A Care Facility Underwater and a Beloved Resident Swept Away: The Older Texans Caught in the Floods

For Cokendolpher, many of those risks became a reality that Saturday morning.

In her own home, the water level rose quickly, forcing Cokendolpher and her family to escape through a kitchen window. They tried to make it to the assisted living facility, but the waist-deep, surging water made it impossible. “We were going to drown if we attempted to get there,” she says.

The family waded through water to one son’s pickup truck, where Cokendolpher’s husband was hoisted into the truck bed by his boys. The rising waters quickly forced the family to relocate to the roof of a nearby trailer. From there, they could see the destruction unfolding at Pafford Place: water pouring in through shattered windows and doors, as furniture swirled aggressively around inside. “That view,” Cokendolpher says through tears, “will haunt me forever.”

The family called 911 and begged for help. But as the hours dragged on, Cokendolpher feared that her residents, who rely on walkers or wheelchairs and have varying degrees of dementia, wouldn’t have the ability to make it to higher ground.

Then the family spotted Pafford Place resident Lee Brizendine emerging from his bedroom. The 85-year-old Navy veteran was attempting to escape, but the waters proved too powerful. As the man she considered a dear friend was sucked under the water and whisked away by the raging river, all Cokendolpher could do was watch. She was overwhelmed by “the most helpless feeling in the whole wide world," she recalls.

Views of Pafford Place during the flash flood and before the storm.

Courtesy Cokendolpher

Brizendine has since been confirmed as one of the dead.

At around 9 a.m., rescuers in boats arrived and moved the Cokendolpher family to dry ground, higher up the property. The rescuers circled Pafford Place, swimming in and out of windows. Cokendolpher prayed for life among the residents whom she helped feed, bathe and entertain each day — whom she considers family, she says — but braced herself for the alternative.

“Seven confirmed” was broadcast through the rescuers’ walkie-talkies, and Cokendolpher recalls wondering, Confirmed dead or confirmed alive? She watched as residents were pulled from the building, placed on boats and returned to her. “The seconds felt like hours,” she recalls. But eventually, she had her answer: seven confirmed alive.

One resident was not among them, though. Brizendine had arrived at Pafford Place two months earlier, lonely and anxious, but quickly settled into a routine of daily coloring, joking with staff and residents and hanging out with his brother-in-law, who visited almost every day. “He was an absolute delight,” Cokendolpher says of Brizendine.

On the Monday after the flood, about 100 volunteers gathered at Pafford Place to help the Cokendolphers start the cleanup and rebuild. Brizendine’s brother-in-law, who had only just learned of Brizendine’s death, was one of them.

Past disasters point to a precarious future

If disaster history offers a preview of what may unfold in Texas in the coming weeks and months, the floods’ toll on older Americans is likely to grow.

Adults 50 and older accounted for 59 percent of total deaths caused by flash and river floods in the U.S. in 2024. Of the roughly 150 deaths attributed to Hurricane Ian, which walloped Florida’s west coast with floods and winds in 2022, about two-thirds were 65 or older. After Hurricane Fiona, which hit that same year, adults 65 and older accounted for 35 of the 42 deaths in Puerto Rico. When Hurricane Florence struck North Carolina in 2018, two out of every three deaths were among adults age 60 or older, and nearly half of deaths were among those 70 and over. The trend holds true for weather events going back decades.  

“We really do see it time and time again,” says Sue Anne Bell, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing, who works on disaster preparedness and response. “We have 50 years of research, or more, showing how older adults are a vulnerable population, but we’re still wrestling with the same problems.”

For Thompson, the Dietert Center’s roughly 300 Meals on Wheels clients were top of mind as she raced home to Kerrville on July 4. Thompson was out of town visiting her daughter when the floods hit Kerr County. As the scale of the disaster became apparent, she decided she needed to make the five-hour trek back home. “Those seniors don’t just rely on us for food; for some, we’re the only people they see regularly,” she says. “We’re the ones checking in on them.”

Thompson arrived at the Dietert Center on Friday afternoon to find the building in shambles. The center usually hosts shared meals, fun classes and social events, and serves as the administrative hub for programs serving about 2,000 older adults in the region. Instead, it was filled with mud, waterlogged furniture and dying minnow fish.

Brenda Thompson, after the flash floods in the offices of the Dietert Center.

Jared Moossy

But “a building is just a building; it can be fixed,” Thompson says. Death, “you can’t repair that.”

Dietert Center staff and volunteers spent the rest of the weekend making phone and house calls to check on older adults. On Saturday, “people were scattered all over the building, wherever they could find a quiet spot, checking in,” Thompson says. As of Thursday, everyone they reached out to appeared to be safe.

Thompson recognizes that the toll of the floods is far from complete and that its risks on the older community will remain long after the flood waters have subsided. Getting the Dieter Center’s full slate of services back up and running is a priority. “While they are living independently, they need help,” she says, and “our resources help them survive.”

But if the community’s response to the floods thus far is a sign of things to come, Thompson feels confident the older locals will be well cared for. “For every call we’ve put out, there’s been one in return asking us what we need,” she says. From grandmas to grandkids, “everyone wants to know how they can help.”