Search for Texas flood victims enters third day, with more rain forecast
Local officials warned the number of dead will likely rise and were due to give an update on Sunday morning, as search and rescue teams raced to find 27 girls missing from a camp near the Guadalupe River, which broke its banks after torrential rain fell in central Texas on Friday, the U.S. Independence Day holiday.
Officials said more than 850 people had been rescued, including some clinging to trees, after a sudden storm dumped up to 15 inches (38 cm) of rain across Texas Hill Country, about 85 miles (140 km) northwest of San Antonio. It was unclear exactly how many people in the area were still missing.
Some experts questioned whether cuts to the federal workforce by the Trump administration, including to the agency that oversees the National Weather Service, led to a failure by officials to accurately predict the severity of the floods and issue appropriate warnings ahead of the storm.
President Donald Trump and his administration have overseen thousands of job cuts from the National Weather Service's parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, leaving many weather offices understaffed, said former NOAA director Rick Spinrad.
He said he did not know if those staff cuts factored into the lack of advance warning for the extreme Texas flooding, but said they would inevitably degrade the agency's ability to deliver accurate and timely forecasts.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees NOAA, said a "moderate" flood watch issued on Thursday by the National Weather Service had not accurately predicted the extreme rainfall and said the Trump administration was working to upgrade the system.
More rain was expected in the area on Sunday. The National Weather Service issued a flood watch for Kerr County, the epicenter of the disaster, until 1 p.m. local time.
The disaster unfolded rapidly on Friday morning as heavier-than-forecast rain drove river waters rapidly to as high as 29 feet (9 meters).
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, told a press conference on Saturday he had asked Trump to sign a disaster declaration, which would unlock federal aid for those affected. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Trump would honor that request.
Trump has previously outlined plans to scale back the federal government's role in responding to natural disasters, leaving states to shoulder more of the burden themselves.
At least 15 of the confirmed dead are children, local officials said. The 27 missing girls were from the Camp Mystic summer camp, a nearly century-old Christian girls camp, which had 700 girls in residence at the time of the flood.
A day after the disaster struck, the camp was a scene of devastation. Inside one cabin, mud lines indicating how high the water had risen were at least six feet (1.83 meters) from the floor. Bed frames, mattresses and personal belongings caked with mud were scattered inside. Some buildings had broken windows, one had a missing wall.
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The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
Texas Hill Country under flood watch as search continues for missing people
Texas Hill Country was back under a flood watch on Saturday, with the National Weather Service warning of 'locally heavy rainfall' of 1-3in with isolated amounts close to 6in possible. The flood watch, which continues through Sunday evening, comes as the death toll from the 4 July flood continues to rise – now at nearly 130 people - and authorities continue their search for the 160 more who are missing. The latest warnings anticipate considerably less rain than what came down last week, which caused the Guadalupe River to rise 29ft in 45 minutes. The Texas division of emergency management had mobilized before the storm, but its assets were not focused exclusively on Texas Hill Country. The storm alerts that were issued before and during the storm, in an area of patchy cellphone service, are now the subject of scrutiny. On Saturday, the Associated Press reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic's buildings from its 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous floodplain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors. Fema had included the prestigious girls' summer camp in a 'special flood hazard area' on its national flood insurance map for Kerr county in 2011, which meant it was required to have flood insurance and faced tighter regulation on any future construction projects. That designation means an area is likely to be inundated during a 100-year flood – one severe enough that it only has a 1% chance of happening in any given year. The 4 July flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by Fema, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off-guard in a county that lacked a warning system. Syracuse University associate professor Sarah Pralle, who has extensively studied Fema's flood map determinations, said it was 'particularly disturbing' that a camp in charge of the safety of so many young people would receive exemptions from basic flood regulation. 'It's a mystery to me why they weren't taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk, let alone challenging what seems like a very reasonable map that shows these structures were in the 100-year flood zone,' she said. Pralle told the AP that some of the exempted properties were within 2ft (0.6 meters) of Fema's floodplain by the camp's revised calculations, which she said left almost no margin for error. She said her research shows that Fema approves about 90% of map amendment requests, and the process may favor the wealthy and well-connected. Experts say Camp Mystic's requests to amend the Fema map could have been an attempt to avoid the requirement to carry flood insurance, lower the camp's insurance premiums or pave the way for renovating or adding new structures under less costly regulations. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion In a statement, Fema downplayed the significance of the flood map amendments to the AP: 'Flood maps are snapshots in time designed to show minimum standards for floodplain management and the highest risk areas for flood insurance. They are not predictions of where it will flood, and they don't show where it has flooded before.' While Texas officials and Donald Trump have been resistant to questions about any failures to forewarn of the impending flood – queries that have largely been put to one side as local and state recovery teams, along with thousands of volunteers, work in and alongside the river to find the missing – the Washington Post reported that Kerr county had the technology to turn every cellphone in the river valley into a loud alarm. But the mass notification system, known as the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, or Ipaws, was not activated and emergency managers in the county relied on a series of text messages for alerts. Trump visited the area on Friday, telling first responders that he and Melania Trump, the first lady, were there to 'express the love and support and anguish of our entire nation'. 'So all across the country, Americans' hearts are shattered,' he said. 'We're filled with grief and devastation. It's the loss of life and, unfortunately, they're still looking.' Trump said two things had struck him: the 'unity' of Texans and the 'competence' of those responding to the disaster. 'Everyone has just pulled together, it's rare that you see this,' he said.
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- The Guardian
Texas Hill Country under flood watch as search continues for missing people
Texas Hill Country was back under flood watch on Saturday, with the National Weather Service warning of 'locally heavy rainfall' of 1-3in with isolated amounts near 6in possible. The flood watch, which continues through Sunday evening, comes as the death toll from the 4 July flood continues to rise – now at nearly 130 people - and authorities continue their search for the 160 more who are missing. The latest warnings anticipate considerably less rain than what came down last week, which caused the Guadalupe River to rise 29ft in 45 minutes. The Texas division of emergency management, or TDEM, had mobilized before the storm, but their assets were not focused exclusively on Texas Hill Country. The storm alerts that were issued before and during the storm, in an area of patchy cell service, are now the subject of scrutiny. On Saturday, the Associated Press reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic's buildings from their 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous floodplain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors. Fema had included the prestigious girls' summer camp in a 'special flood hazard area' on its national flood insurance map for Kerr county in 2011, which meant it was required to have flood insurance and faced tighter regulation on any future construction projects. That designation means an area is likely to be inundated during a 100-year flood – one severe enough that it only has a 1% chance of happening in any given year. The 4 July flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by Fema, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off-guard in a county that lacked a warning system. Syracuse University associate professor Sarah Pralle, who has extensively studied Fema's flood map determinations, said it was 'particularly disturbing' that a camp in charge of the safety of so many young people would receive exemptions from basic flood regulation. 'It's a mystery to me why they weren't taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk, let alone challenging what seems like a very reasonable map that shows these structures were in the 100-year flood zone,' she said. Pralle told the AP that some of the exempted properties were within 2ft (0.6 meters) of Fema's floodplain by the camp's revised calculations, which she said left almost no margin for error. She said her research shows that Fema approves about 90% of map amendment requests, and the process may favor the wealthy and well-connected. Experts say Camp Mystic's requests to amend the Fema map could have been an attempt to avoid the requirement to carry flood insurance, lower the camp's insurance premiums or pave the way for renovating or adding new structures under less costly regulations. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion In a statement, Fema downplayed the significance of the flood map amendments to the AP: 'Flood maps are snapshots in time designed to show minimum standards for floodplain management and the highest risk areas for flood insurance. They are not predictions of where it will flood, and they don't show where it has flooded before.' While Texas officials and Donald Trump have been resistant to questions about any failures to forewarn of the impending flood – questions that have largely been put to one side as local and state recovery teams, along with thousands of volunteers, work in and alongside the river to find the missing – the Washington Post reported that Kerr county had the technology to turn every cellphone in the river valley into a loud alarm. But the mass notification system, known as the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, or Ipaws, was not activated and emergency managers in the county relied on a series of text messages for alerts. Trump visited the area on Friday, telling first responders that he and Melania Trump, the first lady, were there to 'express the love and support and anguish of our entire nation'. 'So all across the country, Americans' hearts are shattered,' he said. 'We're filled with grief and devastation. It's the loss of life and, unfortunately, they're still looking.' Trump said two things had struck him: the 'unity' of Texans and the 'competence' of those responding to the disaster. 'Everyone has just pulled together, it's rare that you see this,' he said.
The Independent
15 hours ago
- The Independent
Texas leads nation in flood deaths due to geography, size and population
Even before the Central Texas floods that killed more than 100 people, the state was by far the leader in U.S. flood deaths due partly to geography that can funnel rainwater into deadly deluges, according to a study spanning decades. From 1959 to 2019, 1,069 people died in Texas in flooding, which is nearly one-fifth of the total 5,724 flood fatalities in the Lower 48 states in that time, according to a 2021 study in the journal Water. That's about 370 more than the next closest state, Louisiana. Flooding is the second leading weather cause of death in the country, after heat, both in 2024 and the last 30 years, averaging 145 deaths a year in the last decade, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Other floods have turned deadly this year: Last month in San Antonio, 13 people died including 11 people who drove into water thinking they could get through, according to study author Hatim Sharif, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio who studies why people die in floods. For several years Sharif has urged state and local officials to integrate better emergency action programs to use flood forecasts and save lives by alerting people and closing off vulnerable intersections where roads and water meet. 'I think in Kerr County, if they had an integrated warning system that uses rainfall forecasts to forecast real-time impacts on the ground, that could have saved many lives and could have also helped emergency crews to know which location would be flooded, which roads would be impassable,' Sharif said. 'They could have taken action.' The role of geography and terrain Texas has so many deaths because of its geography, population and size, experts say. The area where the most recent deadly floods struck is known as flash flood alley because of hills and valleys. 'Steep, hilly terrain produces rapid runoff and quick stream rises, since the water will travel downhill at greater speed into rivers and over land,' said Kate Abshire, lead of NOAA's flash flood services. 'Rocky terrain can exacerbate the development of flash floods and raging waters, since rocks and clay soils do not allow as much water to infiltrate the ground.' 'Urban areas are especially prone to flash floods due to the large amounts of concrete and asphalt surfaces that do not allow water to penetrate into the soil easily,' she said. Along with those hills, 'you've got the Gulf of Mexico right there, the largest body of hot water in the entire North Atlantic most of the time,' said Jeff Masters a former government meteorologist who co-founded Weather Underground and now is at Yale Climate Connections. 'So you've got a ready source of moisture for creating floods.' Preventable driving deaths Historically, many of the deaths were preventable across the nation and in Texas alike, according to experts. Masters said nothing illustrates that better than one statistic in Sharif's study: 86% of flood deaths since 1959 were people driving or walking into floodwaters. Nearly 58% of the deaths were people in cars and trucks. It's a problem especially in Texas because of hills and low lying areas that have more than 3,000 places where roads cross streams and waterways without bridges or culverts, Sharif said. ' People in Texas, they like trucks and SUVs, especially trucks,' Sharif said. 'They think trucks are tough, and that is I think a factor. So sometimes they use their big car or SUV or truck, and they say they can beat the flood on the street ... especially at night. They underestimate the depth and velocity of water.' Abshire said that not only do people ignore the weather service's safety mantra, 'Turn around, don't drown,' but studies found that a number of these fatalities occur when people actively drive around barricades and barriers blocking flooded roads. The latest Texas Hill Country flooding was less typical because so many of the deaths were in a camp where the water overtook the victims, not people going into the water, Sharif said. Only about 8% of flood deaths in the last 60 years happened in permanent homes, mobile homes or camping, according to the study. The July 4th floods happened at night, a common time for flood deaths. More than half of deaths since 1959 have occurred at night, when it's dark and people can't see how much flooding there is or are not awake for the warnings, Sharif's study found. As far as demographics, about 62% of U.S. flood deaths were male, according to the study. 'Risk-taking behavior is usually associated with men,' Sharif said, adding that it's why most fatal victims of car crashes are male. ___ The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
