Texas flooding live: At least 104 dead - as new pictures show devastation at children's camp
Here are some of the latest pictures from Texas.
Firefighters from Mexico joined the emergency response to help the clear up.
In places, a wall of debris was left by the flash floods.
Jesus Gomez said his team recovered the body of one victim killed in the floods.
"It's hard, but first responders, we're a different breed, pretty much," Gomez said.
The team is from Acuna, a Mexican border town about 120 miles (193km) southwest of Kerrville, Texas.
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The Independent
28 minutes ago
- The Independent
A deadly 1987 flood scarred the same Texas county that is reeling through another disaster
Cindy Manley was a summer camp counselor in 1987 when a different devastating flood scarred the Texas Hill Country. The Heart O' the Hills camp is on the Guadalupe River, where a massive search continues for more than 160 people who are believed to still be missing after catastrophic flooding over the July Fourth holiday. Decades earlier, Manley said there was an informal system in place when the river started rising: camps upstream would call down a warning and then get kids out of their bunks and to higher ground. During the flood of 1987, Manley recalled a floating canoe injuring camp director Jane Ragsdale. But Ragsdale, 68, was among the more the than 100 victims who died in the flooding that began July 4, many of them in Kerr County. 'This water, it did something different,' Manley said. 'Jane knows floods more than anybody else. There's no way she would have been sitting in her house if she had thought this was dangerous.' It is at least the fifth time in the last century that flooding near the Guadalupe River has turned deadly. The area, which is known locally as 'Flash Flood Alley,' has hills that quickly gather water and funnel it into narrow river banks. Water rises fast, catching people by surprise. Here is a look at the river's deadly history of flooding. Frantic evacuations in 1987 This mid-July flood killed 10 teenagers and injured 33 others. Water overwhelmed the river and its tributaries, forcing hundreds to flee. At a Christian academy, buses evacuating children initially encountered modest flooding. While some vehicles turned around in time, a bus and van were stranded when the river rose rapidly. As the children were trying to leave the stranded buses to safety, a 'wall of water, estimated to be as much as half a mile wide, rushed upon the campers,' according to a government report. It scattered the kids. A bus with Seagoville Road Baptist Church on the side was pictured slammed against tangled trees, at an angle and partly under water. A deadly morning flood in 1978 The amount of rain was extraordinary – 30 inches fell on parts of the Hill Country between Aug. 1 and 3. It killed 33 people. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the flooding that hit the Hill Country struck early in the morning, 'the worst possible time form the point of view of data collection, warning dissemination and community reaction.' Heavy rains in the early 1990s A large portion of the state flooded, killing at least 13 people and causing vast damage, especially to agriculture. Month after month of 1991 was wetter than normal. Then more than half of the state was hit with more than 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain over a six-day period ahead of Christmas. That caused flooding not only in the Guadalupe basin but created what officials called 'one of the most voluminous floods recorded in the history of the State of Texas.' ___ Associated Press writer John Hanna contributed from Topeka, Kansas, and writer Albee Zhang contributed from Washington. ___
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Fresh flooding hell as Oklahoma boys and girls club race to escape biblical torrent a week after Texas storm
Dozens of children were rushed to safety in knee-deep water as flash floods turned an Oklahoma street into a raging river. The Boys & Girls Club in Sallisaw, near the Arkansas border, was forced to evacuate Tuesday morning as heavy rain fell and flooded the River Valley. Nearly a foot of water seeped into the club, located on the town's Main Street, as a Biblical-style torrent pounded the area. Police, firefighters and clubhouse staff escorted the children out of the building, some having to be carried, and through the flooded street to their parents' cars. 'There were a lot of kids, terrified, screaming and crying,' Kayla Jean, whose 10-year-old son was among those evacuated, told Daily Mail. 'They hadn't ever experienced anything like this.' Jean says heavy rain fall hit the region unexpectedly Tuesday morning, with water levels 'dramatically' rising to 'extreme' levels in just a matter of minutes. The unprecedented downpour eerily mirrors the catastrophic flooding in Texas last week that saw the Guadalupe River swell more than 30ft in just 45 minutes before claiming the lives of more than 100 people, including dozens of children. Over 100 remain missing, sparking fears that the death toll will soon rise substantially. The situation in Sallisaw, thankfully, was handled swiftly and without tragedy. Roughly 50 children were taken from the clubhouse to safety, police told KHBS. More than a foot of water rushed into the Boys and Girls Club in Sallisaw Tuesday morning as torrential rain pummeled the River Valley. Jean, a photographer and mother-of-two, received a call around 9.48am informing her that staff had to 'evacuate and close the club due to flooding', she told Daily Mail. 'I didn't know the severity of it yet,' she explained, recalling how the water levels were so high that her boss didn't think her car would make the 10-minute drive. 'My boss told me "it's so bad you probably can't take your car." So my co-worker took me down in his lifted truck to get my son out.' She made it to the clubhouse within minutes of getting the call, but says during that time period 'those levels just increased dramatically'. 'I don't think we even had a full chance [of rain], it was a 30 to 40 per cent chance of rain that day. But when it started raining, it was heavy, the radar wasn't moving. It just stayed right over us - four to five inches came quickly,' she recalled. Jean made it to her son who she described as being 'scared' but 'awkwardly smiling through it'. 'I asked my son "were you scared?",' she recalled. 'He said, "Honestly, yeah, I've never seen anything like that".' She added: 'The staff at the Boys and Girls club was amazing. The city workers, electrical workers, police, firefighters, they were all amazing. They did a great job keeping kids calm.' Emma Taylor, 10, who was at the clubhouse before the evacuations claims that dozens of children were forced to stand on their chairs in an attempt to stay dry as the water poured in. The youngsters were eventually carried out of the club Tuesday morning after it became clear that the flooding was only going to get worse. 'They carried me all the way to my mom's car was…we had to walk all the way through the water,' Taylor told KHBS. The ten-year-old said her entire body, up to her chin, was 'soaking wet'. Taylor - like Jean's son - was shocked by the incident, telling the outlet: 'I was like, are you kidding me? This really had to happen.' But the adults in the little girl's community were relatively unfazed by the situation, alleging the roads get 'bad' in the village 'every time' there is heavy rainfall. 'I've lived here going on a little over six years, and it does every year when we get a significant amount of rain,' Taylor's next door neighbor Susan Jordan told the TV station. Jordan called on officials to invest in a 'better drainage' system so that flooding is no longer a common occurrence and 'kids don't have to be evacuated right next to a drainage ditch'. Jean, however, says the floods are not typical of the small, rural agricultural village that in 2020 recorded a population of just 8,510 people. 'We haven't ever had flooding to that capacity,' she told Daily Mail. 'There is a low point in our town that does get a lot of flooding - but it has never been this extreme. 'There are some road closures, when it rains heavy in that area of town, but not to the extent of having waist deep water in the Boys and Girls Club.' The unusual weather system saw the roads flood in a matter of minutes, but then the water levels 'went down tremendously, within a few hours', she said. The clubhouse was damaged by the flood. Jean says the facility is closed for the rest of the week while repairs are underway. Staff are hoping to reopen to Boys and Girls Club on Monday, she added. The flooding in Sallisaw came days after torrents of river water roared through several counties in the Hill Country region of Texas. More than 160 people still are believed to be missing and at least 115 have died in the floods, authorities said Wednesday. The large number of missing suggests that the full extent of the catastrophe is still unclear five days after the disaster. At least 115 have died in the Texas floods, including 27 young girls and counselors who were staying at Camp Mystic. People are pictured as they come to pick up items at the all-girls Christian summer camp in Hunt, Texas on Wednesday The deaths include at least 27 young girls and counselors who were staying at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp along the Guadalupe River, when the river burst its banks and flooded the region in the early hours of Friday morning. Authorities and community members alike fear the confirmed death toll will continue to surge as hopes fade for finding survivors among the many reported still missing five days after the disaster. Meanwhile, monsoon rains in southern New Mexico also triggered flash flooding Tuesday and killed three people. The surge of rushing water was so intense that an entire house was swept downstream in a mountain village that is a popular summer retreat. A man, a 4-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy were swept away by floodwaters in the village of Ruidoso, about 130 miles southeast of Albuquerque.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
A Texas firefighter pleaded for an alert amid rising flood waters. It took an hour to go out
As floodwaters in Texas rose in the early morning of July 4, a local firefighter petitioned for an emergency alert to quickly be sent out, but local officials do not appear to have followed his request until about an hour later, according to leaked audio. The reported early-morning request raises questions about the timeline of events offered by local officials, who have said they had little advanced warning and no county system in place to alert residents about the floods, a disaster now responsible for at least 119 deaths, with even more still missing. According to audio obtained by KSAT, at 4:22am, a fireman with the Ingram Volunteer Fire Department reportedly called into emergency dispatch to warn that the Guadalupe River appeared to be rapidly overshooting its banks. Around that time, the river rose as much as 26 feet in 45 minutes, according to state officials. The firefighter urged officials to authorize a CodeRED alert, an emergency system that would send warning messages to the cellphones of people who had previously signed up for the service. 'The Guadalupe Schumacher sign is underwater on State Highway 39. Is there any way we can send a CodeRED out to our Hunt residents, asking them to find higher ground or stay home?' the firefighter asked, according to KSAT. A Kerr County Sheriff's Office dispatcher responded that the request would need approval from a supervisor. The earliest CodeRED alerts appear to have reached local residents about an hour later, according to multiple local media outlets, while some reported not getting their first CodeRED alert until after 10am. 'It should have been an immediate county-wide alert,' resident Louis Kocurek, who didn't get his first alert until after 10am, told Texas Public Radio. Questions have swirled over whether local, state, or federal officials could've done more to warn residents about the floods. Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha admonished reporters on Tuesday and said triggering alerts is 'not that easy.' 'There's a lot more to that [just pushing a button], and we've told you several times,' he added. He said the county's first priority is the ongoing search and rescue effort, but that analysis will be done to reconstruct the timeline for the emergency alerts. 'I believe those questions need to be answered to the family of the missed loved ones, to the public, you know, to the people that put me in this office,' he added on Wednesday. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has also pushed back against those seeking a culprit for the alleged delays, saying during a press conference on Tuesday that seeking to assign blame at this phase is 'the word choice of losers.' The Independent has contacted the Kerrville Police Department for comment. During a press briefing on Wednesday, Kerrville Police Community Services Officer Chief Jonathan Lamb described officers racing into action the morning of the flood, as residents of Hunt woke to find themselves 'trapped on an island.' 'He saw dozens of people trapped on roofs. He saw people trapped in swift-moving water,' Lamb said of one officer, adding that the department evacuated over 100 homes and rescued more than 200 people. Others have alleged the collection of children's summer camps along the river, which relied in part on word of mouth from camps upriver about potential floods, should've been more alert to the risk of floods in the area. 'That scares the hell out of me,' Russel Honoré, the a Army general who coordinated relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina, told The Wall Street Journal. 'There have been floods there before.' State and local officials have blamed federal emergency managers for what they said were inadequate forecasts and warnings, while others have questioned if Trump administration's deep staffing cuts to the National Weather Service played a role. 'The original forecast that we received Wednesday from the National Weather Service predicted 3-6 inches of rain in the Concho Valley and 4-8 inches in the Hill Country,' Texas Emergency Management Chief W. Nim Kidd told reporters last week. 'The amount of rain that fell at this specific location was never in any of those forecasts.' On July 3, a day before the floods, the National Weather Service issued a flood watch for portions of central Texas, warnings that escalated by that evening to a determination that flash flooding was likely across the region. At 1:14am, the service issued a 'life-threatening flash flooding' warning for Kerrville, where much of the devastation has been concentrated, triggering a separate cellphone alert system. That alert was issued more than three hours before the first reports of flooding came in, an agency spokesperson told The Independent. Emergency experts have lauded the efforts of federal forecasters. 'This was an exceptional service to come out first with the catastrophic flash flood warning and this shows the awareness of the meteorologists on shift at the NWS office,' Brian LaMarre, former meteorologist-in-charge of the NWS forecast office in Tampa, Florida, told The Associated Press. County officials have also come under scrutiny for not taking up a previously discussed proposal to install emergency weather sirens in the area around the river.
