July 2025 will be memorialized as a tragic moment in the state’s history. Flooding in Central Texas took the lives of 135 people, including 37 children.
But while survivors and many others following the story remained frozen in shock and despair waiting for a semblance of good news, about 27 scientists at UNT Health Fort Worth worked around the clock testing forensic samples brought by Texas Rangers.
Lab workers from the school’s Center for Human Identification spent two weeks helping state officials identify remains, primarily using kinship DNA testing. Ultimately, the lab identified 47 people, said Michael Coble, executive director for the center.
The team worked overnight to get identifications completed and answers to families within 24 hours.
“When there’s a horrific event, time is of the essence,” said Krystle Rodriguez, a senior forensic analyst for the center. “When children are affected, it just really elevates what work we do and that it needs to be done quickly.”
The kinship tests compared DNA samples collected from victims to that of family members — either a parent, sibling or a child. The lab also used dental and fingerprint comparisons to help with identification.
Because of the lab’s status as one of the premier DNA testing facilities in Texas, Coble said the center is often tapped when a tragedy takes place. It also was involved in identifying the remains of children from the Robb Elementary School mass shooting in Uvalde in 2022.
“Both of those tragedies, whether it was the flooding or the shooting, were very, very emotional,” Coble said. Still, he noted that they “all understand what we have to do, and we kind of pull up our sleeves and we get to work.”
The majority of the lab’s work is with law enforcement. The center has both an anthropology and a DNA lab, allowing for investigations and identification both through testing and sample examinations.
The center is one of the few in the country that specializes in mitochondrial testing, a more detailed form of DNA analysis, making the lab a critical resource in Texas for identifying missing persons and remains.
“We accept any human remains that are found within Texas,” Coble said. “That can be where anthropologists receive skeletal remains and do an investigation. It could also mean the Texas Ranger has found a bone, and they want to know, ‘Is this human, or is it animal?’”
Despite the intensity of investigations during a tragedy, the work remains mostly the same, Rodriguez said. The only difference is the need for speed.
“It’s higher pressure, but you’re pressuring yourself, too,” she said of instances where family members are waiting for answers. “You want to get the answer back to the family so that they can have positive identifications, because that’s what’s holding up the remains being returned to the family.”
The added significance and workload didn’t phase the center’s team members, who were already motivated, Rodriguez said.
“The willingness and the drive and the initiative that was already oozing out of our staff and our teammates was what made that all work,” she said. “Had our teams not been like that, I don’t know that it would have worked.”
Staff at the center were in constant communication with UNT Health and officials from Texas Health and Human Services about any needs.
Whether it was food delivered to the team by the university or the state coordinating sample deliveries, everything was done efficiently, said Erika Ziemak, the director of special projects at the Center for Human Identification.
“Looking back on it, I feel like we did such an amazing job of teamwork, working with each other and getting the results out the door as quickly as we did, and providing those answers to families,” Ziemak said.
Ismael M. Belkoura is the health reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at ismael.belkoura@fortworthreport.org.
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