KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Crews trudged through debris and waded into swollen riverbanks Monday in the search for victims of catastrophic flooding over the July Fourth weekend that has killed nearly 90 people in Texas, including more than two dozen campers and counselors from an all-girls Christian camp.
With additional rain on the way, the risk of more flooding was still high in saturated parts of central Texas. Authorities said the death toll was sure to rise as crews looked for the many people who were still missing.
Operators of Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, said Monday that they lost 27 campers and counselors, confirming their worst fears after a wall of water slammed into cabins built along the edge of the Guadalupe River.
“We have been in communication with local and state authorities who are tirelessly deploying extensive resources to search for our missing girls,” the camp said in a statement.
Authorities said Monday that 10 girls and a counselor from the camp remain missing.
In the Hill Country area, home to Camp Mystic and several other summer camps, searchers have found the bodies of 75 people, including 27 children, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said.
Twelve other deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties, according to local officials.
The floods, among the nation’s worst in decades, swept away people sleeping in tents, cabins and homes along the river Friday in the middle of the night.
Reagan Brown said his parents, in their 80s, managed to escape uphill as water inundated their home in the town of Hunt. When the couple learned that their 92-year-old neighbor was trapped in her attic, they went back and rescued her.
“Then they were able to reach their tool shed up higher ground, and neighbors throughout the early morning began to show up at their tool shed, and they all rode it out together,” Brown said.
A few miles away, rescuers maneuvering through challenging terrain filled with snakes kept up the search for the missing.
Gov. Greg Abbott said Sunday that 41 people were unaccounted for across the state and more could be missing.
Families were allowed to look around Camp Mystic beginning Sunday morning. A man whose daughter was rescued from a cabin on the highest point in the camp walked a riverbank, looking in clumps of trees and under big rocks.
One family left with a blue footlocker. A teenage girl had tears running down her face as they slowly drove away and she gazed through the open window at the wreckage.
Searching the disaster zone
Crews operating heavy equipment pulled tree trunks and tangled branches from the river. With each passing hour, the prospect of finding more survivors dimmed.
Search-and-rescue crews at one staging area said Monday that more than 1,000 volunteers had been directed to an area of hard-hit Kerr County.
Authorities faced growing questions about whether enough warnings were issued in an area long vulnerable to flooding and whether enough preparations were made.
Sign Up For Free: Denver AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day.
Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. Featured Local Savings
President Donald Trump signed a major disaster declaration Sunday for Kerr County and said he would likely visit Friday. “It’s a horrible thing that took place, absolutely horrible,” he told reporters.
Desperate refuge and trees and attics
Survivors shared terrifying stories of being swept away and clinging to trees as floodwaters carried trees and cars past them. Others fled to attics, praying the water wouldn’t reach them.
At Camp Mystic, a cabin full of girls held onto a rope strung by rescuers as they walked across a bridge with water whipping around their legs.
Among those confirmed dead were an 8-year-old girl from Mountain Brook, Alabama, who was at the camp, and the director of another camp up the road.
Two school-age sisters from Dallas were missing Sunday after their cabin was swept away. Their parents were staying in a different cabin and were safe, but the girls’ grandparents were unaccounted for.
Warnings came before the disaster
On Thursday the National Weather Service advised of potential flooding and then sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours of Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies — a rare alert notifying the public of imminent danger.
Authorities and elected officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour, the equivalent of months of rain for the area.
Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said authorities are committed to a full review of the emergency response.
Trump, asked whether he was still planning to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said that was something “we can talk about later, but right now we are busy working.” He has said he wants to overhaul if not completely eliminate FEMA and has sharply criticized its performance.
Trump said he doesn’t plan to rehire any of the federal meteorologists who were fired this year as part of widespread government spending cuts.
“This was a thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it. Nobody saw it. Very talented people there, and they didn’t see it,” the president said.
Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said recent cuts to FEMA and the National Weather Service did not delay warnings ahead of the flood.
“This is not a time for partisan finger pointing and attacks,” he said. “There will be a time to find out what could been done differently. My hope is in time we learn some lessons to implement the next time there is a flood.”
Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee; Cedar Attanasio in New York; Sophia Tareen in Chicago; and Michelle Price in Morristown, N.J.
