Soyla Reyna stood outside Calvary Temple Church, taking a momentary respite from hours of manning the flood displacement shelter at her home church in Kerrville on Thursday.
“A lot of it was unbelievable,” she said as the rain outside the church patio began to let up. “People are devastated by the reoccurrence.”
Over the course of the morning, Reyna had seen nearly 50 people come to Calvary Temple. They sought supplies and shelter after rapidly rising water swept away their homes and RVs, scenes reminiscent of the devastating flood that tore through the region a little over a year ago.
“Both times, it’s been in the middle of the night. I think that is what devastates people. It’s like I couldn’t see, I couldn’t, you know…” she said, breaking into a sigh as she turned her gaze down.
For many Hill Country residents, Thursday’s flooding brought back the familiar levels of wreckage and trauma that they had suffered during and in the immediate aftermath of the July 2025 floods that killed 119 people in Kerr County.
In many parts of the county and elsewhere, scenes were strikingly similar: fences lined with debris and personal effects, cars strewn in all directions, and water lines that hugged the bottoms of homes. The response by Hill Country community members echoed last year, too, as neighbors coalesced in one another’s homes to help begin cleanup and shelters welcomed those displaced with hot meals and clean clothes.
Rain early Thursday pushed the Guadalupe River in Comfort to as much as 37 feet and the Pedernales River to 34 feet in Fredericksburg, according to river gauges. Near Kerrville last year, the Guadalupe River in Hunt spiked to a record-breaking 37.5 feet on July 4.
In some parts of the region, water rose even higher than it did in 2025. Post-flood renovations to the Center Point Fire Department are all but destroyed after a new deluge tore through the building. And further north in Burmenthal, business owners watched low-water crossings along the Pedernales River disappear into crashing waters carrying trunks of trees in its wake.
“This is the highest I’ve ever seen it in 32 years, and it’s backing up into our place across the road. It’s backing up into our creek. I’ve never seen it back up into there,” Burmenthal peach farmer Russell Studebaker said.
Those who have lived along the rivers have been accustomed to flooding for decades, but the sudden overflow last year caught even longtime residents off-guard. Since then, residents sought solace in the idea that the river’s sudden swelling had been a once-in-a-century event — an apparent illusion shattered in the early hours of Thursday.
“When it did it last year, we’re like, ‘Oh my God, it’s never happened before, ever, so maybe it won’t happen again in our lifetime,’” said Sherri Steadham, who lives in Center Point within eyesight of the river. “And here we are, a year and a few days later.”
Steadham was awoken at 5:15 a.m. by a neighbor and longtime friend whose home stands closer to the river — and had collected four inches of water. The water line stopped just short of Steadham’s own home, almost exactly where it did in 2025.
The waters receded somewhat through the day, but Steadham and her neighbors still had to raise their voices to speak over the roar of the swollen river as it carried debris plucked from homes upstream.
There were differences between the flooding in 2025 and on Thursday, including a much less sudden spike in rainfall. Steadham and her friends who awoke before her described a slow creep from the river to their homes, very different from the wall of water that took them by surprise a year before.
Though the rate of flooding and the severity of human casualties have differed — at least two people have died, as of Thursday evening — watching the waters rise and taking calls from trapped residents reminded many first responders of the fear-stricken residents they saved from harrowing floodwaters last year.
“When that rain’s hitting really hard, and you hear it pounding, you can see the look on their faces,” said Razor Dobbs, a volunteer firefighter at Center Point Fire Department who responded to last year’s flood. “You can see the look on their faces, this is it.”
But the region was prepared. Unlike last year’s disaster alert failures by the local government, Maria Flemming, one of Steadham’s neighbors, described a steady stream of warnings from 1:30 a.m. Thursday to well after the worst of the flood had receded. First responders checked on her and the Steadhams in the morning, urging them — unsuccessfully — to evacuate.
Dobbs was proud of how his team responded, a reflection of a year’s worth of preparation.
“Last night, and the night before, we manned everything,” he said.
“After last year, we got a lot of funding. We invested in the boats and the training, and we got rock solid.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
Photo: Sherri Steadham stands on her front lawn after floodwaters from the Guadalupe River receded from near her home in Center Point on July 16, 2026. Eric Vryn for The Texas Tribune