The Guadalupe River gave them no warning.
At just 4 a.m. on Friday morning, brothers Piers and Ruffin Boyett, campers at Camp La Junta in Hunt, Texas, were jolted awake to a sound no child should ever hear: water crashing through wood. The floodwaters, fueled by a violent and relentless storm, had surged to 26 feet in just 45 minutes—engulfing everything in their path, including their cabin.
“We had bunk beds in our cabins and [the water] was going up to the top bunk,” recalled 12-year-old Piers, his Camp La Junta t-shirt still damp when he spoke to KSAT. “We had one choice — and we had to swim out of our cabin.”
It wasn’t just water—it was chaos.
The elder brother, Ruffin, 14, said he was the first to wake up. His counselor was still asleep as the river burst through the cabin’s walls. “He woke up like, ‘What? We’re flooding!’” Ruffin said, recalling the moment with lingering disbelief.
What unfolded next was pure survival. The boys swam through darkness, debris, and cold water to reach safety. “All of the campers in those cabins had to go up on the rafters and wait there until they could swim out,” Ruffin said.
Miraculously, the brothers made it to higher ground. Along with other survivors, they sheltered for 17 hours in cabins built on the hills above the campgrounds. “No one died, we’re thankful for that,” Ruffin added, glancing at his younger brother with a mixture of exhaustion and relief.
But not everyone was so fortunate.
Across Kerr County, the death toll from the catastrophic flooding has risen to 43, including 15 children. At Camp Mystic, a Christian girls’ camp just downriver, at least four campers were confirmed dead, with 23 girls still unaccounted for as of Saturday night. A haunting photo of smiling Mystic campers, taken just days before the flood, has gone viral—now transformed into a national symbol of fragile innocence lost to climate disaster.
“The cabins were flooding and the walls, they broke down,” Ruffin said. He described how some campers tried to hold onto rafters, others cried out for help, and everyone fought panic as the water surged upward with terrifying speed.
On their way to safety, the Boyetts passed other camps—devastated, flattened, gone. “Obliterated,” Ruffin said, his voice catching.
Local emergency services are now working around the clock, aided by drones and rescue boats, to search for the missing and tend to the displaced. President Trump is expected to visit the region on Friday, calling the flooding a “100-year catastrophe.”
Camp La Junta, normally a place of summer fun and friendship, is now a site of trauma. But for the Boyett brothers, survival has also brought perspective.
“We’re alive,” Piers said. “That’s what matters.”
Their story has already become emblematic of the unexpected bravery shown by children during one of Texas’s worst natural disasters in years. Parents across the country are sharing their tale, equal parts heart-wrenching and miraculous.
As Texas mourns, as the river’s rage subsides, the Boyett brothers’ escape will remain one of the few bright spots in an otherwise devastating week.
They had one choice—and they made it.