DENVER — Colorado Task Force 1 deployed to Kerr County, Texas, Monday evening to help with recovery efforts after a deadly flood claimed more than 100 lives, many of them children.
Task force leader Steve Aseltine told Denver7 the written order for the team came down just after 1 p.m. Monday. Forty-eight members of the team packed up bags and vehicles on Monday, as they prepared to make the long drive to the Texas Hill Country.
"The Colorado Task Force 1 travels with an enormous amount of very specialized search equipment. We have probes, cameras, equipment to support our staff, so everything from MREs for food to tents, decontamination equipment for our search dogs and, you know, other medical equipment," Aseltine said. "We travel with doctors, we travel with structural engineers and all the equipment to support their efforts. The first thing we do is we check in with the local authority and find out what's been done so far."
CO-TF1 members who were called in on Monday completed a medical check to ensure they're ready and able to be out on the mission for two to three weeks.
"We want to make sure that they have everything that they need and they're ready to go," Aseltine explained. "Then we check all the vehicles. We make sure all our bags are packed, everyone's got the right radio channel, all those kind of things. Then we're gonna quick eat some food, and then we're gonna hit the road."
Four dogs are also heading to Texas.
"We have two live find dogs, and we have two human remains dogs that are going on this mission, and they'll be used for exactly that," Aseltine said. "Our human remains dogs are used to sniff for human remains, and our live find dogs are trained differently once they hit. Then we send in different equipment, you know, cameras and people to verify, and then we start delaying debris piles."
- Denver7’s parent company, E.W. Scripps, and its public charity, the Scripps Howard Fund, are teaming up to provide relief for Texas flood victims. Read how you can help below
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How to help Texas flood victims following Fourth of July weekend deluge
Coloradans with Texas connections are reeling from the deadly flood and trying to help in any way they can. Former Denver7 Investigative reporter Keli Rabon and her two children are still in shock at what happened.
Rabon was a reporter with Denver7 from 2012 to 2015 but now lives in Houston with her family. Her two boys, Braeden and Brock, were at Camp La Junta in Kerr County when the flooding began.
"My 9-year-old, Braeden, he's been attending Camp La Junta. This was going to be his third year, and [he] just absolutely loves it," Rabon said. "They do a two-week session, but Braeden had bumped up to a full month this year. And then Brock, this was his first camp experience, so he was going in for the two-week session."
"We just had sent the boys off to camp on Wednesday, and, you know, gave them a big hug before they got on that bus to make the four-hour journey to Camp La Junta in Hunt, Texas, where ultimately all of this flooding and terrible tragedy happened," she added.
Rabon told Denver7 she started getting alerts about the weather and loss of service at her boys' camp just a few days later.
"The camp sent a text message on the morning of July 4, and it didn't seem that it was that serious. It seemed like they were just alerting us that there had been a lot of rain overnight," she said. "I think the next message that we got said, 'Hey, the power is out. There's no cell service. There's no Wi-Fi or water, but don't worry. We're trying to get everything under control.
"Well, of course, you know, you can't help when you're that far away from your kids, you can't help but worry, and if they don't have access to electronics there. And apparently, even if they did, you know, they wouldn't have been able to communicate with us anyway."
After learning about what was happening at Camp Mystic, Rabon made the choice to get to her boys.
"I started making plans to just get my rain boots and get my dogs and get in the car and drive to go try to get my kids. I didn't even know at that point if I was going to be able to get them. I just thought, I want to get as close to this camp as I can with the hope that the second that we'd learn more information that I'll be there. So it wasn't until about 8 p.m. that we were able to connect," Rabon said. "It was a long day of few, very few updates from the camp, but understandably, they were most focused on keeping the boys safe and sound.
"Once the water had receded enough for them to actually be evacuated, then they were brought to a church."
Rabon said her youngest son, Brock, was in one of the most heavily damaged cabins at camp.
"He was in a cabin, one of the three cabins at Camp La Junta that did, in fact, flood, and it was washed out," she said. "What he went through being you know, a kinder — just graduated kindergarten — pitch black in the middle of the night, having water rushing into your cabin, getting on top of a bunk, and then on top of the top bunk and then getting hoisted up into the rafters by your counselor, who you've barely known for 36 hours. I mean, what those counselors did in that moment was nothing short of heroic and phenomenal, and we're so grateful for their bravery, and they're just kids too."
Rabon said her boys are doing OK and want to get back to the camp and help with whatever they can. She said the experience has not deterred them from attending camp in the future.
"He's adamant that he wants to go back to camp," she said. "It means so much to him that he won't let this deter him from going back to Camp La Junta, in the future."
While those like Rabon and her family recover, others are jumping right in to try and help. David Crawford, the executive director of Animal Help Now, has already started a fundraising campaign to help animal rehabilitators.
"The idea is to get funds, have funds available, and then when a disaster strikes, make those funds quickly available to the people, the wildlife rehabilitators, especially the home-based ones who have been impacted by the disaster, whether that's whether that's directly impacted from a structural damage to a facility, or whether that's because they've lost their food supplies, or it's because they've had an influx of animals from another facility that they need to care for," Crawford said. "We've already reached out, and we're offering the small grants to them."
Crawford told Denver7 the grants will be anywhere between $200 and $500.
"We make these grants available. Takes about 10 minutes for them to fill out the application. It takes us, generally, within less than 24 hours to get them the funds," he said. "It's small grants, just enough to help them get through the next several days."
The ultimate goal is to help those who work in wildfire rehabilitation, whether it be by helping with damaged or destroyed facilities or with the intake of injured or orphaned animals, according to Crawford.
"It's a labor of love for us, but we value wildlife rehabilitation immensely," he said. "People don't know how valuable wildlife rehabilitators are until they need a wildlife rehabilitator, and then people are so grateful because they've taken this injured bird or this orphan bunny and they found someone who will help with that, which is such a relief for your average compassionate person who's trying to do the right thing."
