On July 16, 1987, a summer camp bus and van carrying the kids across the river, trying to escape the ensuing flood, was hit by a wall of water.
– Thirty-seven years ago, a flash flood resulted in one of the worst tragedies to ever strike the Texas Hill Country. On the night of July 16, 1987, just outside Comfort, the kids at Pot O’ Gold Christian Camp were settling in for their final night of the retreat, while 30 miles up the Guadalupe River, at the other end of Kerr County, heavy rainfall would turn what had been a sleepy river into a wall of water.
In the predawn hours, camp leaders made the decision it was time for the nearly 300 campers to leave. Kids from Seagoville Baptist Church in Balch Springs, near Dallas, had spent the week at the camp. Roy Harris, the camp’s caretaker, led the way in his truck. He would tell investigators when he started driving across Hermann Sons Road he did not see any water but had approximately 18 inches of water under his truck by the time he has driven almost 300 yards. Behind him was the final bus, driven by assistant pastor Richard Koons and behind that was a van.
‘’The van began floating and then we got out and it started sinking,’’ Jeremy Morris said during an interview with. ‘’Kids were screaming and everything. We got out of there and the kids were holding hands in a line.’’ “I expected to see a bus half in, half out,” Rice said as he once again flew over the camp. “There was nothing. Then as we got really close, we could see five kids clinging to a treetop. These are 75-foot trees, but there is only 15 feet of tree sticking out of the water. There is another group of seven or eight on another tree, four or five in the river. There is nothing that prepares you for something like that.
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