KERRVILLE, Texas. – The people of Kerrville, Texas can’t seem to catch a break.
Authorities there ordered everyone to stop the search effort along the Guadalupe River Sunday due to the high risk of more flash flooding, but that doesn’t mean everyone quit looking for victims.
There are so many volunteers involved that Kerrville officials say they can’t account for all of them.
Some search and rescue workers instead went to a memorial Sunday, where they prayed and shared hugs with one another.
The man who made the memorial in Kerrville is from Miami.
He calls the memorial the “Wall of Hope.”
“The pain that’s been happening here, it’s kinda overwhelming,” Leo Soto said.
Soto knows about pain.
From South Florida, he lost friends in the Surfside building collapse in 2021.
Soto started a memorial near the Champlain Towers to deal with his pain. And ever since, he’s traveled the country to help others deal with theirs.
He arrived in Kerrville Wednesday and spoke to Local 10 over Zoom this weekend.
“A lady came in last night -- she looked a little distraught. She had a shirt in her hands and she said she lived by Mystic Camp, and she said she could see from her house, this little girl’s shirt,” Soto said. “I knew I had to come here and bring it here.”
The woman simply wanted to honor the 27 girls who died at the Christian girls camp.
As so many people died in the flash flood, Soto said he knows the community needs this memorial and believes the flowers are in some way therapeutic.
“There’s something that flowers release in the air that just -- it seems to give the sense of comfort and love and hope in the air,” Soto said. “There’s a smell that flowers bring. I’ve seen it here and I’ve seen it many, many times.”
“Within 45 seconds, 30 seconds, you could tell somebody tells a joke or says something funny about a memory that they have and they laugh all together,” Soto added. “In between tears, something was released that created happiness and joy just for a small moment.”
At least 129 people are dead and more than 160 people are still missing from the initial flash flood in the early morning hours of July 4.
