Country singer Pat Green mourns family lost in July 4 Texas floods

Waco-raised country music star Pat Green has lost his younger brother John Burgess and sister-in-law Julia Anderson Burgess the July 4 floods in Kerr County. Two of the couple's children remain missing.

Family members said that John and Julia Burgess were staying with their two young sons at the Blue Oak RV Park located on the banks of the Guadalupe River in Kerrville before the flood, KCEN-TV first reported on July 8. The bodies of John and Julia have been recovered, but the search continues for their sons. The Burgess' daughter was uninjured in the floods as she was away at a nearby summer camp during the tragedy.

“Over the weekend, during the devastating flooding that hit Central Texas, my family — like so many others — suffered a heartbreaking and deeply personal loss,” Green wrote in a July 8 Instagram post. “We are grieving alongside countless Texans whose lives have been upended by this tragedy.”

According to Saving Country Music, the Burgess family, who lived in the town of Liberty east of Houston, were staying at the RV park for the 4th of July in order to be close to their daughter’s camp for when it came time to pick her up.

Blue Oak RV Park owner Lorena Guillen told the New York Post that she saw John clinging to a tree and holding onto his sons before they were swept away by the flood.

“My husband was in the water trying to ask them, ‘Please throw me your baby!’ The man was holding tight to his babies, and he just got swept away,” Guillen told the New York Post on July 7.

Guillen said that all 28 of the RVs parked at Blue Oak were destroyed. In the Instagram post, Green requested privacy as his family begins the mourning process.

“We are so thankful for the outpouring of love and concern,” Kori Green, the musician’s wife, wrote in the caption of a July 8 Instagram post. “We are heartbroken and anxiously waiting for all of them to be found.”

Born in San Antonio and raised in Waco, Pat Green started playing music while enrolled at Texas Tech University and put out his first official releases in 1995. He gained recognition after playing Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Picnic in 1998, thriving as an independent musician before he signed to a major label. Best known for his 2003 single “Wave On Wave,” Green has become a staple in the Texas country music scene.