Death toll from Texas flooding rises to 27, including nine children
"So far, we've evacuated over 850 uninjured people, eight injured people and have recovered 27 deceased fatalities at this time. Of these 27, 18 are adults, nine are children," said Kerr Country Sheriff Larry Leitha.
A frantic search continued for about two dozen people still missing from a century-old Christian girls' camp in central Texas.
In a break for rescue crews, authorities reported that floodwaters were receding in the area around the Guadalupe River, about 37 km northwest of San Antonio, where at least 237 people had been rescued, with more than 100 rescued by helicopter.
Another 23 to 25 people from the Camp Mystic summer camp were missing, most of them reported to be young girls.
The river waters rose rapidly by 29 feet near the camp.
The US National Weather Service stated that the flash flood emergency has largely ended for parts of Kerr County in the south-central Texas Hill Country, around 105 km northwest of San Antonio, following thunderstorms that dumped as much as a foot of rain early on Friday.
A flood watch, however, remained in effect until 7 p.m. on Saturday from the San Antonio-Austin, Texas, region, with scattered showers expected throughout the day, said Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the NWS Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
"In terms of the Guadalupe River, the extreme flood waters have receded," she said. "It's no longer at extreme flood stages. And we're not expecting additional impacts."
At a news conference late on Friday, almost 18 hours after the July Fourth crisis began, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that search-and-rescue operations would continue into Saturday.
Abbott said resources devoted to the effort would be "limitless."
President Donald Trump said that "we'll take care of them" when asked about federal aid for the disaster.
Vice President JD Vance on Saturday described the disaster as 'an incomprehensible tragedy.'
Dalton Rice, city manager for Kerrville, the county seat, said that the extreme flooding struck before dawn with little or no warning, precluding authorities from issuing advance evacuation orders as the Guadalupe River swiftly rose above major flood stage.
"This happened very quickly, over a very short period of time that could not be predicted, even with radar," Rice said.
"This happened within less than a two-hour span."
State emergency management officials had warned as early as Thursday that west and central Texas faced heavy rains and flash flood threats "over the next couple days," citing National Weather Service forecasts ahead of the holiday weekend.
The weather forecasts, however, "did not predict the amount of rain that we saw," said W. Nim Kidd, director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management.
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