Originally aired/published on THV11 July 7, 2025 7:09 PM CDT; reported by Maya Ellison. You can view the story on their website here.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Deadly storms in Texas over the weekend have many people in Arkansas looking to help — and for some, the catastrophe hits home.
“It was heartbreaking and gut wrenching,” Kelly Franklin, an alum of Camp Mystic, said.
These past couple of days have been the hardest for her to face.
“I went to Camp Mystic starting in ’98 and then all the way up to ’03,” Franklin said. “It’s just devastating to see how it looks right now.”
Camp Mystic is one of many locations in the Texas Hill Country affected by “catastrophic” flooding over the Fourth of July weekend.
Officials reported that at least 27 campers and counselors lost their lives, adding to the rising death toll.
“I want to keep having hope, but it feels like somebody’s gripping my heart and squeezing it to the point where it’s like — if there was somebody I knew that was still at camp, my heart would have broke,” Franklin said.
While Franklin is still processing the damage where she once lived, others are stepping up to help.
“The extent of the damage has been a little surprising. This is one of those once in a lifetime sort of storms in this area,” Lance Nutt, director of Sheep Dog Impact Assistance, said. “Even last night, rain and flood waters again, and they had to evacuate volunteers and search and rescue teams, and that really kind of has continued to hamper their recovery efforts.”
Nutt said that volunteers are now waiting to bring in supplies where they can.
“It’s continuing to assess the damage over the next couple days,” Nutt said. “That next phase of going in to help people to continue picking up the pieces. So we expect to have anywhere from 40 to 60 members on the ground by this weekend.”
Those efforts also played a huge role after the deadly flood here in Arkansas 15 years ago.
In 2010, flash floods rushed through the Albert Pike campground in Montgomery County, where 20 people lost their lives.
“Never underestimate Mother Nature, you just don’t know when you’re going to get one of those storms that’s capable of producing seven inches of rain in a short amount of time,” Jay Townsend, chief public affairs officer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said.
Townsend spoke with THV11, where he said in addition to that natural disaster, protocols were put in place to ensure that solutions were instilled.
“We developed a smartphone app where you can go on and you can see the water levels before you go. You can say, ‘Hey, maybe it’s too high to even be camping right now,’ and you can watch them hourly while you’re there. It’s even got the national weather services data on it, where you can see current levels and then forecasted levels,” Townsend said.
Townsend said that disasters like these are unpredictable and hard to prevent, but this app is just one solution to keep you safe.
He said a few things you can do at home are to be aware, like checking the weather app, paying attention to flood warnings and being alert.
The USACE Little Rock app is available to download if you click or tap here.