A makeshift memorial in Kerrville, Texas, on July 15, 2025, to honor victims of the July 4 floods. (Rose L. Thayer/Stars and Stripes)

KERRVILLE, Texas — Fifteen minutes.

That was all the time it took for the water filling Kevin Jones’ apartment in Ingram, Texas, to be waist deep the morning of July 4.

The retired Marine Corps gunnery sergeant had woken at about 4:30 a.m. after a restless night of thunderstorms to help his fiancé Ashlea Baldridge get ready for her opening shift at the Home Depot gardening center.

Their apartment, part of a small mixed-use shopping center near Ingram Dam, had been Jones’ refuge after 20 years as an aircraft crew chief with three deployments to Iraq. It sat across the street from the Guadalupe River, where he loved to walk most days, feed the fish or paddle his kayak.

But in an instant, the tranquility of the waterway was gone. The river has become a destructive force and the couple had to ride out the worst of the flooding for two hours while hanging from the support beam of their apartment’s front awning.

More than two weeks since that day, the couple is living in a hotel and consider themselves among the lucky in Kerr County. In certain ways, the experience tested him more than war, Jones said.

Retired Gunnery Sgt. Kevin Jones speaks to Team Rubicon volunteers in his Ingram, Texas, home after the floods in Kerr County. ( Team Rubicon)

“I’ve got my Marines to my left and right, and we’d get into skirmishes with the enemy. None of them ever lasted two hours,” he said.

The waters of the Guadalupe River reached historic levels that day, flooding dozens of children’s summer camps, homes and recreational vehicle resorts along its banks. More than 100 people died in the waters, including 37 children, and the search efforts continue for three people still missing, according to information released Sunday by Kerr County officials.

Like most people along the river’s edge, Jones and Baldridge had to make quick decisions to survive the flash flood.

By about 4:45 a.m., the front door to their apartment wouldn’t open because the water pressing against it was too great. Baldridge smashed a window, and they climbed into the water.

The couple grabbed onto the support beam and clung to it until the water receded and a rescue vehicle arrived. Two neighbors and a man who had been passing by on a motorcycle during the storm held onto other beams alongside them.

“It was splashing up against our chins and we were about almost as high as we could go before plan B kicked in. If it came up any higher, we were going to have to try and get on the roof,” Jones said.

They watched as vehicles floated by and industrial propane tanks released gas and exploded in the racing water.

“The water survival training I’ve been through in the Marine Corps, especially for aviation, it paid off,” Jones said. “I was calm as can be. When you start losing breath control, especially if you get swept away, that’s when you’re going to be in trouble.”

The couple were facing each other, maybe six inches apart. Jones kept kissing Baldridge on the forehead to reassure her that they would survive this. He wrapped his legs around her to hold her to the beam when her arms got too tired.

“He told me that it was going to be OK so many times that I finally just gave in and believed him,” Baldridge said.

Asking for help

In the days after July 4, Jones reached out to Team Rubicon, a veteran-led disaster recovery nonprofit organization, Jones had volunteered with since his retirement. But this time, he was the one in need of help. He’d lost his vehicles in the flood and needed help to clear his home and determine what could be salvaged.

“Now I’ve seen both sides of it. Sometimes you’ve got to be humbled, and you have to ask for some help,” he said.

For more than a week, a daily average of about 30 to 40 Team Rubicon volunteers, known as “grey shirts,” have gone to locations where someone has asked for their help. They have helped a retired Navy officer clear mud and damaged property from inside his home. The veterans group has also been asked by the county to clear a 30-mile stretch of highway where debris and fallen trees have made it difficult for recovery teams to pass.

The flood-damaged Marine Corps uniform of retired Gunnery Sgt. Kevin Jones hangs on the support beam that he and fiancé held onto to survive flash flooding in Kerr County on July 4, 2025. (Photo provided by Ashlea Baldridge.)

Last week, Team Rubicon members helped Jones rip his apartment down to the studs and clear a flooded storage unit that he had nearby. Inside, they found an American flag and three men stopped to ensure it was refolded properly.

“They’re here for us,” Jones said.

Oscar Arauco, a retired Army chaplain from Harker Heights, volunteered to lead the group’s operations in Kerr County.

“I see a great community, but I see a wounded community,” he said. “As long as we can apply our skillsets and provide some help and some hope to this community, we’ll be here.”

Arauco began volunteering with Team Rubicon in 2017 and what he has seen in Kerr County is different from other disasters because of the small area with such devastation.

“It’s defined,” he said. “It’s not an arbitrary tornado. It’s not a hurricane that just takes and swipes everything away.”

Team Rubicon said it expects to be in the county for several weeks.

A change of plans

Roberto Garcia, commander of the American Legion Kerrville Memorial Post 208, said the post is also ready to help the community for the months of recovery that lay ahead.

The Army veteran expected to spend July 4 marking Independence Day with a barbecue and a castle-shaped bounce house for members and their families at the post, which is on the town’s main drag along the banks of the Guadalupe River.

A truck and storm debris piled up against the mixed-used shopping center in Ingram, Texas, where retired Gunnery Sgt. Kevin Jones and his fiancé lived and rode out deadly floods. (Photo provided by Ashlea Baldridge.)

Instead, Garcia woke up early that morning to a call from Navy veteran Derek Stap, the post’s finance officer. The river had swollen into the post’s parking lot and things looked bad all over town.

“Get here quick,” Stap told Garcia.

As people began driving throughout town looking to give donations to someone willing to take items and offer help, Garcia decided they wouldn’t turn anyone or anything away. They knew they had lots of food and a dry building to offer support.

“We served our country because we want to help,” Garcia said. “Now we are out of that. We find other ways to serve. We might be disabled veterans, but we are not unable.”

Instead of a celebratory barbecue, the post fired up its massive pit to feed first responders and anyone in need. They have fed about 500 people a day on average for the past two weeks.

More than 1,000 local, state and federal responders remain in town, as well as thousands of volunteers from across the country, according to Kerr County officials.

Teams are working along 100 river miles where the water is clogged with debris. The land to right and left of the banks still bears remnants of what the flood deposited on the shore — window blinds stuck in twisted metal fencing, blankets and clothing clinging to the tops of trees and thick mud coating roads.

Other food vendors have since come to town to offer free meals and have set up in the American Legion parking lot, which sits next door to the Hill Country Youth Event Center that has served as a space for emergency operations and news conferences from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump.

Donated bottled water is seen July 15, 2025, in the parking lot of American Legion Kerrville Memorial Post 208 in Kerrville, Texas. (Rose L. Thayer/Stars and Stripes)

But the bounce house remained exactly where the rental company dropped it off the day before the storm. Garcia never got to unfold it. It’s OK, though, he said.

By day, the post’s bingo hall has served as a site to distribute free snacks, supplies and toiletries to anyone in need. At night, it converts to a sleeping space for about a dozen people in town to help with recovery efforts. That number doubled and Garcia had to close the bar early to make room for more cots. The move will cost the post revenue, but it doesn’t matter, Garcia said.

“[The responders] are helping find our loved ones. We can’t turn them away,” he said.

Donors have already filled the immediate need of items such as sleeping cots, bug spray and cleaning supplies. Garcia already has nearly two shipping containers filled with them.

Now he’s gathering tools to help rebuild.

“It’s going to be months,” Garcia said. “These are items we need for the future. Not one week, two weeks. It’s going to be for the long run. It’s part of our core principles — patriotism and community.”

Jones and Baldridge are also planning for an uncertain future. A friend has loaned them a car and an RV to get them out of a hotel until they can find housing again. That could be the old apartment but they don’t know yet.

The landscape has drastically changed. The lush hiking area across the river that they enjoyed is gone. The trees are now so sparse they can see a busy road that used to be hidden by the thick foliage. They also said they’re not certain they want to live ground-level with the river again.

“We’re day-to-day right now,” Baldridge said. “We’re just trying to get into what we’re calling phase two, to where we’re more involved in helping others than our recovery.”