Belton woman survives Hill Country flooding nightmare

By David Stone

By David Tuma

The Belton Journal

A 19-year-old Belton woman narrowly escaped rising flood waters that tore through her Hunt, Texas, hotel during a Fourth of July gathering.

Riata Schoepf waded through chest-deep water in the middle of the night before she was rescued by a group of strangers.

She was part of a group of 33 friends and family members who spend the July 4th holiday every year at the River Inn Resort & Conference Center in Hunt.

“It was late and I had gone to bed, but a few people in our group were still up,” Riata said. “I woke up about 2:30 a.m. to a banging on our door. My boyfriend’s brother burst into the room and said the hotel was flooding and we needed to go.” “There had been many lightning strikes right around the hotel, so my first thought was that the hotel was on fire,” she said.

“We walked outside and the flood water was up to the bottom-floor doors,” Riata said. “It was insane — it just came out of nowhere.”

Like many of the hotel guests, Riata ran to her car but was stuck in unmoving traffic as the water lapped at her car door.

“We were just sitting in the car and you start seeing the water rising. We were at a standstill. There was nowhere for us to go.”

Riata joined other hotel guests and fled from the car.

“We started walking down the street, and as we were walking, the water rose higher and higher,” she said. She said her group was passing a two-story house where people on the top floor were using flashlights to peer into the fast-moving waters below. Riata said the people in the house screamed for them to come up, and they let down some sheets.

“They let down the sheets and we started climbing up,” she said. “I was probably in chestdeep water for 20 minutes before I got pulled up, then I started helping get others up the sheets.”

Riata said cell service was almost non-existent. She sent a text to her Mom and Dad, but they didn’t get the message until about 8 a.m.

“We were busy getting ready for the Fourth of July parade, and we hadn’t really heard much about the flooding in the Hill Country,” said Ronnie Schoepf, Riata’s father. “We were actually going to be in the parade.

“We didn’t know the extent of the tragedy when we got her text,” he said. “I kept thinking: ‘Is this real? Is this happening? We kept trying to get hold of her and the people she was with.”

Ronnie Schoepf said he and his wife would receive occasional texts from their daughter.

“One text said: ‘They are going to rescue us soon — they are getting the elderly people out first,’” he said. “I drove to the other side of Marble Falls and my wife got another text saying they weren’t going to get them out tonight. I couldn’t get in the flooded area, so I turned around and went back to Belton.”

Schoepf’s BBQ, the family business, was hosting a Fourth of July concert and fireworks that night. Another text from Riata, this one saying that the Army had showed up and they were “taking us out tonight.”

She was taken to Austin, and later in the weekend she was able to go get her car and return to Belton.

“We are super glad she is safe, and we continue to pray for those families who have losses and are recovering from devastation,” Ronnie said.