The Texas floods are not an isolated tragedy
Tens of people remain missing, including a group of young girls attending a Christian summer camp when the weather system struck. But this is not an isolated issue. Flooding has caused an average of more than 125 deaths per year in the United States over the past few decades, according to the National Weather Service, and flash floods are the nation's top storm-related killer. Here's a look at some of the most deadly flooding nationwide in the past 25 years.
Texas, July 2025 Authorities are still assessing the deadly effects of heavy rains that caused devastating flash floods in Texas Hill Country, leaving at least 32 people dead and many others missing as frantic parents sought word about their daughters unaccounted for at a girls camp near the Guadalupe River. Searchers used helicopters, boats and drones to look for victims and to rescue stranded people in trees and from camps isolated by washed-out roads.
Hurricane Helene, 2024Hurricane Helene struck Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Virginia in September 2024. The storm caused about 250 deaths, according to the National Weather Service. Many of those who died in Helene fell victim to massive inland flooding, rather than high winds. Helene was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland US since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The storm decimated remote towns throughout the Appalachians and left millions without power, cellular service and supplies. In North Carolina alone, Helene was responsible for 108 deaths, according to the state's Department of Health and Human Services.
Kentucky, 2022 Raging floodwaters in eastern Kentucky in late July of 2022 led to 45 deaths, AccuWeather senior meteorologist Tyler Roys said Saturday. The floods destroyed homes and businesses and caused significant damage to schools, roads, bridges and water systems. The disaster robbed thousands of families of all their possessions. Tennessee, 2021 Twenty people were killed when creeks near the small Middle Tennessee town of Waverly overflowed after more than more than 17 inches (43 centimeters) of rain fell in the area in less than 24 hours in August 2021. Homes were washed off their foundations, cars were wrecked and businesses were demolished. The dead included twin babies who were swept from their father's arms.
Hurricane Harvey, 2017 Hurricane Harvey barreled into Texas in August 2017 as a powerful Category 4 storm. Harvey hovered for days as it trudged inland, dumping several feet of rain on many Gulf Coast communities and the Houston area. Harvey killed at least 68 people, according to a National Hurricane Center report. All but three of the Harvey deaths were directly attributed to freshwater flooding, which damaged more than 300,000 structures and caused an estimated $125 billion in damage. West Virginia, June 2016 A rainstorm that initially seemed like no big deal turned into a catastrophe in West Virginia, trapping dozens of people during the night and eventually leaving 23 people dead around the state. Superstorm Sandy, 2012 Superstorm Sandy was a late fall freak combination of a hurricane and other storms that struck New York and surrounding areas in October 2012.
Sandy killed 147 people, 72 in the eastern US, according to the National Hurricane Center. More than 110 deaths were attributed to drowning, Roys said. Mississippi River, 2011 Heavy rainfall in several states, plus a larger-than-normal slow melt, led rivers in the Mississippi River Basin to swell and flood in 2011. Flash floods associated with these storms caused 24 deaths across Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee in April and May, according to the National Weather Service.
Hurricane Ike, 2008 Hurricane Ike struck the southeast Texas Gulf Coast in September 2008, creating a storm surge as high as 20 feet (6 meters) in the island city of Galveston. Ike then poured more than 4 feet (1.2 meters) of rain on Houston, destroying thousands of cars and leaving hundreds of thousands of families with flood-damaged homes. In all, Ike was responsible for more than 100 deaths, many caused by flooding.
Hurricane Katrina, 2005 Hurricane Katrina is the deadliest flood event in the US in the past 25 years. The storm crashed into the Gulf Coast and caused devastating flooding when levees failed in New Orleans, where people had to be rescued by boat and helicopter from rooftops.
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Gulf Today
2 hours ago
- Gulf Today
Hopes fade for missing Texas flood victims as death toll hovers around 100
Search teams plodded through muddy riverbanks and flew aircraft over flood-ravaged central Texas on Monday as hopes dimmed of finding survivors among dozens still missing from a disaster that has claimed at least 96 lives, many of them children. Three days after a torrential predawn downpour transformed the Guadalupe River into a raging, killer torrent, a Christian girls' summer camp devastated by the flash flood confirmed that 27 campers and counselors were among those who had perished. Ten girls and a camp counselor were still unaccounted for, officials said on Monday, as search-and-rescue personnel faced the potential of more heavy rains and thunderstorms while clawing through tons of muck-laden debris. The bulk of the death toll from Friday's calamity was concentrated in and around the riverfront town of Kerrville and the grounds of Camp Mystic, situated in a swath of Texas Hill Country known as "flash flood alley." By Monday afternoon, the bodies of 84 flood victims - 56 adults and 28 children - were recovered in Kerr County, most of them in the county seat of Kerrville, according to the local sheriff. As of midday Sunday, state and local officials said 12 other flood-related fatalities had been confirmed across five neighboring south-central Texas counties, and that 41 other people were still listed as missing outside Kerr County. The New York Times, one of numerous news media outlets publishing varying death tolls, reported that at least 104 people had been killed across the entire flood zone. Caution tape covers the entrance of Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, on Monday. AFP Debate also intensified over questions about how state and local officials reacted to weather alerts forecasting the possibility of a flash flood and the lack of an early warning siren system that might have mitigated the disaster. On Monday, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick vowed that the state would "step up" to pay for installing a flash-flood warning system in Kerrville by next summer if local governments "can't afford it." "There should have been sirens," Patrick said in a Fox News interview. "Had we had sirens here along this possible that we would have saved some lives." 'ROUGH WEEK' AHEAD While authorities continued to hold out hope that some of the missing would turn up alive, the likelihood of finding more survivors diminished as time passed. "This will be a rough week," Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr said at a briefing on Monday morning. Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian girls' retreat on the banks of the Guadalupe was at the epicenter of the disaster. "Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy," the camp said in a statement on Monday. Richard "Dick" Eastland, 70, Mystic's co-owner and director, died trying to save children at his camp from the flood, local news media reported. He and his wife, Tweety Eastland, have owned the camp since 1974, according to its website. "If he wasn't going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way, saving the girls that he so loved and cared for," Eastland's grandson, George Eastland, wrote on Instagram. MISHAP IN THE SKY Authorities lost one of their aviation assets on Monday when a privately operated drone collided in restricted airspace over the Kerr County flood zone with a search helicopter, forcing the chopper to make an emergency landing. No injuries were reported, but the aircraft was put out of commission, according to the Kerr County Sheriff's Office. National Weather Service forecasts on Monday predicted that up to 4 more inches of rain could douse Texas Hill Country, with isolated areas possibly receiving as much as 10 inches (25 cm). A woman holds a candle during a vigil for the victims of the floods over Fourth of July weekend, at Travis Park, in San Antonio, Texas, on Monday. AFP Officials said the region remained especially vulnerable to renewed flooding due to the saturated condition of the soil and mounds of debris already strewn around the river channel. State emergency management officials had warned on Thursday, ahead of the July 4 holiday, that parts of central Texas faced the possibility of flash floods based on National Weather Service forecasts. But twice as much rain as was predicted ended up falling over two branches of the Guadalupe just upstream of the fork where they converge, sending all of that water racing into the single river channel where it slices through Kerrville, City Manager Dalton Rice said. Rice said the outcome was unforeseen and unfolded in a matter of two hours, leaving too little time to conduct a precautionary mass evacuation without the risk of placing more people in harm's way. Authorities in flood-prone areas like the Guadalupe River basin also must balance the odds of misjudging a catastrophe against not wanting to "cry wolf," he said. Still, a team of European scientists said climate change has helped fuel warmer, wetter weather patterns that make extreme rain and flood events more likely. "Events of this kind are no longer exceptional in a warming world," said Davide Faranda, of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). "Climate change loads the dice toward more frequent and more intense floods." The Houston Chronicle and New York Times reported that Kerr County officials had considered installing a flood-warning system about eight years ago but dropped the effort as too costly after failing to secure a $1 million grant to fund the project. Reuters
Khaleej Times
11 hours ago
- Khaleej Times
Texas floods: How geography, climate and policy failures collided
"There's no such thing as a natural disaster," geographers like to say -- a reminder that human choices turn hazards into tragedies. The Texas flash floods this weekend that left more than a hundred dead, including many children, offer a stark illustration. Here is a look at the intertwined forces that amplified this storm's impact. - 'Flash Flood Alley' - Texas's Hill Country sits in an area known as "Flash Flood Alley," explains Hatim Sharif, a hydrologist at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Warm Gulf air rushes up the Balcones Escarpment -- a line of steep hills and cliffs that arcs southwest down from near Dallas -- cools, and dumps torrents onto thin soils that quickly give way to bedrock. Runoff then funnels through a dense web of creeks. "Water will rise very, very quickly, within minutes or a few hours," Sharif told AFP. The early hours of July 4 proved that. Around 3:00 am, a gauge near Camp Mystic in Hunt showed the Guadalupe River rising nearly a foot (30 centimeters) every five minutes; by 4:30 am the river had surged more than 20 feet, National Weather Service data show. That's enough water to sweep away people, vehicles and buildings. An urgent NWS warning went out shortly after 1 am, but most campers were asleep; phones are banned, coverage is patchy, and darkness makes escape routes hard to judge. Sharif urges the use of hydrologic forecasts that convert rainfall into likely river levels. "Rainfall needs to be translated into runoff," he said. "If you have 10 inches, what will happen?" Summer camps have long been drawn to the region for its natural beauty. But with increasing risks, Sharif warns that treating these sites as safe or permanent is unwise. - 'We need to adapt' - A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, loading the dice for heavier downpours. A new analysis by ClimaMeter finds that the meteorological conditions preceding the floods, which delivered more than twice the monthly average rainfall in a single day, could not be explained by natural variability alone. "Climate change is already affecting us, so we need to adapt," said Mireia Ginesta, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford who co-authored the research, which is funded by the European Union and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). "We also need to cut our emissions, and make sure that proper funding is provided to the forecast services and research in general on climate change." The call comes as the National Weather Service, like other agencies, has experienced deep staffing cuts under President Donald Trump's administration. Experts stress, however, that NWS forecasters performed admirably under the circumstances. The real failure, wrote climate scientist Daniel Swain on Bluesky, "was not a bad weather prediction, it was one of 'last mile' forecast/warning dissemination." - No warning system - For years, commissioners in Kerr County, where the camps lie, considered flood sirens and digital alerts to replace the informal practice of summer camp staff getting on the radio and warning fellow camps. Minutes from a 2016 meeting show officials labeling even a feasibility study "a little extravagant," suggesting sirens would mainly help tourists, and vouching for the word-of-mouth system. "The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of night, I'm going to have to start drinking again to put up with y'all," Commissioner H.A. Buster Baldwin said in a transcript. The debate rolled on. Residents during meetings in 2021 expressed strident opposition toward relying on federal funds tied to the Biden administration. After the disaster, San Antonio mother Nicole Wilson -- who almost sent her daughters to Camp Mystic -- launched a petition on urging Governor Greg Abbott to approve a modern warning network. "Five minutes of that siren going off could have saved every single one of those children," she told AFP.
Dubai Eye
12 hours ago
- Dubai Eye
Hopes fade for missing Texas flood victims as death toll hovers around 100
Search teams plodded through muddy riverbanks and flew aircraft over flood-ravaged central Texas as hopes dimmed of finding survivors from a disaster that has claimed at least 96 lives, many of them children. Ten girls and a camp counselor were still unaccounted for, officials said on Monday, as search-and-rescue personnel faced the potential of more heavy rains and thunderstorms while clawing through tonnes of muck-laden debris. By Monday afternoon, the bodies of 84 flood victims - 56 adults and 28 children - were recovered in Kerr County, most of them in the county seat of Kerrville, according to the local sheriff. The New York Times, one of numerous news media outlets publishing varying death tolls, reported that at least 104 people had been killed across the entire flood zone. Debate also intensified over questions about how state and local officials reacted to weather alerts forecasting the possibility of a flash flood and the lack of an early warning siren system that might have mitigated the disaster. On Monday, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick vowed that the state would "step up" to pay for installing a flash-flood warning system in Kerrville by next summer if local governments "can't afford it". "There should have been sirens," Patrick said in a Fox News interview. "Had we had sirens here along this possible that we would have saved some lives." Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian girls' retreat on the banks of the Guadalupe was at the epicenter of the disaster. "Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy," the camp said in a statement on Monday. Authorities lost one of their aviation assets on Monday when a privately operated drone collided in restricted airspace over the Kerr County flood zone with a search helicopter, forcing the chopper to make an emergency landing. No injuries were reported, but the aircraft was put out of commission, according to the Kerr County Sheriff's Office.
