located in West Texas, to get his first-hand account of the recovery effort. 

Sheriff's experience with flood response

Andrews County Sheriff Rusty Stewart gave insight into the flood response law enforcement has been executing for nearly a week in the Hill Country.

What they're saying:

"Since Monday, our team, we've made four recoveries and tons of vehicles. It’s a very methodical search. If there is a pile, you got to get into it, you got to dig through it, you don't know what you are going to find," Stewart said.

Stewart said the search area was almost completely covered in debris, which had to be sorted through. 

"What you are looking at, the guardrails here, they were torn off on the other side, a lot of water came across," Stewart said. "We did a lot of searching here, it bottlenecks way back up there and they are doing a lot of search efforts but it is very slow, you have massive debris piles."

Officials are spending their days sorting through the mess hoping to find survivors, and preparing themselves to find the remains of the missing. It’s a necessary and important job, but one that evokes complicated emotions. 

"You really got to reflect. We have a job to do, we put our hats on and we do it," Stewart said. "Afterwards, everyone has their own little way of dealing with it. We do have counselors, we get together. It's not like how we did 30 years ago, we talk about it, we get it out in the open so we can move on to the next one."

Alongside law enforcement in the cleanup effort are masses of volunteers who’ve traveled from across and outside the state to support the survivors and honor the victims of the flood. As someone with boots on the ground, Stewart described what he’s seen in the aftermath.

"When something like this happens, everyone comes together. You are no longer this department or that department, you are one group that is working in a common goal to get one thing accomplished, bringing closure to some families and to get this cleaned up."

Deadly Texas flooding

Big picture view:

The death toll from the July 4th weekend flooding in Central Texas sits at 119. Across the state, more than 170 people remain missing. 

At least 96 people have died in Kerr County, including 36 children, at last count.

161 people in Kerr County are now known to be missing, including at least five girls and a counselor from Camp Mystic are still missing.

In Travis County, there were at least seven deaths and also significant damage to infrastructure.

Kendall County has reported seven deaths.

Burnet County has at least five deaths confirmed. A Marble Falls volunteer fire chief is still missing.

Williamson County reports three deaths and Tom Green County has one death confirmed.

Officials say as for missing people, there is one in Burnet and 10 in Travis County.

Resources and donations for those impacted

• Texas flooding: State, county resources, services for those affected
• Texas flooding: Resources for those impacted
• Texas flooding: Businesses, organizations donate to recovery, relief efforts

What's next:

FOX 4’s Steven Dial ended up outside the Ingram Volunteer Fire Department after the ride along with Stewart. Crews are set to continue to search by foot, horseback and water, until every missing person is located. 

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