Two teenage camp counselors have recalled the harrowing moment they wrote the names of the young girls they were caring for on their bodies in case they were swept away in the raging Texas floodwaters.
Silvana Garza and Maria Paula said they desperately put on a “happy face” to keep the children calm as they prepared to evacuate a branch of Camp Mystic neighboring the one where at least five girls were killed and 11 are still missing.
“Us as counselors, we started to write our names on our skin, anywhere that was visible,” Paula Told Mexican news outlet NMas in a Spanish-language interview on Sunday.
“We did the same for the girls, wrote their names anywhere that was easy to see,” she added.
Survivors of the neighboring private all-girls summer camp — where at least five girls are confirmed dead and another 11 remain missing — flocked to to the location where Garza and Paula worked as the Guadalupe River swelled.
As news poured in of the horror nearby, the pair said they were told to “put on a happy face” to not scare the younger girls.
“At the time, we started to prepare our girls because we thought we were also going to be evacuated,” Garza told the outlet.
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“We told them to pack a bag, to pack their favorite stuffed animal. We didn’t know if we were going to be evacuated or not. We were just waiting.”
At least 82 people have been killed in the historic floods — with dozens more people missing and the number of those killed only expected to rise.
