Search for missing girls from summer camp after Texas floods kill at least 24
There were hundreds of rescues around Kerr County, including at least 167 by helicopter, authorities said, after nearly a foot of rain fell.
The total number of missing is not known, but the sheriff said between 23 and 25 of them were girls who had been attending Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along the river.
Families are reunited at a reunification centre after flash flooding hit the area (AP/Eric Gay)
On social media, parents and families posted desperate pleas for information about loved ones caught in the flood zone.
'The camp was completely destroyed,' said Elinor Lester, 13, one of hundreds of campers at Camp Mystic.
'A helicopter landed and started taking people away. It was really scary.'
She said a raging storm woke up her cabin around 1.30am on Friday (7.30am on Friday BST). When rescuers arrived, they tied a rope for the girls to hold as the children in her cabin walked across the bridge with floodwaters whipping around their knees.
The flooding in the middle of the night on the July 4 US holiday caught many residents, campers and officials by surprise.
First responders scan the banks of the Guadalupe River for individuals swept away by flooding in Ingram, Texas (Michel Fortier/The San Antonio Express-News via AP)
Officials defended their preparations for severe weather and their response, but said they had not expected such an intense downpour that was, in effect, the equivalent of months' worth of rain for the area.
One US National Weather Service forecast this week had called for only between three and six inches of rain, said Nim Kidd, the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management.
'It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw,' he said.
At a news conference late on Friday, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said 24 people had been confirmed killed. Authorities said 237 people had been rescued so far.
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NBC News
an hour ago
- NBC News
In deadly Texas floods, one town had what some didn't: A wailing warning siren
As heavy rain triggered flash flood warnings along the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country early Friday, the small unincorporated town of Comfort had something its neighbors upriver in Kerr County didn't: wailing sirens urging residents to flee before the water could swallow them. Comfort had recently updated its disaster alert system, installing a new siren in the volunteer fire department's headquarters and moving the old one to a low-lying area of town along Cypress Creek, a tributary of the Guadalupe that is prone to flooding. Friday was the first time the new two-siren system had been used outside of tests, providing a last-minute alarm for anyone who hadn't responded to previous warnings on their cellphones or evacuation announcements from firefighters driving around town. 'People knew that if they heard the siren, they gotta get out,' said Danny Morales, assistant chief of the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department. Morales said that no one died in Comfort, a town of about 2,300 people in Kendall County. But in Kerr County about 20 miles away, dozens of people, including young girls staying at Camp Mystic, a riverside Christian summer camp, were washed away when the Guadalupe surged over its banks and swamped the surrounding countryside. As of Monday evening, officials said, 104 people had been confirmed dead, 84 of them in Kerr County, including dozens of children. Kerr County has no siren system despite years of debate, in part because some local officials felt it was too expensive to install. The part of Texas Hill Country known as 'flash flood alley' has seen rising waters many times before, but the swift and punishing destruction over the Fourth of July has focused attention on whether local officials are doing enough to protect their residents as climate change causes more frequent and severe weather disasters and the federal government is slashing spending on emergency preparedness. The swollen river has receded, leaving behind heartbreaking signs of the devastation: little girls' suitcases and clothes strewn along the wrecked cabin grounds and plush toys caked with detritus, twisted metal and gnarled vehicles. Three days after the flooding, searchers were still picking through downed trees and hunting through thick black mud for those still missing. Parents' hopes were dimming as the days dragged on with no signs of life. It is impossible to know whether a siren system in Kerr County would have saved lives; they are meant to alert people who are outdoors, not in bed indoors, as many of Kerr County's victims were when the river rose overnight — at one point by 26 feet in just 45 minutes. The weather service issued a flood watch for the area Thursday afternoon and an urgent flash flood warning for Kerr County at 1:14 a.m. Friday, a move that triggers the wireless emergency alerts on cellphones. By the time flooding inundated low-lying parts of Kendall County, where Comfort is located, it was later Friday morning. The first weather service flash flood alert for Kendall came at 7:24 a.m. When the sirens went off, many residents were already awake and aware of the dangerous flooding. A Facebook video recorded by Jeff Flinn, the managing editor of The Boerne Star, shows the emergency sirens in Comfort sounding at 10:52 a.m.; he said the alert lasted for about 30 seconds. Kerr County was relying on the emergency alerts that blare on cellphones. Those alerts may not get through, particularly in rural areas with bad service or in the night when phones are off or when there are no phones around; the girls at the summer camp weren't allowed to bring them. And some may choose to ignore them, because they're bombarded by phone alerts. Some Texas officials have blamed the National Weather Service, arguing it didn't do a good enough job forecasting rainfall and issuing timely flood warnings. But some independent meteorologists and a former weather service official told NBC News that the agency performed as well as it could given the unpredictability of rain and flash flooding and the timing of the disaster. Tom Moser, a former Kerr County commissioner, said he began looking into a warning system for his area after flooding in Hays County, which was overwhelmed by the Blanco River, killed 13 people over Memorial Day weekend in 2015. Kerr County officials debated various options, including one for an alert system that included sensors and sirens, and the cost was about $1 million, Moser said. 'There were a number of people that did not like the sirens going off because they go off accidentally,' Moser said. 'They didn't want that disturbance in the Hill Country.' At a March 2016 commissioners' meeting, Rusty Hierholzer, then the Kerr County sheriff, was adamant that the deadly flooding in the Hays County community of Wimberley was a warning for the need to install sirens in addition to a phone app notification system known as Code Red already in use. In Wimberley, some people didn't get alerts on their phones, 'so yes, you need both,' Hierholzer said, according to a transcript of the meeting. 'You need the sirens, and you need Code Red to try and make sure we'll notify everybody as we can when it's coming up.' During a follow-up discussion about the proposal that August, then-Commissioner H.A. 'Buster' Baldwin questioned the flood warning system they were considering, saying, 'I think this whole thing is a little extravagant for Kerr County, with sirens and such,' according to a transcript. They estimated the system would cost $1 million, and they didn't have the money to add it to the budget. Moser said they also didn't get disaster relief funding they'd asked for from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 'As a matter of fact, there were no grants available we thought we could get in a timely fashion,' Moser said.
Powys County Times
2 hours ago
- Powys County Times
Girls camp grieves loss of 27 children and staff in Texas floods
Crews picked through mountains of debris and waded into swollen rivers in the search for victims of catastrophic flooding that killed more than 100 people over the July Fourth weekend in Texas, including more than two dozen campers and counsellors from an all-girls Christian camp. With additional rain on the way, more flooding still threatened in saturated parts of the US state. Authorities said the death toll could still rise as crews looked for many people who were missing. Operators of Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, said they lost 27 campers and counsellors, 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 later said that 10 girls and a counsellor from the camp remain missing. The raging flash floods — among the nation's worst in decades — slammed into riverside camps and homes before daybreak on Friday, pulling sleeping people out of their cabins, tents and trailers and dragging them for miles past floating tree trunks and automobiles. Some survivors were found clinging to trees. Piles of twisted trees sprinkled with mattresses, fridges, coolers and canoes now litter the riverbanks. Search-and-rescue teams used heavy equipment near Kerrville to remove large branches while volunteers covered in mud sorted through chunks of debris, piece by piece. 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. Fourteen other deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties, according to local officials. Governor Greg Abbott said on Sunday that 41 people were unaccounted for across the state and more could be missing. Authorities vowed that one of the next steps will be investigating whether enough warnings were issued and why some camps did not evacuate or move to higher ground in areas long vulnerable to flooding. – 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 step that alerts the public to imminent danger. Authorities and elected officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour, the equivalent of months of rain. Kerrville city manager Dalton Rice said one of the challenges is that many camps are in places with poor mobile phone service. US President Donald Trump signed a major disaster declaration on Sunday for Kerr County and said he would likely visit on Friday. He said it was not the time to talk about whether he was still planning to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency and added that he does not 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,' the president said. Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said recent cuts to Fema and the National Weather Service did not delay any warnings. 'There's a time to have political fights, there's a time to disagree. This is not that time,' Mr Cruz 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.'
Daily Mirror
3 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Heartbreaking photo shows entire cabin of girls washed away in horror floods
Camp Mystic announced they lost 27 campers and counsellors to the floodwaters last week - and one heartbreaking image shows an entire cabin of girls who were swept away A heartbreaking photo shows the girls and counsellors who were staying in one of the cabins at Camp Mystic in Texas before floods swept them away. The Bubble Inn cabin, located less than 500 feet from the river, hosted 13 girls and two counsellors when it was hit by catastrophic flooding that killed nearly 90 people over the July Fourth weekend. Camp Mystic, a century-old all-girls Christian summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, announced they lost 27 campers and counsellors to the floodwaters. Among those staying in the Bubble Inn cabin where the youngest girls of the camp, aged eight and 10. The location of the cabin, which took in water from the Guadalupe River and a creek nearby, made the girls' escape challenging. As of Monday morning, the bodies of 10 girls and counsellor Chloe Childress, 18, were found. Counsellor Katherine Ferruzzo and three other campers - Molly DeWitt, Ellen Getten and Abby Pohl - remain missing. The girls from the Bubble Inn cabin who are confirmed dead are Janie Hunt, Margaret Bellows, Lila Bonner, Lainey Landry, Sarah Marsh, Linnie McCown, Winne Naylor, Eloise Peck, Renee Smajstrla and Mary Stevens. A photo taken in the cabin shows terrain and mud all over the room, with the girls' belongings, bags, blankets and clothes left behind. The extent of the damage is visible all over the large room. In another cabin that was severely damage, mattresses can be seen on the floor, with dirt all over the place in the aftermath of the floods. Different photos that emerged last week showed beds and blankets covered in a thick sludge, with belongings including bags, toys and clothing strewn across the floor. Images also showed the roof of a building sagging and pieces of jagged wood beneath it. Nearby trees were also knocked down by the force of the water. After the tragic floods, 13-year-old Elinor Lester, one of hundreds of campers, said the floods had "completely destroyed" the camp. She said: "The camp was completely destroyed. A helicopter landed and started taking people away. It was really scary." Search-and-rescue teams have continued searching for the dead, using heavy equipment to untangle trees and wading into swollen rivers. Volunteers covered in mud sorted through chunks of debris, piece by piece, in an increasingly bleak task. With additional rain on the way, more flooding still threatened in saturated parts of central Texas. Authorities said the death toll was sure to rise. After the summer camp confirmed 27 campers and counsellors were confirmed dead, the local sheriff said 10 girls and a counsellor remained missing in total. Authorities have said one of the next steps would be investigating whether enough warnings were issued and why some camps did not evacuate or move to higher ground in a place long vulnerable to flooding, which some local residents refer to as "flash flood alley". The investigation will include a review of how weather warnings were sent out and received. Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said one of the challenges is that many camps and cabins are in places with poor phone reception. He said: "We definitely want to dive in and look at all those things. We're looking forward to doing that once we can get the search and rescue complete." But some camps were aware of the dangers and monitoring the weather, with at least one moving several hundred campers to higher ground before the floors. Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said recent government spending cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Weather Service did not delay any warnings. "There's a time to have political fights, there's a time to disagree. This is not that time," 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." The weather service first advised of potential flooding on Thursday and then sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours of Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies - a rare step that alerts the public to imminent danger. Authorities and elected officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour - the equivalent of months of rain. However, some residents said they never received any warnings. President Donald Trump, who signed a major disaster declaration for Kerr County and plans to visit the area, said Sunday that he does not plan to rehire any of the federal meteorologists who were fired this year. "This was a thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it," the president said. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said local and federal weather services provided sufficient warnings. "That was an act of God. It's not the administration's fault that the flood hit when it did, but there were early and consistent warnings," she said. On Sunday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said more than three dozen people were unaccounted for across the state and more could be missing.
