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.