When 134 people were killed as a result of a historic and deadly flood event in Central Texas in July, at least one DeKalb County man went into the receding flood plains to help.

That man, Erik Carlson, 47, a lieutenant for the Sycamore Fire Department, is a hazmat specialist for the Illinois Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 1 team. On July 12, he responded to a call to duty within four hours, leaving his wife and son at home.

After the news that he’d be deployed that afternoon, Carslon, a second-generation firefighter, was on his way out of Sycamore by 6 p.m. He was deployed for 15 days, more than 1,000 miles from Sycamore, searching for people reported missing as a result of deadly floods in central Texas.

“It was a very humbling experience, and I think the biggest thing is I’ve got to thank my family,” Carlson said. “From when the first emails and text messages went out, it was about three and a half hours, and I was packing my bag, getting ready to go upstate. That’s how we operate.”

A flash flood in the hill country of central Texas on the morning of July 4 killed more than 130 people, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, a century-old girls’ summer camp located on the banks of the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, Texas.

“The media was rightfully focused on the Kerrville area with that Mystic camp, the girls’ camp. They got totally devastated,“ Carlson said. ”That was a very large loss of life and very devastating."

Carlson said he didn’t realize the “grand scope” of the flooding until he arrived in Texas and spent the first week operating in river systems, “a good bit away from the Kerrville area.”

In his second week of deployment, Carlson was moved closer to Kerrville and worked along the Guadalupe River. He said he was surprised to find that the flood had impacted a large swath of the hilly section of Central Texas.

Sycamore Fire Chief Bart Gilmore said Carlson was the only firefighter from DeKalb County deployed as part of the Texas emergency response.

“During that time, he experienced heat over 100 degrees, humidity that was, I believe, in the 70% range,” Gilmore said. “He had toxic water, dangerous animals, really harsh conditions.”

Carlson said the post-flood conditions were hot and humid, but the work was necessary.

“[There was] a lot of hiking doing the search and recovery efforts, just trying to bring closure for the people involved and affected down in Texas,” Carlson said. “I was proud to represent the Sycamore Fire Department and the city of Sycamore.”

On Tuesday, Carlson was recognized by the Sycamore City Council and Gilmore, who presented him with two distinctions.

Gilmore said Carlson earned the Fire Chief’s Recognition Award through the great skill and reputable conduct he displayed during his deployment.

“He gets that for his excellent service representing the city of Sycamore and its fire department,” Gilmore said.

The second award was the Humanitarian Service Medal. That award, also presented by Gilmore, came from Mutual Aid Box Alarm System, which helps fire departments cooperate at the scenes of big emergencies near and far.

The Sycamore City Council and every member of the audience gave Carlson a standing ovation.

Carlson has been with the Illinois Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 1 team since 2016, and the Sycamore Fire Department for nearly 19 years. He said the Texas floods caused more widespread devastation than anything else he’d seen in his professional career. That includes his deployment with Illinois Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 1 in 2021, when Hurricane Ida impacted Gulf Coast communities.

“This by far was not only the largest, obviously, incident for me but for the task force, and for the state of Illinois, sending our specialized team out of state,” Carlson said.