NC agencies in Texas assisting recovery efforts from Kerr County flooding

As North Carolina cleans up its own flood damage, several state agencies are in Texas to assist with the search for missing people who disappeared during historic flooding in the state.

Among those heading to Texas is the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, which concluded its first day on the ground on Monday.

Texas saw historic levels of flooding in Kerr County in July, and more than 100 people died in the flooding, some of whom were from a girls’ summer camp.

While Fiji, a K-9 unit with the Nash County Sheriff’s Office, is back home relaxing, she was hard at work in Texas a week earlier.

“There’s a lot of damage out there. A lot of timber has been pushed around, lots of mud and things like that, and cars are pushed all over the place and crushed,” said Jack Thorpe, a deputy with the Nash County Sheriff’s Office, and Fiji’s handler. “The water just took everything in its path and destroyed it.”

The SBI sent four crews with cadaver dogs to Texas to aid officials with their recovery efforts of people still missing.

John Taylor, an NC SBI agent, said it was an effort to pay the state back for their help during Hurricane Helene, which swept away much of western North Carolina and killed more than 100 people in September.

“Texas sent a lot of resources to us last fall in the wake of Hurricane Helene. It’s not only is it the right thing to do, but to be able to repay and to help them back out in their time of need, it’s just an added sense of pride for our handlers, and for myself and our agency,” Taylor said.

Thorpe, who, along with Fiji, was part of the recovery efforts in western North Carolina, said the flooding deaths in Texas were more surprising because the destruction was not as widespread as they were in North Carolina.

“It was interesting and sad because the destruction was less than Helene’s, but the death toll was higher,” Thorpe said.

The SBI is expected to stay in Texas for the next seven days.