The night that devastating flooding obliterated parts of Texas, Stuart Gross said he was awakened by nearby screams as raging waters swept up homes and citizens.
The Ingram, Texas, resident told ABC News he has lived near the Guadalupe River for more than 45 years and has seen other floods, but “this was the biggest.”
“We had a 30-foot wall of water, 300 yards wide, go down by my house at 85 miles an hour,” Gross said of the flooding that began in the early hours of Friday.
Gross, who was able to get his wife and “fur babies” to safety, said he does not think this tragedy was preventable, but said he doesn’t know “why we don’t have an early warning system on this river, not that it would’ve changed everything.”
Many people like Gross are now surveying the aftermath of the devastating floods, searching for missing family members or grieving the loss of loved ones.
Another survivor, Carlos Valles, began to assess the damage in Louis Hays Park, where he was preparing his production team for a Fourth of July music festival. The area of the festival, which has been going on for more than 20 years, is now surrounded by torn-down trees, mangled metal and flipped-over forklifts and cars. Valles began to cry as he evaluated what had happened.
MORE: Texas flash flooding disaster raises questions about rescue and recovery efforts
“Water rose so quick, you couldn’t do anything about it,” Valles told ABC News.
Regardless of the damage, Valles said the “biggest thing” is the lives that were lost in the floods, which includes young campers at Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp housing hundreds of young girls.
“Our stages, stuff can be replaced with time, but lives cannot, you cannot bring all these children back,” Valles said.
Devon Williams, one of the surviving camp counselors at Camp Mystic, told “Good Morning America” that prior to the floods, “it was just a normal day” and “nobody had any idea what was going to happen.”
Williams said the counselors had “no idea” people were missing or how grave the situation was “until we saw the helicopters flying over us.”
As of Monday, 10 girls and one counselor from Camp Mystic are still unaccounted for, according to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. William said the tragedy feels “surreal” and “not real.”
MORE: Texas flooding victims: From young campers to a dad saving his family, what we know about the lives lost
“I cry a lot. I try not to think about it. These are babies that were lost. It’s just a lot, like I really can’t even put it into words. It’s a lot to process,” Williams said.
Rev. Jasiel Hernandez Garcia, who was in charge of receiving survivors from the camp at the reunification center, witnessed the children “being offloaded from the bus, missing shoes, having dirt all over them, being hungry, seeing their parents from a distance and their weeping out of joy,” he said.
A short distance away from Camp Mystic is Camp La Junta, a boys’ camp, where everyone was able to get to safety. Katie Fineska, the owner and director of the camp, said she walked to her porch and saw “one of our tables from our dining hall floating across the field from our house,” which is when she knew “something was very wrong.”
Fineska said the “incredibly calm” counselors had the children climb “from their bunks up into the rafters” to keep them safe.
Someone else who was able to survive the deadly floods is Devyn Smith, who was swept away by the waters when she was camping with her family, but was able to climb to safety in a tree, according to her uncle, Travis Reynolds, and Carl Jeter, the Coast Guard who rescued Smith.
MORE: At least 27 dead at Camp Mystic as officials say they were caught off guard by storm
Smith was allegedly in the river for about four hours before grabbing hold of a tree, where she dodged RVs, tree limbs and even a refrigerator floating beside her, Jeter said.
Jeter said he was across the street on his deck when he heard Smith screaming for help.
Reynolds said that his niece has cuts and bruises all over her entire body, but should be released from the hospital soon pending blood work. Regardless, he said the trauma of this experience will weigh “heavily on her and the rest of our family.”
Reynolds said five other members of his family remain missing.
ABC News’ Jaclyn Lee contributed to this report.
