United Cajun Navy helps Texans deal with flood aftermath

By Erika Ryan,

Megan Lim, Juana Summers, Tyler Bartlam, Courtney Dorning

Published July 8, 2025 at 4:20 PM PDT

Neil Summer, with the Matagorda Volunteer Fire Department, leads a search group made up of volunteers on the banks of the Guadalupe River near Center Point, Texas on Monday. The group was performing a "hasty search," which is where they quickly clear an area and move on in hopes of more quickly finding survivors.

CENTER POINT, Texas — Hours after catastrophic flooding tore through Central Texas, an army of volunteers were already en route.

"We had seen the alerts overnight when we started getting reports about mass casualties. We had a feeling we were going to get a call," says Brian Trascher, vice president for the Louisiana-based group of volunteers called the United Cajun Navy.

And within a couple of hours they did.

By Friday afternoon, a group from a chapter in San Antonio arrived with airboats. Trascher and others from Louisiana soon joined them.

Brian Trascher, vice president for the United Cajun Navy, watches as a search helicopter flies over their search area on the banks of the Guadalupe River near Center Point.

More than 100 people have been confirmed dead, a majority of them in Kerr County, where the Guadalupe River overflowed its banks. More than 150 people are known to be missing, the Texas governor said Tuesday.

It's now nearly a week, and rescue and recovery efforts continue.

Trascher and his team — along with local, state and federal emergency responders — are combing through fallen trees and other debris that litters the area — all with the hope of finding survivors.

"When you get past the 48 to 60 hour mark, the survivability index really goes down a lot," he told All Things Considered host Juana Summers. "We always hold out hope for a miracle."

Katie Hayes Luke / for NPR

for NPR

Volunteers fan across a designated search area on the banks of the Guadalupe River.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Juana Summers: Can you just put in two terms for us the scale of the devastation here?

Brian Trascher: One of my guys — he's had over 115 storm deployments — he said it's the worst he's ever seen. I got one of my meteorologist storm chasers here. He said it's the worst flood damage he's ever seen. And these guys have been in the business 30 years.

So, that gives any kind of, you know, illustration of the scope.

Some volunteers like Megan Ansaldo, from Bandera, Texas, are on horseback as they help in the search and recovery efforts.

I went to a restaurant last night, like one of these really giant dining rooms. So there's probably 150 people in the dining room, but you could hear a pin drop. All you heard was forks and knives. And it was not necessarily like first responders, just normal Kerrville, you know, residents eating dinner.

But everybody's very somber right now and you can feel it. Even the people that didn't know the victims. Everybody's feeling it.

Volunteers stand near the banks of the Guadalupe River and listen to instructions on how to properly conduct a search operation.

Summers: This is a grim question, but I do have to ask — from your experience, having been out to so many of these, how likely is it that there are more survivors still alive to be found out here?

Trascher: Yeah, that's a reasonable question. When you get past the 48 to 60 hour mark, the survivability index really goes down a lot. We always hold out hope for a miracle.

Sometimes just bringing someone's loving home so they can bury and observe their religious customs brings closure. Nothing's worse than just never seeing somebody again and never knowing what happened to them. You are never going to stop guessing what happened. And so when we bring that closure, at least the families have a path to healing.