Amid the devastation and destruction in the Texas Hill Country, there are incredible stories of surviving the now-deadliest natural disaster of 2025.
HUNT, Texas — A family of 33 from Austin all survived on the roof of a hotel while just a few miles away, a woman and her two dogs rode out the storm – literally – in a kayak.
This all happened in Hunt, Texas, where we find the hardest hit homes and most eye-opening stories of survival.
“This area has been very near and dear to our families for a long time,” said David Fry, who was vacationing with 33 family members at the River Inn Resort in Hunt.
“Our aunt and uncle were in this unit‚” Fry said, while walking by a hotel room with one wall completely torn off.
It might be the last time they ever spend a week at the River Inn Resort.
Here you can find what looks like a screenshot of time.
Swim trunks are still hanging on a hook outside of a room, a set of dominoes is laying, waiting for the next game and a movie is found near a set of mailboxes along the side of the only road in and out of town.
All of these things placed here by Mother Nature as the raging Guadalupe River created the hellscape, rising more than 25 feet in roughly 45 minutes early Friday morning.
“That’s when we went through banging on doors, just trying to notify as many people as possible and get them out and push them up to the road,” Fry said. “A couple of vehicles had already been lost off the roadway to fast water.”
His family had no choice but to climb up on the roof of the building. They hoisted one another up.
David saved his family, others at the hotel and people stranded in homes across the street.
“You had a whole village of people that you had to worry about. What drives you to help even more people,” asked the reporter.
“It’s the only thing that matters,” said Fry.
They all survived.
As the storm rolled down river, Diana Smith found herself in an incredibly dangerous situation as water surrounded her home.
“I just screamed. I called 9-1-1. Nothing happened. And I screamed ‘God, I don’t know what to do,’” Smith recalled. “I open the front door and it sweeps both my dog’s different directions and I’m panicking thinking, ‘Now what the hell am I gonna do?’ I said a prayer when I was standing on my porch. Both my parents are deceased. And I said, ‘Mom, Dad, God, help.’”
She and her two dogs jumping in a kayak and literally riding out the flooding.
“Do you think it’s that prayer is why you’re here today,” asked the reporter.
“I have a kid! Yeah,” said Diana Smith.
Diana and David are among the survivors in Kerr County who found a way to live through the impossible.
“I don’t know what to think. I think I’m still in shock,” Smith said.
“You know, it was it was very, very close call and have we been ten or fifteen minutes later. Yeah, we’ve been too late,” Fry added.