The Tragic Flood of 1987: A Summer Camp Disaster
Editor’s note: This story was originally published on 2017. We’re bringing it back following another round of historic flooding in July 2025 and the deaths of more young campers along the Guadalupe River in Central Texas.
When the water started rising, no one was worried.
Despite nearly a foot of rain the night before, campers at the Pot O’ Gold Ranch in the Hill Country town of Comfort were leaving as scheduled the morning of July 17, 1987.
“There was no urgency,” said Richard Koons, then 26, who was driving a bus carrying 33 people from Seagoville Road Baptist Church in Balch Springs.
Breaking News
That bus and a van — with 10 more passengers from the church — were following several other buses on a road along the Guadalupe River when they stalled out in about a foot of water.
The Flood
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“We’re just sitting there, kidding around,” Chip Asberry, now 45, told the San Antonio Express-News. “Water began coming in and they said everyone get out and walk. No big deal. Boys kidding with girls.”
The 43 campers had formed a human chain and were heading to higher ground when a wall of water came screaming toward them.
A bus driver farther back on the road, Wesley Edwards, said the first wave was 10 feet high, and it was followed by four more.
“The river came to them in a hurry,” said the Rev. Claude Bonam Sr., director of the summer camp.
The bus and the van were swept away — along with the campers, many of whom were able to grab onto pecan trees in the raging floodwater.
“All of a sudden a wall of water hit, and I’m trucking down the river,” Asberry told the Express-News. “I was in the same area as Jason Hernandez and Scott Chatham. I pulled myself into a tree with them.
“We saw people and friends passing the tree. We tried to reach out to them but we really couldn’t do anything.”
The Rescue Efforts
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Terrified and soaking wet, campers clung to the trees for hours, singing hymns and praying, until rescuers arrived.
Steve Bohnert, a 32-year-old volunteer firefighter at the time, told the Express-News that he and others didn’t have swift-water training and felt helpless.
“We couldn’t do anything,” he said. “We saw kids in trees. We were trying to point them out to the choppers.”
A helicopter hovers over the Seagoville Road Baptist Church bus swept away by floodwater on July 17, 1987.
Helicopters belong to the Army, the Texas Department of Public Safety and a San Antonio TV station spent hours swooping down perilously close to the water drop harnesses and pluck up survivors.
In one case, a girl grabbed onto a rope instead of tying it around herself. As the helicopter lifted her out of the tree, she lost her grip and fell 100 feet to her death.
Thirty-three people were eventually pulled to safety.
The Aftermath
Ten campers died in the flood: John Bankston Jr., 17, of Dallas; Melanie Finley, 14, of Mesquite; Leslie Gossett, 14, of Balch Springs; Lagenia Keenum, 15, of Balch Springs; Michael Lane, 18, of Dallas; Michael O’Neal, 16, of Balch Springs; Cindy Sewell, 16, of Dallas; William Sewell, 13, of Dallas; Stacey Smith, 16, of Scurry; and Tonya Smith
