Two young sisters have been confirmed dead after catastrophic floods swept through Texas Hill Country early Friday morning, leaving behind a scene that has left the nation in grief.

Blair and Brooke Harber, aged 13 and 11, were on a family vacation in Hunt, Texas, when a wall of water overtook the cabins in the gated community of Casa Bonita. According to a family member, the girls were sleeping in a separate cabin with their grandparents when the flood hit at around 3:30 a.m.

Their final text came just moments before the waters surged in. “I love you,” Brooke wrote to her father and grandparents. It would be the last message they’d receive from her.

A frantic rescue effort, but the current was too strong

RJ Harber and his wife Annie, the girls’ parents, were jolted awake by the storm. The rain was so loud, the family recalls, that they couldn’t hear the floodwaters tearing through the doors until it was nearly too late. In a desperate attempt to escape, RJ and Annie smashed a window and ran outside, trying to reach the cabin where their daughters were sleeping.

They borrowed a neighbor’s kayak to paddle across the rising waters, but the current was too powerful. The couple, along with five other neighbors, were later rescued.

For twelve agonizing hours, the girls remained missing. Then came the news no family is ever prepared for: Blair and Brooke were found 15 miles downstream, hand in hand.

Search efforts are still underway for their grandparents, Mike and Charlene Harber, who are presumed to have been swept away with the girls. The family had chosen to stay in a neighbor’s larger cabin to make sure the girls were comfortable — a decision that ended in tragedy.

A family’s faith and the heartbreak of what could not be saved

Blair and Brooke were students at St. Rita’s Catholic School in Dallas, where their mother works. Both girls were described as warm, bright, and deeply faithful. They brought their rosaries with them on the trip — a small symbol of comfort that now carries even deeper meaning.

“Blair had a heart that never hesitated to help someone,” said their aunt, Jennifer Harber. “And Brooke just made people feel better by being in the room.”

The Harber family had simply set out on a brief summer escape. But within hours, they were thrust into the heart of one of the deadliest flood disasters in recent Texas history. With the statewide death toll now surpassing 80 and dozens more still unaccounted for, their loss is part of a much wider tragedy — but no less personal.

For now, a father clings to the final message from his daughter, and to the image of two sisters who refused to let go of each other — even in their final moments.