From NPR News, this is all things considered. I'm Scott Detrow.

Two weeks ago, Austin-based NPR immigration correspondent Sergio Martinez Beltran

was on a reporting in Detroit when catastrophic flooding hit the Texas Hill country.

He was reporting a totally different story, but as often happens with breaking news,

reporter switched gears. He was soon on a plane headed back home

to cover the Texas floods. Landed in Austin, left my personal car in the airport parking lot,

rented a car, and just like went straight to Kerrville. Even though he rented an SUV,

getting to Kirk County, the epicenter of the disaster, took much longer than usual.

There were a lot of roads that were closed because they still had water on them.

In those early hours, his GPS wasn't helping much either.

It was kind of scary because the GPS was not aware of those road closures.

So at times, it was sending me through areas that as soon as I got to those roads,

I had to stop and slam on my brakes because there was water and I could not see it.

Once he arrived, Serahio's first stop was an elementary school that had been turned into a reunification center for victims and their families.

Right away, I knew this was pretty bad because there were hundreds of people there.

And it was 9 p.m. and hundreds of people were out there waiting for their loved

ones. So I came on Tuesday, which was four days after the floods. That's NPR reporter Kat Lonsdor.

She was part of a later wave of staffer sent to Texas to cover the disaster, the scope of which was

still coming into focus when Kat arrived in Kirk County. There's a little bit more clarity of what

the destruction is. There's more clarity of the numbers of people lost, of the people still missing.

And quite frankly, a lot of times around then is when it starts turning into a recovery operation.

Water from the river had receded by then.

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