Hunt – When Sgt. Tyler Cottonware woke up before dawn that morning, he expected a busy day.
The City of Kerrville Police sergeant had plans to work the Fourth of July festivities. He knew it had rained overnight. He knew flooding was possible.
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What he didn’t know was that within hours he would find himself rescuing people from rooftops, pulling survivors from floodwaters, and helping coordinate a mass casualty response in his hometown.
“I woke up at about 3:45,” Cottonware recalled. “The power went out in the house... then I went to turn on the water and we had no running water. So I knew something was going on.”
As he left home, he noticed his driveway had washed out.
“At that point I knew it was probably a pretty good rainstorm,” he said. “But didn’t know that it was going to be as catastrophic as it was.”
Flooding is part of life in the Hill Country. Residents are accustomed to high water after heavy rain.
But this was different.
“We’re used to flooding,” Cottonware said. “Just nobody was prepared for that type of flooding.”
“I immediately knew this is bad”
The moment he reached the center of Hunt everything changed.
“As soon as I turned onto 1340 from School Road, my headlights hit a body of water that was covering Highway 39,” he said. “It’s never been to that point.”
The radio was already exploding with traffic.
“I immediately knew at that point, this is bad,” Cottonware said. “That’s when I got on the radio. The radio was going crazy.”
Then came a realization he still remembers vividly.
“I said, ‘Show me in command of Hunt. Do I have any resources out here?’ And the answer was no.”
“There was nobody out here. It was me.”
The first people he saw
Within minutes, Cottonware shifted from assessing conditions to trying to save lives.
“That’s when we transitioned into, okay, this is bad, then it starts to be, how do we save people?” he said. “Because you know that there’s going to be loss of life.”
He drove toward the Hunt Store and began scanning the darkness with his spotlight.
“That’s when I saw the young girl and her mom on the roof of the Hunt Store.”
The rushing water was so loud he wasn’t sure they could hear him.
“I said, ‘I see you up there. Stay there. I’ll come to you as soon as I can. As soon as the water subsides, I’m gonna get to you. I’m not gonna forget about you.’”
Around him, floodwaters were carrying debris and vehicles downstream.
“There were vehicles flipped over, horns honking, that had been washed up from downstream.”
He checked vehicle after vehicle to make sure nobody was trapped inside.
Then he discovered even more people waiting to be rescued.
“There was probably 15 or 20 of them all on the roof,” he said of another home where flood victims had climbed to safety. “I’m yelling at them, ‘Hey, is everybody accounted for?’”
A boy clinging to a utility pole
One image from that morning has never left him.
“I see a young guy, young boy, whatever, wrapped onto like a utility pole,” Cottonware recalled.
The water was still moving too fast to safely reach him.
Cottonware tried entering the floodwaters but quickly realized the danger.
“I made it about waist deep and something struck my leg,” he said. “I thought, hey, if I get taken out, then I’m no good for anybody.”
So he waited.
The moment the water dropped enough, he tried again.
“I went and got the kid off the utility pole, pushed to the Hunt Store, got the young lady and her mom off the roof, and that just continued throughout the day.”
Turning a church into a triage center
As rescues continued, survivors began arriving at the Hunt United Methodist Church.
The church quickly became an emergency medical center.
“We kind of created a makeshift rendezvous point at the Hunt United Methodist Church,” Cottonware said. “That’s kind of where we were putting everybody that we found, everybody that was injured or washed up that we got out of the river.”
The injuries were severe.
“A lot of them were severely hurt, severely injured,” he said.
Cottonware remembers treating victims while trying to determine who needed immediate evacuation.
“We had all sorts of injuries. People missing fingers. People missing substantial pieces of their hand. Leg injuries.”
One survivor had severe internal injuries after being swept downstream.
Another challenge was hypothermia.
“People were in the river for so long,” he said.
At one point, an emergency room doctor happened to arrive at the church.
Cottonware was relieved.
“He said, ‘Hey, can I help you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, are you a nurse?’ He goes, ‘I’m a doc.’ And I said, ‘Thank God.’”
“This was a mass casualty event”
Even for a veteran law enforcement officer, the scale was overwhelming.
“I’ve seen injuries such as that in the past,” he said. “Just not on that large of a scale.”
Then he summed up the disaster in five words:
“This was a mass casualty event.”
He estimates hundreds of people eventually cycled through the church triage area.
“I don’t know the final count of how many people we had there,” he said, “but it seemed like it was upwards of 200 at one point.”
Rescuing people he knew
What made the day even harder was that this wasn’t happening in a distant city.
This was Hunt.
His hometown.
The people needing help were neighbors.
Friends.
Classmates.
People his children knew.
One of the girls he rescued from the Hunt Store roof still stands out.
“The young lady I got off the roof, she actually goes to school with my son,” he said.
Months later, she approached him.
“She came up and gave me a big hug and said, ‘Thank you. You saved me.’”
Cottonware says moments like that are what keep first responders going.
“That’s what keeps pushing us forward.”
The question he couldn’t forget
Days after the flood, Cottonware finally returned home after long hours of rescue and recovery work.
His children had watched the disaster unfold from afar.
One conversation still weighs on him.
“The hardest thing one of my kids said to me is my oldest boy, Rylan, said, ‘Dad, have you found any more of my friends?’”
Cottonware paused.
“I was like, buddy, I’m trying, man.”
He says that moment strengthened his resolve.
“That’s what pushed me even harder,” he said. “I need to get answers for these families. I need to reunite this family member with the family. That’s why we did it.”
One year later
Today, recovery continues across Hunt and Kerr County.
But Cottonware still thinks about the young girl on the Hunt Store roof.
“She’ll always stick with me,” he said.
And he still reflects on how close the community came to an even greater tragedy.
“I thank God every day that the water didn’t go up any more than it did,” he said. “Because if it would have, it could have been catastrophic.”
Cottonware’s story is one of many featured in KPRC 2’s documentary examining the flood, the rescue efforts, the recovery, and the lasting impact on the Texas Hill Country.
KPRC 2 presents a documentary exploring the disaster, the recovery, and the people whose stories continue to define the Hill Country’s path forward.
Through firsthand accounts from first responders, survivors, community leaders, and families, the KPRC 2 explores not only what happened that day, but how a community continues moving forward one year later.