3 hour(s) ago
Noem describes breaking down inside Camp Mystic cabin, heartbreaking interactions with parents there
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Tuesday that she had broken down inside a cabin at Camp Mystic in Texas while touring the facility over the weekend in the wake of the devastating flooding.
“I had walked through the cabin where all the little girls died,” Noem said during a Cabinet meeting. “And I had kind of fallen apart in there, but I walked out of the cabin and a gentleman was standing there, and he said ‘that man over there needs a hug.’ And so I walked over to him and I hugged him, and I said, ‘do you work here?’ And he said ‘no, my little girl was in that cabin.’ And he said ‘and I just found her best friend about an hour and a half ago, she had passed away.’ And he just fell apart. And so then we just, hugged and talked for probably an hour about that.”
“There was a dad there of one of the counselors. The counselor was alive, but she was dealing with the fact that she had hung on to some of these girls and was trying to keep them out of the floodwaters, and had gotten hit by something and had lost two of the girls and wasn't able to hang on to them and was going to live the rest of her life, thinking about that moment when she wasn't able to hang on to these girls,” Noem told President Donald Trump.
“These parents were picking up their kids’ belongings out of the mud and throughout the camp and putting them in bags,” Noem also said. “And then one of the dads said, ‘I knew 50 of these girls here, so I knew that was her dress, my daughter's friends dress.’ So he was picking it up and putting it in a bag to return to her parents.”
Noem said during the meeting that “We're still looking for a lot of little girls and, other family members that were camping along that river” and “they will continue until they find every single person.”
Posted by Greg Norman
