Photo Credit: CFISDEducation
Cy Woods HS senior documents memories of 2025 Hill Country flood
A High School Journalism Network collaboration By Bailey Bishop, Cypress Woods HS
Cypress Woods High School senior Avery Arkin remembers first hearing about what really happened during and after the 2025 Hill Country flood. During an hour-long conversation, an older couple shared their experience living less than a mile from Camp Mystic, where 25 campers and two counselors lost their lives.
“They wake up, realize it’s flooding,” Arkin said. “And then they go to Camp Mystic to where it flooded, and they see all these little girls’ clothes in the trees. They don’t know if there are girls in the water because the water is so loud and strong. They don’t even know if anyone’s yelling because it’s so loud.”
That was just one of several stories that Arkin heard after being selected to participate in the Texas Hill Country Youth Media Initiative in July. The program focused on interviewing locals about last year’s floods and was organized by the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. Students learned both video and audio journalism skills as well as how to connect with and interview people from the community.
Arkin heard about the program through her journalism adviser, who convinced her to apply. She had to write a few essays and share her journalism experience to be accepted into the program.
Arkin said most of the interviewees were older people who lived in the Kerrville and Comfort area. While these people volunteered to have their stories told, some just enjoyed having someone to talk to.
“One of my interviews was an hour long,” Arkin said.
One of her more memorable interviews was with a woman who worked as an archaeologist and was helping the cleanup crews remove debris from the Guadalupe River.
“She told me that when they were trying to get all of the stuff out of the river, there was an entire fridge in there,” Arkin said. “They go inside the fridge, and there’s a carton of eggs, and the eggs aren’t even broken.”
But while staying in Kerrville, Arkin didn’t just hear about the floods; she experienced one for herself. On the night of July 16, she remembered hearing it start to rain before she went to sleep, but she recalled she didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary.
“It’s like three in the morning, and my roommates wake me up, and they’re like, ‘Are you okay?’” Arkin said. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ I don’t know what’s happening.”
It wasn’t until she woke up the next morning that she found out Kerrville had flooded once again. According to the Texas Tribune, Kerr County received 25.4 inches of rain between July 13-17, but it was the storm the night of July 16 that led to the flooding, and ultimately, the deaths of two individuals.
When Arkin and the rest of the journalism students were able to leave campus, they took a trip down to the Guadalupe River to assess the damage.
“We went to see the river, and it was insane,” Arkin said. “There were all these fallen trees in the river, these 20-foot-tall trees that had fallen over.”
It was a stark reminder of what Kerrville and the Hill Country had gone through just a year prior, an event now thoroughly documented at the Heart of the Hills Heritage Center, an organization that aims to preserve Texas Hill Country history, thanks in part to the stories recorded by Arkin and her fellow students.
For Arkin, the whole experience left a mark.
“My main takeaway was that it showed me how to interact with communities that have been through a traumatic incident like [the floods],” Arkin said.
Source: CFISD
