During Texas's second-worst flood, Matthew Crowder ignored dispatch warnings to save a family. Now the community rallies to help survivors.

The flash flood was the deadliest from inland flooding in the U.S. since Colorado’s Big Thompson Canyon flood on July 31, 1976, killed 144 people, said Bob Henson, a meteorologist with Yale Climate Connections. That flood surged through a narrow canyon packed with people on a holiday weekend marking Colorado’s centennial.

Early on the morning of July 4, the Guadalupe River in central Texas overflowed its banks, causing catastrophic flooding. As of July 9, at least 111 people had died, and homes and businesses along the river were washed away in the affected parts of Texas Hill Country,