No fewer than 66 people are dead in central Texas after devastating flash floods slammed Texas Hill Country, United States, with water rescues taking place along the Guadalupe River, which rose rapidly early Friday morning to the height of a two-story building.
A dozen are still missing from Camp Mystic in Kerr County, a children’s summer camp, officials said yesterday.
Of the fatalities, 59 have occurred so far in Kerr County, its sheriff, Larry Leitha, said at a news conference yesterday morning — an increase from 43 deaths reported the previous night. The dead include 38 adults and 21 children, with 18 of the adults and four of the children unidentified.
At least 11 Camp Mystic campers are missing, along with one counselor, Leitha told reporters. This is the first solid number officials have provided regarding campers who remain unaccounted for, after estimating Saturday that it could be as high as 27. There were about 750 children at Camp Mystic when the floods hit, the sheriff said earlier.
President Trump signed a major disaster declaration for Kerr County yesterday morning, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott visited the summer camp for the first time. He called the scene “horrendously ravaged” in a social media post.
“Today I visited Camp Mystic. It, and the river running beside it, were horrendously ravaged in ways unlike I’ve seen in any natural disaster,” Abbott wrote. “The height the rushing water reached to the top of cabins was shocking. We won’t stop until we find every girl who was in those cabins. “
At the Vatican, Pope Leo extended a prayer to the flooding victims during yesterday mass, saying, “I express my sincere condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones, in particular their daughters who were at summer camp, in the disaster caused by the flooding of the Guadalupe river in Texas in the United States.”
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Although Kerr County was hit hardest by flooding, at least seven others have been confirmed dead in different parts of Texas. About 150 miles east of Camp Mystic, Travis County has confirmed at least four deaths, county spokesperson Hector Nieto told CBS News by phone Saturday night. Travis County includes the Texas capital city of Austin.
In Burnet County, at least two people were confirmed dead and another six were missing, according to Derek Marchio, emergency management coordinator for the county. More than 50 rescues had been conducted countywide since the flooding crisis unfolded, Marchio said.
In Tom Green County, the San Angelo Police Department confirmed Saturday the death of a 62-year-old woman identified as Tanya Burwick. Police said Burwick was driving when her vehicle became submerged by floodwaters.
Officials have conducted more than 160 air rescues, Leitha said in an earlier update, adding that 850 uninjured and eight injured people have been rescued overall as of Saturday. U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a social media post that the U.S. Coast Guard was responsible for saving 223 of those people, as dramatic video showed Guard members conducting aerial rescues near Kerrville on Thursday, while dark water covered the ground.
The Department of Homeland Security oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“We’ve been rescuing people out of these camps by the hundreds, you know, all day,” Rice said Saturday night. “There’s a lot of folks that are shelter in place, so we leave them in place to make sure that we get them food, water.”
Some of the hundreds of people rescued were found hanging onto trees, Abbott said Saturday. At a news conference, the governor said he signed an updated federal disaster declaration to include several other counties in Texas that have been damaged by storms.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said in Saturday’s briefing that his property was also devastated by the flooding and he “barely got home” on Friday. Kelly also said he had visited a funeral home and “got to see firsthand many of the body bags” before going on a helicopter ride with Sen. John Cornyn and Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring to survey the damage.
“It’s gonna be a long time before we’re ever going to be able to clean it up much less rebuild it,” Kelly said. “We didn’t know. We knew we’d get rain, we know the river rises but nobody saw this coming.”
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said in a news briefing on Friday that there hadn’t been “a drop of rain until the tragedy struck” earlier in the day, and that the Guadalupe River had risen about 26 feet in 45 minutes. An alert went out around 4 and 5 a.m. local time Friday, he said.
Speaking to reporters late Friday night aboard Air Force One, Trump called the floods a “terrible thing.” On Saturday, he said his administration was working with state and local officials “on the ground” in Texas to respond to the flooding.
“Melania and I are praying for all the families impacted by this horrible tragedy,” Mr. Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Our Brave First Responders are on site doing what they do best.”
Rice, Kerrville’s city manager, explained how the Guadalupe River flooded so quickly.
“When you look at the headwaters of the Guadalupe… there’s a north and a south fork,” Rice said Friday night. “Since 1987, under normal conditions, if you can call it that, you’ll hit water in one of those areas, and those two forks will converge into the Guadalupe, which comes through the city of Kerrville.”
“This rain event sat on top of that and dumped more rain than what was forecasted on both of those forks,” Rice continued. “When we got the report, it was about 7 feet or so on the south fork, and within a matter of minutes it was up to 29 feet, and all of that converged at Guadalupe.”
The Guadalupe River at Hunt reached its second-highest height on record, higher than the famous 1987 flood, the city said, citing the National Weather Service.
