Kerr County is healing one year after the July 4 flood
www.texastribune.org
Crider’s dance hall is back. Homes are rebuilt. Kids swim in the river. But there’s also deep grief after the river killed 119 people and traumatized more.

KERR COUNTY — Alicia Baker can’t bring herself to clean her daughter’s bedroom.

Eleven-year-old Madelyn “Emmy” Jeffrey left a pile of craft supplies on the floor in their San Antonio home before heading off to the Guadalupe River with her grandparents, where they drowned in the flood last Fourth of July.

A year later, the pile is still there.

Baker, who wears a diamond made from her daughter’s ashes, said seeing the mess allows her to pretend her daughter is away at camp or traveling.

“If all of her things are gone then I can’t rationalize that anymore,” the 43-year-old said.

When the Guadalupe River swelled into a huge, raging waterway in the early morning hours of July 4 last year, it carved a horrific path of destruction. Baker’s daughter and parents, staying at their one-bedroom vacation house by the water, died along with 116 others in Kerr County.