Death toll from Texas floods reaches 78; Trump plans visit
Search for survivors continues amid fears of more flooding
Trump plans to visit disaster scene
Questions arise over federal response cuts
By Sergio Flores, Rich McKay and Tim Reid
Larry Leitha, sheriff of Kerr County in Texas Hill Country, said 68 people had died in flooding in his county, the epicenter of the flooding, among them 28 children. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, speaking at a press conference on Sunday afternoon, said another 10 had died elsewhere in Texas and confirmed 41 were missing.
President Donald Trump sent his condolences to the victims and said he would probably visit the area on Friday. His administration had been in touch with Abbott, he added.
'It's a horrible thing that took place, absolutely horrible. So we say, God bless all of the people that have gone through so much, and God bless, God bless the state of Texas,' he told reporters as he left New Jersey.
Among the most devastating impacts of the flooding occurred at Camp Mystic summer camp, a nearly century-old Christian girls camp where 10 Camp Mystic campers and one counselor were still missing, according to Leitha.
'It was nothing short of horrific to see what those young children went through,' said Abbott, who noted he toured the area on Saturday and pledged to continue efforts to locate the missing.
The flooding occurred after the nearby Guadalupe River broke its banks after torrential rain fell in the central Texas area on Friday, the U.S. Independence Day holiday.
Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said the destruction killed three people in Burnet County, one in Tom Green County, five in Travis County and one in Williamson County.
'You will see the death toll rise today and tomorrow,' said Freeman Martin, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, also speaking on Sunday.
Officials said on Saturday that 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 the region, about 85 miles (140 km) northwest of San Antonio.
Kidd said he was receiving unconfirmed reports of 'an additional wall of water' flowing down some of the creeks in the Guadalupe Rivershed, as rain continued to fall on soil in the region already saturated from Friday's rains.
'We're evacuating parts of the river right now because we are worried about another wall of river coming down in those areas,' he said, referencing volunteers from outside the area seeking to help locate victims.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency was activated on Sunday and is deploying resources to first responders in Texas after Trump issued a major disaster declaration, the Department of Homeland Security said. U.S. Coast Guard helicopters and planes were aiding search and rescue efforts.
SCALING BACK FEDERAL DISASTER RESPONSE
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.
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.
Trump's administration has overseen thousands of job cuts from the National Weather Service's parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, leaving many weather offices understaffed, former NOAA director Rick Spinrad said.
Spinrad said he did not know if those staff cuts factored into the lack of advance warning for the extreme Texas flooding, but that they would inevitably degrade the agency's ability to deliver accurate and timely forecasts.
Trump pushed back when asked on Sunday if federal government cuts hobbled the disaster response or left key job vacancies at the National Weather Service under Trump's oversight.
'That water situation, that all is, and that was really the Biden setup,' he said referencing his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden. 'But I wouldn't blame Biden for it, either. I would just say this is 100-year catastrophe.'
He declined to answer a question about FEMA, saying only 'They're busy working, so we'll leave it at that,' Trump said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees FEMA and 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.
Joaquin Castro, a Democratic U.S. congressman from Texas, told CNN's 'State of the Union' program that fewer personnel at the weather service could be dangerous.
'When you have flash flooding, there's a risk that if you don't have the personnel … to do that analysis, do the predictions in the best way, it could lead to tragedy,' Castro said.
'COMPLETE DEVASTATION'
Katharine Somerville, a counselor on the Cypress Lake side of Camp Mystic, on higher ground than the Guadalupe River side, said her 13-year-old campers were scared as their cabins sustained damage and lost power in the middle of the night.
'Our cabins at the tippity top of hills were completely flooded with water. I mean, y'all have seen the complete devastation, we never even imagined that this could happen,' Somerville said in an interview on Fox News on Sunday.
Somerville said the campers in her care were put on military trucks and evacuated, and that all were safe.
The disaster unfolded rapidly on Friday morning as heavier-than-forecast rain drove river waters rapidly to as high as 29 feet (9 meters).
A day after the disaster struck, the summer camp, where 700 girls were in residence at the time of the flooding, was a scene of devastation. Inside one cabin, mud lines indicating how high the water had risen were at least six feet (1.83 m) 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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IOL News
7 hours ago
- IOL News
Understanding Flash Flood risks in Texas Hill Country: why were residents unprepared?
A man conducts a search near the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas, on Sunday. Devastating floods swept through Central Texas on Thursday evening and Friday morning. Image: Desiree Rios/The Washington Post The deluge that killed nearly 80 people along fast-surging Texas rivers early Friday struck a region that has grappled with deadly floods before. And yet, the magnitude of the disaster exposed gaps in its ability to warn people, including a delayed flood risk alert from Kerr County and stalled development of a flood monitoring system. This swath of Central Texas is the most flash-flood prone region in the country, and officials know the Hill Country's terrain can turn slow, shallow rivers into walls of water. But even as weather forecasts began to hint at the potential for heavy rain on Thursday, the response exposed a disconnect: Few, including local authorities, prepared for anything but their normal Fourth of July. When the precipitation intensified in the early morning hours Friday, many people failed to receive or respond to flood warnings at riverside campsites and cabins that were known to be in the floodplain. A review of wireless emergency data from a public database that pulls in Federal Emergency Management Agency's Integrated Public Alert & Warning System shows that the county did not send its first Amber Alert-style push until Sunday. Days after the state had launched a full-scale rescue effort, continued rains appeared to prompt an alert sent to much of Kerr County urging people to 'move to higher ground' because of 'high confidence of river flooding.' The county has sent such alerts in past emergencies. Until then, most cellphone alerts were coming from the National Weather Service's Austin/San Antonio station. But some alerts about life-threatening flooding didn't come until the predawn hours, and to areas where cellular reception may have been spotty. Video Player is loading. 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Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad Loading Members of Texas EquuSearch conduct a search near the Guadalupe River in Hunt, Texas, on Sunday. Image: Desiree Rios/The Washington Post The disaster has prompted renewed emphasis on a years-long push for a comprehensive flood monitoring system in Kerr County. And it has raised questions about whether anything could be enough to prepare and protect communities in places like this, where cellphone-based alerts can be unreliable, emergency managers have limited resources and the potential for disaster is high. 'That's the part that hurts,' said Rosalie Castro of Kerrville, Texas. 'We had no warning.' For hours on Friday, the 60-year-old waited for word from her nephew who lived in a trailer home park near the Guadalupe River. The first alert Castro received on her phone came around 7:58 a.m., but her nephew was caught off guard. 'If it wasn't for his dogs barking, he wouldn't have awakened on time,' Castro said. He survived. But his neighbor, Julian Ryan, cut an artery while rushing to save his family. Melinda Cortez had never been to Kerrville. She, her family, and some good friends rented a few cabins at the HTR campground along the Guadalupe River for the Fourth of July river festival. After dinner at Howdy's Restaurant, they sat on the porch, talking and laughing until about midnight. It was lightly raining. At 4:45 a.m., she awoke to another camper banging on the cabin door, yelling to get out, now. Water was everywhere. A minute later, the camp sent a text to guests that 'we have just received notice from the fire department that we need to evacuate the park due to flooding,' according to a message reviewed by The Washington Post. Water from the river, which had been about a football field away from her cabin steps, was up to the porch. A Ford F-150 truck and trailer floated by. Glancing at her phone, she noticed two new alerts: one was a flash-flood warning, the other was from the campground, sent five minutes before the man pounded on their cabin door, telling them to evacuate. By then, the water was up to their waist. Cortez, like many people who were in town or visiting that weekend, didn't know the area could flood. There are more than a dozen camps in the Guadalupe River region - and many are adjacent to or partially inside high-risk flood zones, according to maps from FEMA . But Cortez lives in Austin, a few hours away, and didn't know about the risk, or its history. While enjoying the river that day, she had not seen warnings, and 'the camp didn't say anything,' she said. 'I never thought that whole area could flood,' she said. For emergencies and disasters, leaders often use a patchwork of alerts and warnings to try to get to different populations. The National Weather Service, which had been warning about the coming rains and potential for flash floods for days, has stations across the state. Its Austin/San Antonio office sent alerts on social media as well as using wireless emergency alerts, which use cellphone towers to target people in a specific area. Local authorities, including the police, often post updates to their Facebook pages and websites. Kerrville and the county use a web-based notification system called CodeRED, which people have to sign up for. The holes in this warning system are not new and highlight the challenge of urgently communicating weather risks as a warming climate drives more atmospheric moisture, which can come down in sudden bursts. And in remote areas, with fewer resources for emergency management operations, the breakdown can be even worse. Kerrville police, the Kerr County sheriff and other official pages did not mention looming weather and its risks on their social media profiles, posting on July 3 about the upcoming Fourth of July river festival. Officials from those agencies, county government and the county judge did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a Friday news conference, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said he couldn't say why areas including Camp Mystic, where dozens of people died or were still missing, weren't evacuated - they hadn't seen this disaster coming. 'Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming,' Kelly said. 'We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States and we deal with floods on a regular basis. When it rains, we get water. We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what's happened here. None whatsoever.' Emergency management and weather experts say it's often a challenge to warn and get alerts to an entire community, especially when disasters unfold in a matter of moments. 'The warnings are called flash-flood warnings for that reason. They happen in moments almost as quickly as tornadoes,' said Cary Burgess, a meteorologist who lives in the area. 'You can't predict where a tornado will strike down, and you cannot predict exactly where heaviest rainfall totals will fall.' He urged that when watches are first issued, 'people have a responsibility to prepare for the worst-case scenario and there was talk about flooding potential for a few days out.' Meteorologists in this region of Texas are acutely aware of the most flood-prone areas in a region that has been known as 'flash flood alley' for decades, said Steven Lyons, who retired four years ago after a decade as the meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service's San Angelo office. When preparing to issue flash-flood warnings in the midst of the storm, lists of dozens of areas in jeopardy would pop up automatically. It's up to the meteorologists to decide which to send, or deselect. Central Texas, specifically Kerr County and the surrounding areas, is made of undulating hills and steep canyons filled with thin, drought-stricken soil and slick limestone. Normally, the rivers and streams run clear, tranquil, and shallow. But when it rains, that topography 'causes the river to roar,' the Upper Guadalupe River Authority explained in a 2017 video warning people of flood risks. The silky, shallow limestone river beds turn the meandering water into massive walls of concrete that hurl water downstream in a matter of minutes. While much of the region is rural and remote, there is a heavy concentration of old mobile-home parks - many filled with vulnerable residents - along and near the river. Kerrville has been growing steadily, according to an overview of city and county meeting minutes, and new residents may not have the lived experience of how quickly heavy rains can spark a flash flood. Ahead of these floods, the Weather Service office near San Antonio, which oversees warnings issued in Kerr County, had one key vacancy: A warning coordination meteorologist, who is responsible for working with emergency managers and the public to ensure people know what to do when a disaster strikes. The person who served in that role for decades was among hundreds of Weather Service employees who accepted early retirement offers and left the agency at the end of April, local media reported. Lyons said that departure would have had a limited impact on Friday's emergency, however, because this staffer's key work takes place weeks and months ahead of a disaster, ensuring training and communication channels are in place. Pat Vesper, meteorologist-in-charge of the Weather Service's San Antonio/Austin office, declined to answer questions about the vacancy, flood warnings or communications with Kerr County officials. He referred questions to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials, who did not immediately respond to questions. The tragedy in Hill Country was already reigniting debate among meteorologists and social scientists, which goes back decades, about how to craft and disseminate warnings in a way that saves lives. 'The real trick is, how do you get people to get the message quickly, a message they can understand easily, and have them take action that will save their lives?' Lyons said. 'People think, 'It can't be that bad; I'll just jump up on my roof,'' Lyons said. 'Well, not if your house is floating away.' The fact that the worst of the flooding hit in the middle of the night only exacerbated the challenge. 'If people had gotten the message before they had gone to sleep, would they have gotten out of there? Maybe,' Lyons said. 'The messaging is critical but so are the actions that people take based on the messaging. We can't tell you how many raindrops are going to fall out of a thunderstorm.' Past floods have spurred the same discussions about how to protect people around Hill Country. About a decade ago, Kerrville leaders began working on a flood warning system, after a river rose to about 45 feet and nearly swallowed the nearby Texas town of Wimberley over Memorial Day Weekend in 2015, said Tom Moser, a Kerr County commissioner at the time. County officials assessed an upgrade to a warning system that would have included sirens. But some balked at the cost, with one commissioner calling it 'a little extravagant for Kerr County, with sirens and such.' The next year, they submitted a grant request for $980,000 to FEMA for the initiatives, county documents show. But they didn't get the money, and 'most of the funds went to communities impacted by Hurricane Harvey,' according to the county's Hazard Mitigation Action Plan. In an interview, Moser said the community took some steps to reduce flood dangers, installing flood gauges and barriers at low river crossings, spots where rural roads pass through what is normally a trickling stream. They also trained emergency management staff and other authorities on what to do in the event of a flood. But despite attempts to fund a larger flood warning system project in the county budget, Moser said, 'It never got across the goal line.' The efforts stalled by the time he retired in 2021. But the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which partners with the county, made some progress this past year. They signed an agreement with a consulting firm to assess the county's needs, aiming to develop a monitoring and warning system depending on 'what we can afford,' said director Diane L. McMahon. The investment comes as the deaths in Texas are likely to galvanize a push for similar flood warning systems across the states and the country, Moser said. 'I think there will be a lot of attention paid to it now,' Moser said, adding that he doesn't know if any warning system will be able to protect everyone. But 'it could be a lot better than what we currently have.' Watching the death toll rise, Nicole Wilson wondered what might have happened if campers along the river had the kind of warnings she had growing up in tornado-prone Kentucky: loud, blaring sirens. After rushing to pick up her two daughters from another Central Texas camp, Wilson thought how just minutes could be life changing. She started a petition on Saturday, calling on officials to 'implement a modern outdoor early warning siren system.' 'Sometimes we only had five minutes,' she recalled of her childhood tornado warnings. 'Maybe those girls in the lower cabins would have come outside and seen the water,' she said. 'Maybe they could have grabbed others and ran to higher ground.'
The Citizen
11 hours ago
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Children's camp confirms 27 dead, with Texas flood toll over 80
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eNCA
19 hours ago
- eNCA
Desperate search for missing girls as nearly 80 dead in Texas floods
US - Rescuers in Texas raced against time Sunday to find dozens of missing people, including children, swept away by flash floods that killed at least 78 people, with forecasters warning of new deluges. US President Donald Trump said he would "probably" visit the southern state on Friday. The president brushed off concerns his administration's wide-ranging cuts to weather forecasting and related federal agencies had left local warning systems worse-off. Instead, Trump described the flash floods as a "100-year catastrophe" that "nobody expected." At least 40 adults and 28 children were killed in the worst-hit Kerr County in central Texas, Sheriff Larry Leitha said, while at least ten more people were killed by flooding in nearby areas. "You will see the death toll rise today," warned Texas public safety chief Freeman Martin at a press conference. "Across the state, in all the areas affected by flooding, there are 41 known missing," Texas Governor Greg Abbott said. As questions grew about why warnings did not come sooner or people were not evacuated earlier in the area popular with campers, Trump said the situation was a "Biden setup." "That was not our setup," Trump told reporters on Sunday, adding that he would "not" hire back meteorologists when probed about staff and budget cuts at the National Weather Service (NWS). Asked about whether he would change his plans to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he responded: "FEMA is something we can talk about later." Trump, who previously said disaster relief should be handled at the state-level, also signed a major disaster declaration that freed up resources for Texas. - Missing girls - In central Texas, some 17 helicopters joined the search for missing people, including ten girls and a counsellor from a riverside Christian summer camp where about 750 people had been staying when disaster struck. In a terrifying display of nature's power, the rain-swollen waters of the Guadalupe River reached treetops and the roofs of cabins in Camp Mystic as girls slept overnight Friday, washing away some of them and leaving a scene of devastation. AFP | RONALDO SCHEMIDT Blankets, teddy bears and other belongings at the camp were caked in mud. Windows in the cabins were shattered, apparently by the force of the water. The National Weather Service (NWS) warned Sunday that slow-moving thunderstorms threatened more flash floods over the saturated ground of central Texas. Governor Abbott warned that heavy rainfall could "lead to potential flash flooding" in Kerrville and surrounding areas, as officials warned people against going near the swollen river and its creeks. The flooding began at the start of the Fourth of July holiday weekend as months' worth of rain fell in a matter of hours, much of it coming overnight as people slept. The Guadalupe surged around 26 feet (eight meters) -- more than a two-story building -- in just 45 minutes. - 'Washed away' - Flash floods, which occur when the ground is unable to absorb torrential rainfall, are not unusual in this region of south and central Texas, known colloquially as "Flash Flood Alley." Scientists say that in recent years human-driven climate change has made extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heat waves more frequent and more intense. Officials said while rescue operations were ongoing, they were also starting the process of debris removal. "There's debris all over the place that makes roads impassable, that makes reconstruction projects unachievable," Abbott said. AFP | Gianrigo MARLETTA Texans also started flying personal drones to help look but local officials urged them to stop, citing a danger for rescue aircraft. One of the searches focused on four young women who were staying in a house that was washed away by the river. Adam Durda and his wife Amber, both 45, drove three hours to help. "There was a group of 20-year-olds that were in a house that had gotten washed away," Durda told AFP. "That's who the family requested help for, but of course, we're looking for anybody." Justin Morales, 36, was part of a search team that found three bodies, including that of a Camp Mystic girl caught up in a tree. "We're happy to give a family closure and hopefully we can keep looking and find some of the... you know, whoever," he told AFP. "Help give some of those families closure. That's why we're out here."
