Death toll rises to 82 after catastrophic Texas flood
During a separate press conference, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said an additional 10 people were dead in the broader central Texas area. At least 82 are confirmed dead as of Monday morning.
Abbott said another 41 people are still missing across the affected area, including 10 children and one counselor from Camp Mystic, a Christian camp for girls along the Guadalupe River.
Abbottsigned a federal disaster declaration on Saturday, which President Donald Trump signed on Sunday. Abbott also issued a disaster declaration for six Texas counties in addition to the 15 he identified on Friday, when heavy rains first caused the flooding.
On Truth Social, Trump said his administration was working with state and local officials to respond to the flooding.
"Melania and I are praying for all of the families impacted by this horrible tragedy," Trump wrote on Saturday. "Our Brave First Responders are on site doing what they do best. GOD BLESS THE FAMILIES, AND GOD BLESS TEXAS!"
The X account for Elon Musk's Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet system, is offering support to affected residents. Musk has a strong presence in Texas through his companies Tesla, X, and SpaceX.
"In support of those impacted by flooding in Texas, Starlink is providing Mini kits for search and rescue efforts — ensuring connectivity even in dead zones — and one month of free service for thousands of customers in the region, including those who paused service so they can reactivate Starlink during this time," the post said.
Officials said over 12 inches of rain fell in the county on Friday. The National Weather Service first issued a flash flood warning at 4 a.m. on Friday.
It extended the flood watch until Monday at 7 p.m., saying there was "a threat of flash flooding from slow moving heavy rains overnight and through the day on Monday."
The region is a popular vacation destination and home to multiple summer camps for children. Camp Mystic in Hunt has about 750 campers. Two days after disaster struck, officials said they remain hopeful they can find survivors.
In a statement posted to its website, the Heart O' the Hills, another girls' camp based in Hunt, said its director, Jane Ragsdale, had died in the floods.
"We have received word that Jane Ragsdale did not make it," it said. "We are mourning the loss of a woman who influenced countless lives and was the definition of strong and powerful."
It added that the camp was not in session as the flooding hit, and that "most of those who were on camp at the time have been accounted for and are on high ground."
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said during an earlier press conference that the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in just 45 minutes, washing away bridges and buildings in a wide area.
On Facebook, parents and community members have circulated flyers with contact numbers, urging the public to help locate the missing children.
Kerr County has an estimated population of about 53,900, according to a 2024 count by the US Census Bureau. The county sits in the Hill Country region of Central Texas, which includes cities like San Antonio and Austin. Beyond the Guadalupe River, the region is home to several others, including the Colorado, Concho, and Blanco Rivers.
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New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Survivor of 1987 Texas camp flood recalls eerily similar experience to Camp Mystic horror
A former camp counselor during the devastating 1987 Texas floods told The Post on Monday that the tragedy was eerily similar to what happened to the young campers on the same river last week. The Rev. Richard Koons was a youth pastor at a church camp in Comfort in July of that year when a sudden rainstorm dropped 12 inches of rain in just 45 minutes — flooding the Guadalupe River with 25 feet of water in less than an hour. Just like Camp Mystic — the girls' Christian camp which was swept away during torrential rains at the cost of nearly 30 lives Friday — Koons' camp was located on the banks of the Guadalupe and found itself inundated with water and scrambling to evacuate. 3 The flood levels at Richard Koons' church camp in 1987 were eerily similar to the levels at Camp Mystic on Friday. National Weather Service A caravan of buses raced for the gates, but one carrying Koons and over 40 campers and staff was cut off by a wall of water. 'That river for us went to about 35 feet deep really, really quick,' Koons told said, recalling how campers first climbed onto the bus roof before helping each other to the branches of nearby trees. Some people stripped off their pants and tied them together into a rope to help haul kids up to safety, he said. And all the while the river was raging away beneath them. 3 The 1987 flooding cut off an evacuating bus full of campers, leading to 10 being swept away and killed. National Weather Service 'The water that day was traveling 70 miles an hour,' Koons said. 'There was a guy, I remember, who jumped in the water trying to rescue somebody. And he had just got back from Colorado with Sweetwater Rescue. And he broke his ribs and had to be rescued. That's just how fast it was going.' Koons' wife was also with the group and struggling to hold on for safety — and wound up getting swept away but miraculously survived. 'One of our young men started crying and told me he had my wife but he couldn't hold on to her. She went a mile down the river. Nobody went that far and survived,' Koons said. 'She wasn't rescued by helicopter, but four guys in a boat got to her. She thought she went under the water. Everything went dark. She thought it was over. And the water just pushed her to a pile of debris.' 3 Camp Mystic was ravaged by flooding Friday, with at least 27 campers and staff now confirmed dead. AFP via Getty Images After nearly two hours, Koons and the survivors were rescued by helicopter — but 10 teens by then had been swept away and lost their lives. Similar chaos unfolded early Friday at Camp Mystic in Kerr County, not far from Koons' old camp. As the Guadalupe River rose during rains overnight, most campers were evacuated — but more than two dozen people including some staff were left behind and swept away as the river overtook the campus. At least 27 campers and staff have been confirmed dead as of Monday, with several more still missing. Friday's flooding slightly outdid the 1987 floods, with the Guadalupe River rising over 26 feet this time around. More than 100 people have been confirmed dead in the flooding, and that number is expected to rise as search and rescue crews continue scouring the ruined countryside.
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Texas flooding death toll hits 100 as experts say better early warning system could have reduced casualties
A flood warning system deemed too costly by the Texas county where last week's rains killed at least 27 kiddie campers might have given the victims a fighting chance to get out of harm's way, experts told The Post on Monday. Officials in Kerr County, where at least 75 of the more than 100 known flood victims died, contemplated installing a flood warning system in 2017 — but rejected the plan on the grounds its price tag was too high. The proposed system — similar to one in a neighboring town that ran $2 million — would have included river gauges, sirens and other modern communication tools along the Guadalupe River, known locally as 'Flash Flood Alley.' 4 An aerial view of flooding in Kerrville, Texas on July 5, 2025. Po3 Cheyenne Basurto/UPI/Shutterstock The river rose by more than 26 feet during a freak summer storm July 4, sending deadly torrents of water flooding the region — and experts said a flood-warning system such as the one proposed for Kerr might not have been perfect, but it could have at least potentially helped curb the devastation. 'No one is ever going to complain about having more data when it comes to hazardous weather,' said Nick Bassill, director of the New York State Weather Risk Communication Center. 'Then there's the question of, once you know that the flooding is imminent, how do you communicate that to the people who maybe aren't able to be communicated to, like if they're at a camp somewhere or something like that,' he said. Camp Mystic, a Christian girls' summer camp a few hundred feet from Guadalupe's riverbanks in Hunt, lost at least 27 campers age 8 and 9 and one counselor — with 10 kids and a counselor still missing, officials said Monday. 4 Furniture and debris in a room destroyed by flooding at Camp Mystic. REUTERS/Marco Bello Bassill said he would have been in support of an advanced warning system such as the one Kerr County officials eschewed in 2017 — adding that the setups don't necessarily have to be high-tech or expensive to save lives. 'A really basic one that is probably close to a must-have in these sot of situations would be a NOAA weather radio [for residents], so if you're in an area without Internet or cell phone service and there's a flash flood warning in the middle of the night, you've got your radio on, you'll be woken up by a sort of jarring alert from it. So that would be … a really obvious kind of low-cost solution,' he said. Follow The Post's coverage on the deadly Texas flooding NOAA radios such as the one Bassill described can be found on Amazon starting at around $20. Dr. Erik Nielsen, an assistant professor at Texas A&M University and an expert in extreme rainfall and warning communication, had a slightly different take, noting that even if an advanced early warning system was in place, extenuating circumstances could have limited their efficacy. 4 Suitcases and other belongings at Camp Mystic after the flooding. REUTERS/Marco Bello 'Sirens are designed to be outdoor alerts. They're not designed to be indoors, and they probably will not wake you up,' he said. 'And then it comes into the context. People would have to know what those sirens meant. So there would have to be some sort of educational thing beforehand, maybe at the campground or something like that to make sure people understood that if these sirens are going off, what does it mean and what does that look like?' he said. Nielsen said the best approach is one that encompasses several different warning methods. 'You need layered ways to receive warnings. … Things like a NOAA weather radio, your cell phone alerts, things maybe in place locally like sirens. All those things work together to communicate information,' he said. 4 A search and rescue team on the water on the Guadalupe River near Camp Mystic. AFP via Getty Images Nielsen praised the National Weather Service for helping get the word out, noting the Guadalupe had some gauges in place, 'but likely not enough. 'You need to have river gauges that are showing you these things, so this is an area where the National Weather Service did a very good job. They had a warning out at 1 a.m., and if you look at the river gauges upstream of Hunt on the South fork, I don't know that there are any to actually show you what that water rise is actually doing.' Having a better gauge system in place would have 'possibly' saved lives, he said, 'but then it also still goes back to all of the challenges of communicating to people when they're asleep at 2 to 3 in the morning. Your best alert system is great, but if you don't get the people to hear it and understand it, it's not going to do anything,' he noted. 'So that's where the design aspect and the education aspect of such a system matters, especially to those who are not from the area.'
Politico
2 hours ago
- Politico
How federal forecasts did — and didn't — fail in Texas
Some Texas officials were quick to point fingers at the National Weather Service after devastating floods took the lives of more than 90 people, including dozens of children at a sleepover camp on the Guadalupe River. But the agency issued accurate forecasts ahead of Friday's deluge, escalating its warnings as far as 12 hours before the flooding hit, writes Chelsea Harvey. It will take experts time to piece together why those warnings failed to marshal a state and local response before it was too late. But today, the weather service's forecasters gained a perhaps unlikely ally: the Trump administration, which has spent the past few months trying to shrink the agency and its funding. 'The National Weather Service did its job,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, adding that the agency had extra staff on duty at the time of the storm. 'So to any person who has deliberately lied about these facts surrounding this catastrophic event, you should be deeply ashamed.' Leavitt's comments — aimed at Democrats and 'some members of the media' — belie President Donald Trump's long-running criticism of the weather service and its parent agency, NOAA. During his first term, Trump undermined forecasts for 2019's Hurricane Dorian by displaying a NOAA map doctored with a Sharpie marker to back up his inaccurate claims that the storm would hit Alabama. When a local weather service office issued a rare correction of the president's assertions to quell public confusion, then-acting NOAA chief Neil Jacobs criticized the local forecasters. Trump is now nominating Jacobs to lead NOAA, this time permanently. Since retaking office, Trump has targeted NOAA's research on climate science, and his administration has begun to carry out a proposal to downsize the agency and disband its climate programs, very much like what Project 2025 had called for. As the height of hurricane season looms, NOAA — led by a Trump appointee who took over as acting administrator in April — has lost or forced out more than 600 weather service employees, slashed grants and programs, shuttered climate education and proposed to cut $2.2 billion of agency funding as part of the administration's larger effort to downsize the federal government. It's not clear how much, if at all, those changes contributed to the emergency response in Texas last week. Several leadership posts for weather service in Texas are vacant, including roles that often serve as middlemen between NWS meteorologists and local authorities ahead of weather emergencies, Chelsea reported. But as her story notes, 'accurate weather forecasts alone aren't enough to save lives' — a reality that the U.S. has experienced time and again in recent decades. The late night and early morning alerts that went out last week may have simply failed to reach communities due to the hour or because people often disable emergency alerts on their cellphones. Local government resources were lacking as well — as The New York Times reported Sunday, officials in rural Kerr County, Texas, had rejected a proposed early-flood-warning system in 2017 as too expensive. 'The crux of this disaster is a failure of the last mile of communication,' Tom Fahy, legislative director at the union that represents NWS, told Chelsea. 'The forecasts went out, they communicated the forecasts, they disseminated the watches and warnings. And the dilemma we have is there was nobody listening at 4 o'clock in the morning.' It's Monday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host, Heather Richards, Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. 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Trump has criticized FEMA's handling of catastrophes in North Carolina and elsewhere, and on the campaign trail falsely claimed money for disaster aid was being funneled into housing undocumented immigrants. EPA puts dissenters on leaveThe Environmental Protection Agency last week placed 139 employees on administrative leave for signing onto an open letter criticizing the Trump administration's policies on climate change and science. The targeting of dissenters has sparked a backlash among EPA union employees and on Capitol Hill, Kevin Bogardus reports. Placing the staffers on leave was 'an act of blatant political retaliation,' said Nicole Cantello, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 704, which represents Region 5 employees. She added that 'EPA employees have the right to freedom of speech just like everyone else.' The agency has stressed its employees have other means to provide feedback other than the open letter, which they argue was a misuse of taxpayer funds and misled the public. NEPA headache for courtsA recent 8-0 ruling of the Supreme Court that limits federal environmental reviews to pollution directly tied to an infrastructure project could help agencies defend their analyses. But legal experts are split on how much the decision will shift rulings in the lower courts, Niina H. Farah writes. The ruling this term was an unusual example of the Supreme Court weighing in on the National Environmental Policy Act. Critics of NEPA argue federal judges have wrongly interpreted the landmark law to require more and more analysis — and in the process, critical projects are bedeviled by rising costs and delays. In Other News Resilience: More than $2.7 billion worth of climate-related grants were canceled by the Trump administration through May 15, according to data obtained by Floodlight. More oil: OPEC+ oil producers are poised to sign off on another big output boost for September. Subscriber Zone A showcase of some of our best subscriber content. Trump plans to visit Texas later this week after flash flooding killed dozens of people in the central part of the state. An Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling that countries in Central and South America have an obligation to protect the climate could shape policies across Latin America. EPA may reconsider its opposition to the Pebble open-pit copper and gold mine in Alaska's pristine Bristol Bay watershed, which is a prime salmon habitat, according to federal lawyers. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will soon launch a rulemaking to 'sunset' certain regulations governing the natural gas and electricity industries, according to a draft 'notice of inquiry' obtained by POLITICO's E&E News. That's it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.
