The mission proved to be much more arduous than expected for her and her small crew of four, all of whom are first tour aviators.

Coast Guard Lieutenant Blair Oguiofor was one of more than 1,700 emergency responders who headed to central Texas.

The survival of people in local camps and low-lying areas depended not on official evacuations but on whether they were paying attention, on their own, to weather alerts in the middle of the night.