A former camp counselor during the devastating 1987 Texas floods told The Post on Monday that the tragedy was eerily similar to what happened to the young campers on the same river last week.
The Rev. Richard Koons was a youth pastor at a church camp in Comfort in July of that year when a sudden rainstorm dropped 12 inches of rain in just 45 minutes — flooding the Guadalupe River with 25 feet of water in less than an hour.
Just like Camp Mystic — the girls’ Christian camp which was swept away during torrential rains at the cost of nearly 30 lives Friday — Koons’ camp was located on the banks of the Guadalupe and found itself inundated with water and scrambling to evacuate.
A caravan of buses raced for the gates, but one carrying Koons and over 40 campers and staff was cut off by a wall of water.
“That river for us went to about 35 feet deep really, really quick,” Koons told said, recalling how campers first climbed onto the bus roof before helping each other to the branches of nearby trees.
Some people stripped off their pants and tied them together into a rope to help haul kids up to safety, he said.
And all the while the river was raging away beneath them.
“The water that day was traveling 70 miles an hour,” Koons said. “There was a guy, I remember, who jumped in the water trying to rescue somebody. And he had just got back from Colorado with Sweetwater Rescue. And he broke his ribs and had to be rescued. That’s just how fast it was going.”
Koons’ wife was also with the group and struggling to hold on for safety — and wound up getting swept away but miraculously survived.
“One of our young men started crying and told me he had my wife but he couldn’t hold on to her. She went a mile down the river. Nobody went that far and survived,” Koons said.
“She wasn’t rescued by helicopter, but four guys in a boat got to her. She thought she went under the water. Everything went dark. She thought it was over. And the water just pushed her to a pile of debris.”
After nearly two hours, Koons and the survivors were rescued by helicopter — but 10 teens by then had been swept away and lost their lives.
Similar chaos unfolded early Friday at Camp Mystic in Kerr County, not far from Koons’ old camp.
As the Guadalupe River rose during rains overnight, most campers were evacuated — but more than two dozen people including some staff were left behind and swept away as the river overtook the campus.
At least 27 campers and staff have been confirmed dead as of Monday, with several more still missing.
Friday’s flooding slightly outdid the 1987 floods, with the Guadalupe River rising over 26 feet this time around.
More than 100 people have been confirmed dead in the flooding, and that number is expected to rise as search and rescue crews continue scouring the ruined countryside.