Dennis Quaid has given an update about his 17-year-old daughter, Zoe, while she’s working as a camp counselor in Texas during the devastating flash floods.
The 71-year-old actor told Fox News Digital Friday that Zoe’s camp is many miles north of Kerrville, Texas, which was hit by the catastrophic overflooding of the Guadalupe River.
“The Hill County of Texas is a magical place, especially for children going to camp there,” the Texas native said. “It’s a cherished memory you carry with you all your life. My daughter was actually a few miles away from [Camp] Mystic, further north. Thankfully, their camp was OK.”
At Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp situated on the banks of the Guadalupe River, at least 27 children and staff members died after the floods. The death toll due to the disaster stands at 121, while 173 people are still missing.
Quaid also said that on the night that the floods began, he tried to get in touch with his daughter, but didn’t hear back from her right away.
“I heard about this as I was going to bed that night,” The Parent Trap star explained to the outlet. “And I tried to call her because I knew she was up there. I knew it wasn't near where the floods were, but I wasn't able to talk to her till the next day.”
He confessed that he “didn't really get a lot of sleep” on the night he was waiting for Zoe to call him back. Still, his daughter and others at her camp are “relatively safe up there.”
Zoe also has a twin brother, Thomas. The two are Quaid’s only children with his ex-wife, Kimberly Buffington. Quaid shares his 33-year-old son, actor Jack Quaid, with his ex-wife Meg Ryan.
In 2020, two years after he divorced Buffington, The Substance star got remarried to his wife, Laura Savoie.
During his interview with Fox News Digital, Quaid sent his condolences to his friend, Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, who lost a nine-year-old family member, Janie Hunt, in the Texas floods.
“I can't imagine how that would … how devastating that would be,” he said. “You think of those kids that night, and it just chills my heart. Do a lot of praying because there's a lot of people that need to be prayed for.”
Kerr County remains the center of the disaster after the Guadalupe River overflowed on July 4.
Crews are searching mounds of debris along an eight-mile stretch of the Guadalupe River, often finding cars and RVs buried in the wreckage. Search and rescue efforts are expected to continue for several weeks, said Fredericksburg Fire Chief Lynn Bizzell.
Several of the cabins at Camp Mystic were also built on “extremely hazardous” floodways where the river’s water moves at its highest velocity and depth, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Two days before the deadly floods, the camp reportedly passed its annual state safety inspection and had a written disaster plan in place.
