Ted Cruz Discusses Visit To Camp Mystic: 'Most Horrific Thing I've Ever Seen'

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At today's Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) spoke about the deadly flooding in Texas Hill Country.

Transcript

00:00Good morning. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will come to order.

00:05I want to take a moment at the outset to address the tragedy in my home state over the holiday

00:10weekend. In the early hours of July 4th, Central Texas was hit with extraordinary flash flooding.

00:21More than 100 people have died and the death toll is expected to keep growing.

00:26Over 160 remain missing right now and the search effort is ongoing as we speak.

00:37I'm the father of two daughters. When I think of those little girls that were lost at Camp Mystic,

00:44it's every parent's worst nightmare. I was at Camp Mystic on Monday. The devastation in that 100-year-old,

00:55beautiful girls camp that has helped raise generation of girls and women in Texas.

01:04The devastation was the most horrific thing I've ever seen.

01:08The Guadalupe River is normally a quiet and peaceful river.

01:13I've been swimming and floating in that river dozens of times.

01:17There's a reason there are 40 camps right there in Kerr County because it is absolutely beautiful.

01:26My youngest daughter, Catherine, goes to camp just a few miles up the river from Camp Mystic.

01:32My wife Heidi was there the week before picking Catherine up.

01:38We had been celebrating because Catherine had won war canoe where the girls race in canoes against

01:47other girls in the camp and Catherine was a good athlete and she had won war canoe.

01:52And I looked at that same peaceful river and 1.8 trillion gallons of water dumped upon it

02:00in the early hours of July 4th. And it rose some 30 feet.

02:07Camp Mystic, the river is hundreds of yards away from the cabins. There's a lot of space there.

02:12And yet you looked at the cabins and in the cabins there was eight foot of water in every girl's cabin.

02:21You could see the water line. It washed out every single thing in the cabin.

02:28There's one cabin, the cabin where the youngest girls were in, called Bumble Inn.

02:37The water blew out the windows in that cabin and swept all of the girls and the counselors out.

02:48Every girl in that cabin is either confirmed dead or missing.

02:54Outside that cabin are 17 single white crosses with the names of the girls written on it.

03:03The 17th cross, the name written on it is Dick Eastland,

03:10who for 50 years had been the camp director at Camp Mystic.

03:15And Dick likewise lost his life in those early morning hours,

03:20in his suburban driving through high water trying to rescue his girls.

03:24Texas, our heart is broken and we saw extraordinary courage.

03:37We saw search and rescue. We saw heroes.

03:40I met with a young Coast Guardsman on Monday who's credited with 165 rescues.

03:46He landed at Camp Mystic. They put him on the ground in a very difficult helicopter landing.

03:53And he was at a field at the highest point on the campground, helping rescue little girls.

03:58For three and a half hours they helicoptered out 165 girls.

04:04About 15 per helicopter.

04:06And he sat there and held their hands and stayed on the ground with them.

04:11This guy, I know a lot of my colleagues have gotten to meet Coast Guard swimmers.

04:16Who I have analogized, they're kind of like Navy SEALs and California surfers mixed together.

04:26Like this young man, he described himself in the press, he said,

04:28I'm just a dude, which is something a Coast Guard swimmer would say.

04:32But they're completely fearless. And when I saw him, he just hung up the phone from talking with a mom and dad.

04:40And with their daughter and they were crying, they said, you saved our daughter's life.

04:44And when she was there terrified out of her mind, you held her hand and told her it'd be okay.

04:54So the weather can have enormous consequences.

04:59Our thoughts today are also with the people of Rio Dosa, New Mexico, who faced flash flooding just yesterday evening.

05:09The power of a flash flood, the power of a tornado, the power of a hurricane, the power of a wildfire to devastate and destroy.

05:20Flying in a Coast Guard helicopter up the Guadalupe River,

05:22it was astonishing the devastation that water can produce.

05:29Cars were flung around like matchbox cars.

05:32And you know, when a car hits a tree, the car loses.

05:37The car crumples.

05:39But I'll tell you, when water hits trees, the trees lose.

05:43And all up and down the Guadalupe River, you saw thousands of trees just run over like a bulldozer had knocked them down.

05:51That was the force of the 30-foot wall of water that just everything in its path obliterated.

06:00Now, when tragedy strikes, we ask ourselves what could have been done differently.

06:05And that's a question that we need to ask.

06:10And in any crisis, there's an order that things play out.

06:16Stage number one is search and rescue.

06:18And that's got to be the first priority, saving lives, getting lives out of harm's way.

06:23Stage number two is recovery and rebuilding.

06:25And that's a process that takes months or even years as you go to the homes that are destroyed,

06:30you go to the buildings that are destroyed, and you look to rebuild.

06:32And we'll do that.

06:33Texas will rebuild.

06:34We're strong.

06:36But there's also a process of engaging in a retrospective and saying,

06:43what is the exact timeline of what transpired and what could we have done better?

06:50Look, every one of us looking at the flooding in Texas, if we could step into a time machine

06:56and go back to two or three in the morning on July 4th,

06:59we would rush into those little girls' cabins and get them the hell out of there.

07:05And so one question, Dr. Jacobs, you and I had a very good conversation in my office yesterday.

07:10I want to thank each of the nominees here for your expertise.

07:12But one question we will certainly be asking in Texas, and we ought to be asking across the country,

07:19is how can we improve the speed and rate of response that when an extreme weather warning goes out?

07:25In Texas, the National Weather Service put out one at just after 1 a.m. and another just after 4 a.m.

07:33But the problem is most people are asleep at 1 a.m. and 4 a.m.

07:35So those little girls never heard the warning. And so there are discussions about all sorts of steps we can take,

07:44including setting up sirens and warning systems along the Guadalupe River Valley,

07:49which I think makes an awful lot of sense.

07:52But we ought to be asking what lessons can be learned and what can be done more effectively to protect human life.

07:59Now, this hearing, we have three very qualified nominees. We have Dr. Neal Jacobs,

08:06who is the nominee for Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator.

08:11We have Mr. Taylor Jordan, the nominee for Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction.

08:17And we have Mr. Harry Kumar, the nominee for Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs.

08:25I think each of them are highly qualified.

08:29I appreciate your willingness to serve and I appreciate your commitment to protecting public safety.

08:34There's no mission that is more important, particularly concerning weather-related events,

08:40than early detection, knowing what is happening,

08:44and improving the ability to notify people in harm's way and get them out of the way.

08:49We know we're going to have other disasters going forward.

08:52There will be more floods, there will be more hurricanes, there will be more tornadoes.

08:57But every step we can take to remove someone from the path of that devastation

09:03is a step we need to take and I appreciate each of your dedication to doing that.

09:08Ranking Member Campbell.

09:09Thank you Mr. Chairman.

09:20Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

09:22Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

09:22And

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