Searchers push for closure after deadly Central Texas floods

May 30--Rosie Bankston knows the torment of losing a loved one to a raging river.

Twenty-eight years ago, her 17-year-old son, John Bankston Jr., was one of 10 teens swept away by the Guadalupe River when a wall of water crashed into their bus while evacuating a youth camp near Comfort during a flash flood.

No one ever found him. Last week, Rosie Bankston said she never got closure, and that, despite the passage of more than a quarter-century, she still can't talk about what happened.

"I don't think I can get through it," she said when asked about her experience.

Last week's historic floods, which left a path of destruction and swept away more than a dozen people, led to a grim search along the usually scenic Blanco River in pursuit of what Bankston never got -- a chance to say goodbye, a body to bury.

Pushed by what they describe as an emotional need to help bring finality to victims' loved ones, bands of searchers walked shoulder-to-shoulder along the limestone riverbed and nearby pastures. For days, they picked their way through debris fields of huge cypress trees and lumber from homes torn off their foundations.

The searchers included professionals with experience combing through the wreckage of the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and volunteers with corporate desk jobs who showed up with shovels and an offer to help.

As of late last week, multiple victims remained missing, including several members of two families from Corpus Christi whose riverside vacation home was swallowed by the river. As the week drew to a close, their relatives said they had begun confronting the possibility that their loved ones might never be found.

"I think recognizing with what's happening with the weather, we all know and we have accepted that they're gone," Julie Shields told KVUE-TV last week. Her sister, Laura McComb, and McComb's two children were among those swept away by floodwaters.

It is unclear how long searchers will continue their quest, but it isn't unusual after natural disasters, including floods, for days or weeks to pass before a victim's body emerges from the ruins -- or, rarer, for their remains to never be recovered.

After Hurricane Ike ravaged the Southeast Texas coast in September 2008, the family of Greg Walker, a 40-year-old husband and father of three who lived in Port Neches, waited an agonizing 15 days before volunteers found him. He had called 911 early Sept. 13 to report that water was engulfing his pickup, but no rescue attempt could be launched until the next day. His body was recovered a mile away.

The bodies of some other victims were never found. That was the case for Glennis Dunn, who tried to flee Hurricane Ike from her home near Bolivar. A slab was the only thing left of her home, and friends think she was washed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet in most instances, even bodies trapped underwater by debris eventually will emerge, said Dr. Lee Ann Grossberg, a Houston forensic expert. Bodies typically bloat, causing them to pull away from the debris and rise to the surface, she said.

"Sometimes it can take time, and, with flooding, it could have started in one body of water and traveled to a completely different geographical location," she said.

In Wimberley and other areas of Central Texas inundated by the Memorial Day weekend floods, officials said they weren't yet ready to surrender hope of recovering the missing.

Search began before storms subsided

The search for victims began last weekend even as the swollen river continued to engulf homes. Anticipating possible flooding, local and state emergency responders were on standby and ready to answer the call for help.

Lt. Brent Satsky, a Texas Parks and Wildlife game warden, was awaiting a possible assignment near Spicewood when he got the call to race to Wimberley. He said that, by the wee hours of May 24, he and others were deployed along the Blanco River.

Early on, Satsky and his crew used their boat to pluck a woman and her two golden retrievers from the second story of a home.

"It's one of those things you get immediate gratification from," Satsky said. "You see someone who survived who otherwise may not have."

Yet as hours and then days passed, and the chance for finding survivors grew dim, the focus turned to recovering bodies.

Searchers tried to keep hopes alive, and at one point midweek that feeling intensified when they found a dog belonging to Jonathan McComb and his family still alive in a tree.

The recovery mission has been divided into three large teams made up of trained searchers, including about 90 people from Texas Task Force 1, a group of trained volunteers whose members include first responders from local agencies and that helps after disasters nationally; what organizers call "spontaneous volunteers" of residents who showed up and wanted to help; and a group coordinated by relatives of the Corpus Christi families.

The flood presented unique challenges for searchers. Crews along the Blanco have contended with debris fields up to two stories high made up of jagged lumber from homes -- some with protruding nails -- that require special attention. Searchers also have confronted displaced animals, including snakes in trees.

Will Boettner, spokesman for the Texas A&M Forest Service incident command group, which is helping coordinate the effort, said state helicopters flew over large areas along the river to identify debris where victims might be trapped and that officials used that information to pinpoint their search.

He said once Jonathan McComb was discovered alive, crews realized the swiftness of the water might have carried victims farther than originally thought, so crews shifted the search downriver.

Beth Crawford, a pharmaceutical sales representative in Austin, got word the afternoon of May 24 that one of her best friends was missing. Crawford, who got to know Michelle Carey-Charba through work in 2008, said she was initially confident her friend would be found safe. But by Wednesday, with no word, Crawford decided to go to Wimberley to help in the search.

She joined a team of 20 volunteers, which combed through several large piles of debris.

"I knew Michelle would do it for me," she said. "It was sort of simple like that."

Other searchers found Carey-Charba's body that day, in neighboring Caldwell County, many miles downstream from Wimberley. Carey-Charba's husband is still missing; their 6-year-old son's body was found Friday, according to a South Texas TV station.

"I want them all to be found, so they can have a proper burial and be together and for closure for their families," she said. "To have some finality to this."

Missing bodies can mean legal difficulties

In addition to the emotional toll of not finding a missing loved one, the lack of a body can lead to years of legal difficulties for families. A 2003 law meant to expedite legal matters in the wake of natural disasters has been used only once, according to state officials.

The main legal obstacle families face is the lack of a death certificate, a crucial document in settling legal affairs ranging from life insurance payouts and wills to home and vehicle titles as well as marital status. Texas law calls for a seven-year waiting period before a missing person can be declared dead, putting families in a lengthy limbo. Families can petition a probate judge to declare a missing person dead if they are able to present enough circumstantial evidence of the death, speeding up the process.

But thanks to the 2003 law, in events declared a "catastrophe," as the Wimberley floods likely would be, families can obtain a special death certificate as long as there is evidence the person was at the scene and the subject of search efforts. In such cases, the death certificate could be issued after a 10-day waiting period.

The law, like many others across the country, was the result of lessons learned after the 9/11 attacks, when New York City medical examiner officials devised a way to expedite death certificates for victims whose bodies would never be found. Sarah Scott, chief administrative officer for the Travis County medical examiner's office, helped develop the process as general counsel for the New York City medical examiner's office, and said it saved many families from financial ruin.

"We realized within two days of 9/11 that we were not going to have intact bodies and we would have a serious social problem on our hands," Scott said. "You couldn't get a life insurance policy cashed without a death certificate. It really helped people."

But even though bodies have gone missing after other Texas disasters, most notably Hurricane Ike, the Department of State Health Services has only a single record of a Certificate of Death by Catastrophe being filed since the Legislature created the tool: that one was issued after the 2007 floods in Burnet County, at the time part of the worst flooding in Texas since 1957.

Searches take toll on searchers, too

Searchers say they are driven by the need to help families achieve closure. But extended search efforts often take an emotional toll on the searchers themselves. "On the first day (of a search and rescue operation), everyone's adrenaline is really running rampant, there's a lot of excitement," said Tim Miller, who heads Texas EquuSearch, a nonprofit whose volunteers have been involved in more than 1,300 searches.

As the days go by, though, the stress can mount. "When you see the (family members of missing persons) involved, the depressions they go through, it's hard to detach yourself from it," he said. "Between the physical end, seeing all the destruction, and all the emotional pain, it takes a huge toll. It takes a long time to decompress."

And when searches prove unsuccessful, searchers often take it personally. "You think, 'What could I have done differently? What could we have done differently?' It stays with you for a long time," he said. "We work through this stuff, almost like a group therapy session. We talk about all these things."

According to the VA National Center for PTSD, as many as 1 in 3 rescue workers experience symptoms of severe stress, which can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety or depression. One survey of PTSD studies found that the prevalence of PTSD among rescue workers worldwide was 10 percent, significantly higher than in the general population.

"The emotional pain and stress is far worse than any physical pain we go through," Miller said. "It's always in our mind. Many of our people have sleepless nights."

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