UPDATE: Texas floods leave at least 51 dead, 27 girls missing as rescuers search devastated landscape
At least 51 people, including 15 children, were killed, with most of the deaths coming in Kerr County in the state's Hill Country. Besides the 43 dead in Kerr County, four deaths were reported in Travis, three in Burnet and 1 in Kendall.
Rescuers dealt with broken trees, overturned cars and muck-filled debris in a difficult task to find survivors. Authorities still have not said how many people were missing beyond the children from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County where most of the dead were recovered.
With each passing hour, the outlook became more bleak. Volunteers and some families of the missing who drove to the disaster zone began searching the riverbanks despite being asked not to do so.
Authorities faced growing questions about whether enough warnings were issued in area long vulnerable to flooding and whether enough preparations were made.
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USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
Texas flooding deaths hit at least 80: Here's how you can help
At least 80 people, including at least 28 children, have died as a result of flash flooding in Texas after the Guadalupe River north of San Antonio flowed over its banks. The search for victims intensified July 6, as 11 children and a camp counselor remain missing from Camp Mystic, a Christian girls' camp at the river's edge. The National Weather Service said Kerr County, located in Texas Hill Country, was inundated by as much as 15 inches of rain triggered by intense thunderstorms − half of the total the region sees in a year. The Guadalupe River rose more than 26 feet in just 45 minutes, reported. The area is known for being especially vulnerable to floods, earning it the nickname "flash flood alley," and it has experienced several major flood events in the past two decades. President Donald Trump said in a statement Sunday that he signed a major disaster declaration for Kerr County, days after the flooding swept through Texas Hill Country. It remains unclear how many people in total were still missing in the communities along the Guadalupe, where local officials say thousands of people came from out of town to celebrate the Fourth of July weekend. Here's how you can help. Texas flooding deaths reach at least 70: 11 young campers missing as rescuers race time How to help in the aftermath of flooding in Texas The Red Cross The Red Cross has opened shelters in affected areas as well as two reunification centers, according to a post on X. The organization is taking donations on its website. World Central Kitchen World Central Kitchen, the non-profit founded by chef José Andrés, deployed to Texas on July 4. The organization provided food to stranded campers at Camp La Junta that have since been evacuated, according to a July 4 X post. WCK is taking donations on its website. Kerr County Relief Fund The Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country has started a Kerr County Flood Relief Fund. The fund will provide aid to vetted organizations in Hunt, Ingram, Kerrville, Center Point, and Comfort that are providing rescue, relief, and recovery efforts as well as flood assistance, according to the foundation. The fund is accepting donations on its website. Austin Pets Alive! The Austin animal shelter reported that it has taken in over 50 animals from Kerr and Williamson counties as of July 5. In a July 6 update, the shelter said that they are coordinating a volunteer search and rescue group to find animals along the riverbank. The shelter also said it is seeking donations to provide support to families that have lost pets, including body recovery and cremation services. The shelter is accepting donations on its website. GoFundMe Crowdfunding website GoFundMe has a page for verified fundraisers connected to the flooding in Central Texas. The page will be updated as fundraisers are verified, according to GoFundMe. The Salvation Army The Salvation Army Kroc Center in Kerrville is coordinating and accepting donations of nonperishable goods, personal hygiene items, diapers and other items while providing regular updates on its Instagram page. The Salvation Army of Texas has also deployed a deployed a mobile kitchen and team, according to a July 5 statement. "The community was waking to celebrate the July 4th holiday and has suddenly been faced with historic and tragic flooding," Major Phil Swyers, of The Salvation Army in Kerrville, said in the statement. "The Salvation Army is here to help and will support those impacted by this disaster." This story has been updated with new information and to fix a typo. Contributing: Dinah Voyles Pulver, Susan Miller, Christopher Cann, Kathryn Palmer, USA TODAY
Indianapolis Star
2 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
Flood threat still looms over battered Texas Hill Country: See flood warnings
The threat of floods continues to loom in Central Texas as the search for survivors and victims of the historic flash floods that swept through the state intensifies. At least 80 people died during the storm, and Gov. Greg Abbott announced at a July 6 news conference that at least 41 people were known to be missing across the state and areas affected by the flooding. Among those still missing were 10 children and a counselor from Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp near the Guadalupe River. The impending storms forced Abbott and other state emergency officials to hold the Sunday evening news conference in Austin, with the governor saying that more expected storms will "pose life-threatening danger over the next 24 to 48 hours." "There is heavy rainfall that's already occurred and there's more heavy rainfall that's expected that will lead to potential flash flooding broadly in these in the Big Country, Concho Valley, Central Texas and once again Kerrville," Abbott said. Texas flooding deaths: Here's how you can help Flood watches have been issued by the National Weather Service until at least 7 p.m. CT July 6 in Hill Country and along the I-35 corridor. The Weather Prediction Center added that scattered thunderstorms are likely to drop "torrential downpours over sensitive soils across parts of the Texas Hill Country." A flash flood warning was issued through 6 p.m. CT for Cedar Park, Georgetown, and Leander. A separate flash flood warning was issued for Ingram and Hunt through 6 p.m. CT. Abbott told Texans to remain "extraordinarily" cautious at the press conference. "There's nothing expected at this time to the magnitude of what was seen in Kerrville," Abbott said. "That said flash flooding can occur at lower levels of water than what happened in Kerrville." The new warnings come on as questions swirl around forecasters' response to the weather patterns that lead to the Independence Day floods. Local officials said they were caught off guard by the floods. "We didn't know this flood was coming," Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly told reporters after the flood. "We had no reason to believe this was going to be anything like what's happened here. None whatsoever." Officials at the Texas Division of Emergency Management were publishing news releases warning that "heavy rainfall with the potential to cause flash flooding is anticipated across West Texas and the Hill Country" and readying resources, such as swift-water rescue boat squads, as early as July 2. At around midnight on July 3, rain began gushing into the Guadalupe River – dropping more than 10 inches into the river at Hunt in just four hours and swelling it to dangerous levels.
Boston Globe
3 hours ago
- Boston Globe
How the cataclysmic Texas floods unfolded, minute by minute
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'It made like a swirl right around those cabins like a toilet bowl,' said Craig Althaus, who worked at the camp in Texas Hill Country for 25 years. Advertisement At least 78 people died in the floods that swept through Central Texas on Friday - including 28 children - authorities said Sunday, and dozens more remain missing in one of the deadliest freshwater floods in decades. Ten children are still missing from Camp Mystic, the Christian camp on the banks of the river where for nearly a century girls have come to escape the heat of their hometowns: singing praise songs, learning how to fish and ride horseback. Advertisement Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Sunday that rescue operations and efforts to find the missing were ongoing, even as serious flood conditions threaten again. Abbott said he visited Camp Mystic on Sunday and called the scene 'nothing short of horrific - to see what these young children went through.' Authorities said they had little hint of the cataclysmic events to come when the National Weather Service issued its first flood watch for the area at 1:18 p.m. Thursday. The areas along the river in Kerr County were not only packed with campers at about 18 summer camps but thousands more celebrating the holiday in tents and cabins, some of which had been in Texas families for generations. The Weather Service cautioned that 1 to 2 inches of widespread rainfall was likely, with 'the potential for a lower probability but much higher impact flood event overnight.' But extraordinary conditions were working against them, meteorologists say. Atmospheric conditions sent plumes of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico deep into Texas - an area so prone to flooding that it is called 'Flash Flood Alley'- a system that then stalled and eventually dumped catastrophic levels of rain onto the same area in hours. The Weather Service said it gave localities enough time to warn residents, but the most dire alerts came in the early hours Friday, with the flash flood warnings blasting from phones at 1:14 a.m. Many locals said those alerts never reached them. Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice told reporters that he went for a jog along the river between 3:30 a.m. and 4 a.m. Friday and noticed only a light rain. He went home to shower and returned to a park to check conditions. By 5:20 a.m., the river had risen dramatically, surging from 7 to 29 feet within a few hours, authorities say. Advertisement Thomas Rux, 65, said he was awakened by thunder and fire officials with a bullhorn banging on his door, which convinced him to leave his trailer by the river about 4:30 a.m. He grabbed his keys and wallet, and fled to a nearby business on higher ground. From there, he could see the river rise with shocking speed. Eventually his 44-foot-long RV drifted by, carried by the raging waters, lodging between two trees. His alarm company called to see if someone has broken in. No, he told them, the river had just carried away his home. Serena Aldrich, an attorney from San Antonio, said in an interview that her two girls, ages 12 and 9, were asleep at Camp Mystic - the beloved summer camp about to celebrate its centenary - when the storm bore down. The older girl, who was bunking in an elevated area they call 'Senior Hill,' was awakened by loud thunder. The younger girl, who was in a different cabin, woke up when water started flooding in. Groups of girls in their pajamas, some without shoes, were guided by their counselors up the side of a tall hill to a camp area with the pavilion and the famous lighted sign - that can be seen for miles around - that says 'Mystic.' They were eventually rescued from a neighboring camp by helicopter. She said that the family was 'heartbroken' by the experience, but that the young counselors had been heroic. Advertisement Amid the darkness and chaos, Camp Mystic director Richard 'Dick' Eastland was also trying to help evacuate the youngest campers in the Bubble Inn cabin, witnesses said. He and his wife, Tweety, had been directing the camp since 1974, now alongside their sons. Eastland taught the girls how to bait a hook and fish, said Paige W. Sumner, the director of philanthropy at the local senior center who attended the camp for years. 'He was like a dad to everyone,' Sumner said in an interview. Whenever one of the campers was injured or there was another emergency, she recalled, Eastland would jump up and quickly buzz to the scene in a golf cart. Eastland was found in a black SUV, along with three girls he had tried to save, and died on the way to the hospital, local authorities said. Around 5 a.m., Collene Lucas left her job at a convenience store, not thinking much about the rain and wildly rushing river, which sits less than 100 yards from the home she shares with her husband, David. 'We're familiar with that sound,' Lucas, 62, said. When she got news of the flooding, she tried to head home to reach her husband, but was stymied when her truck stalled out in the water. Only when his dogs began raising a ruckus and emergency responders arrived at his door did David step out of bed - into two feet of water. 'I've been here close to 40 years, and I've never seen anything like this,' said David Lucas, 73, gray-bearded and weary. Never had water come close to the house, he said, not until the day it all but swallowed it whole. Advertisement The river would eventually leave miles of devastation in its wake, with pecan, cypress and live oak trees toppled, and houses ripped from their foundations. At Camp Mystic, cots were overturned, swimming towels still on the line covered in muck and stuffies abandoned. More than 850 people would be saved in the next 36 hours, authorities said. One little girl survived by clinging to a mattress for hours as it floated down the river, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told reporters. By Sunday, rescue operations continued, with helicopters crisscrossing the cloudy skies above the First Presbyterian Church of Kerrville, and authorities vowed to continue searching until everyone believed lost had been found. Rain threatened and authorities warned ominously of another 'wall of water' headed their way. Inside the church, the morning light streamed through stained glass windows where the roughly 200 parishioners wrestled with all their community had faced in recent days, and all that lay ahead. The church had lost one of its beloved members. Jane Ragsdale, the director and co-owner of the nearby Heart O' the Hills camp, had died in the flooding. The camp, along the banks of the Guadalupe River, was not in session when the disaster hit. But Ragsdale had been described as the 'heart and soul' of the camp, where she had served since the 1970s, according to the camp website. Inside her church Sunday morning, the service began with hymns and a long silence. The pastor giving the children's message told the young faces before her: 'It's okay to be angry about what's happened. It's okay to be really scared. It's okay to be terribly sad.' The Rev. Jasiel Hernandez Garcia said he, too, had struggled to find the right words amid such tragedy. Advertisement 'This is not how this weekend was supposed to be,' Garcia said from the pulpit. It was supposed to be a time of celebrations and fireworks, of time with family and making new friends at nearby camps. 'In the blink of an eye, everything changed. The waters came quickly, too quickly. Homes flooded, roads disappeared, and people were swept away,' he said. 'What felt strong was made fragile. What seemed secure was taken away in just a moment.' Dennis reported from Kerrville and Ingram, Texas, Gowen from Lawrence, Kansas, and Gregg from Washington. Scott Dance, Ben Noll and Matthew Cappucci contributed to this report.
