{"id":41390,"date":"2025-07-19T13:43:01","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T13:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/19\/texas-songwriter-who-survived-july-4-flood-says-more-help-is-needed\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T13:43:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T13:43:01","slug":"texas-songwriter-who-survived-july-4-flood-says-more-help-is-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/19\/texas-songwriter-who-survived-july-4-flood-says-more-help-is-needed\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Songwriter Who Survived July 4 Flood Says More Help Is Needed"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tJulia Hatfield was just one of the residents of the Blue Oak RV Park along the Guadalupe River in Ingram, Texas, when the devastating and deadly flash flood<\/a> of July 4 decimated the park. Even now, she says, her neighbors are still a long way to rebuilding \u2014 and recovering.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis community is going to need so much help,\u201d Hatfield, a touring singer-songwriter, says. \u201cThe fear is that once media attention moves on to the next thing, people might forget that there\u2019s going to be a long time that Kerrville needs some support. That\u2019s not gonna change in a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHatfield, named the 2018 Best New Female Vocalist at the Texas Regional Radio Awards, frequently performs upriver in Kerrville and the surrounding Hill Country. On July 4, she had an afternoon gig on the books at Howdy\u2019s, a hilltop restaurant overlooking her RV park. \u201cWe just fell in love with the people at Blue Oak,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a call with Rolling Stone<\/em>, Hatfield says she made a nine-hour drive home on July 3 and was in her bed by 11:30 p.m. Her husband had seen the heavy rain forecast and, concerned about leaks in their RV, stayed up most of the night. They got cellphone alerts about flooding potential overnight, Hatfield says, but it was nothing that seemed unusual for their part of Texas.<\/p>\n

\n\tAround 4:30, however, she says her husband heard screaming.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s when he looked out. Right below us, the RVs were already starting to get washed away. He woke me up immediately, and we started throwing stuff in the car. I didn\u2019t know what to grab, and the only thing that came to mind was instruments,\u201d Hatfield says. \u201cBut I got out, and we started trying to figure out how we could help everybody, but it all happened so fast. It was about a foot or two of water a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHatfield says they moved their car and sought refuge on the deck of Howdy\u2019s bar, up on the hill. From there, she witnessed rental cabins floating by, with people standing on the front porches.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe trees were snapping in half. The noise that it made is going to haunt me forever. The RVs, they were just crumbling,\u201d she says. \u201cI heard a child start to scream, and I saw him starting to get washed away. I screamed for the first responders, but by that point, they had moved their vehicles to the top of the hill, so nobody was there. A few seconds later, he was gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tLater that afternoon, Hatfield\u2019s mother called and said a child was on the local television news and had been rescued. According to Hatfield, it was the same child she had seen washed away \u2014\u00a0a small miracle for a region that saw more than 130 deaths, with roughly 100 people still unaccounted for.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the waters subsided, Hatfield and her husband began volunteering in rescue and cleanup efforts in and around Kerrville, a town so intertwined in the Texas music scene that it would be impossible to separate the community from the music.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo many of the songwriters, the things we do revolve around water, and the Guadalupe is probably the biggest one,\u201d Hatfield says. \u201cWhat I\u2019ve seen through this is the music community coming together in a really powerful way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the days since the flood, the Blue Oak RV Park has become symbolic of the tragedy, especially in music circles. The park was where Pat Green\u2019s brother, John Burgess, was swept away and died, along with his wife and two of his three children. Green\u2019s sharing<\/a> of his family\u2019s grief on social media opened a wider window into the tragedy that unfolded at the park. Hatfield emphasizes, however, that the scope of the devastation stretches from horizon to horizon.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s just 27 miles on either side of the river of complete destruction,\u201d she says. \u201cMost of these [debris] piles from the RV parks are the size of large houses. There were cars completely crushed, wedged between these piles and remnants of RVs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTransportation for people whose RVs were destroyed is one of the causes Hatfield has taken up in the aftermath. She\u2019s partnered with a nonprofit called\u00a0EmergencyRV<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0pair flood victims with RV donations. \u201cI keep thinking about all these people who bought RVs in 2020 [during the pandemic] thinking they were going to use them a lot, and now they can\u2019t seem to sell them while\u00a0we have a need for them,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tHatfield recognizes that being a musician puts her in a position to both bring in donations and give a platform for Kerr County Flood Relief Fund. She\u2019s already performed at benefit concerts<\/a>, with more coming, and says the support \u2014 even the most simple of gestures \u2014\u00a0has been awe-inspiring.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI had some friends in New Braunfels who just started giving me stuff the other day,\u201d Hatfield says. \u201cThey were like, \u2018Hey, I have some frozen meat!\u2019 They\u2019re a bunch of Texans, you know? Whatever they\u2019ve got is yours.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n