Search for Texas flood victims to resume after pause due to heavy rains
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During the pause in searches, Ingram Fire Department officials ordered crews to immediately evacuate the Guadalupe River corridor in Kerr County, warning the potential for a flash flood was high.
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Late Sunday afternoon, the Kerr County Sheriff's Office announced that search teams in the western part of that county could resume their efforts. The Ingram Fire Department would resume its search and rescue efforts Monday morning, said agency spokesman Brian Lochte.
Latest flooding damages dozens of homes
Gov. Greg Abbott said on X the state conducted rescues of dozens of people in San Saba, Lampasas and Schleicher counties, and that evacuations were taking place in a handful of others.
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The latest round of flooding damaged about 100 homes and knocked down untold lengths of cattle fencing, said Ashley Johnson, CEO of the Hill Country Community Action Association, a San Saba-based nonprofit.
'Anything you can imagine in a rural community was damaged,' she said. 'Our blessing is it was daylight and we knew it was coming.'
With more rain on the way, county officials ordered everyone living in flood-prone areas near the San Saba River to evacuate, with people moved to the San Saba Civic Center, Johnson said.
A wide-ranging weather system brings heavy rains
The weather system brought slow-moving storms and multiple rounds of heavy rain across a widespread area, pushing rivers and streams over their banks.
The rains caused waterways to swell further north in Texas, where emergency crews rescued one motorist who was left stranded in waist-high rapids on a submerged bridge over the Bosque River.
'He drove into it and didn't realize how deep it was,' said Jeff Douglas, president of the McGregor Volunteer Fire Department.
In the west Texas city of Sonora, authorities called for evacuations of some neighborhoods due to rising flood waters. Sonora is located about 110 miles (177 kilometers) northwest of Kerrville.
Kerrville residents get support from police, alerts
Under heavy rain, Matthew Stone on Sunday cleared branches and a log from a storm sewer in front of his home on Guadalupe Street in Kerrville as several inches of water pooled up on the road.
Multiple houses on the street overlooking the Guadalupe River were severely impacted by the July 4 floods. Stone said he felt safe for now.
'The cops have been coming back and forth, we're getting lots of alerts, we're getting a lot of support,' he said.
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Just before daybreak on the Fourth of July, destructive, fast-moving waters rose 26 feet (8 meters) on the Guadalupe River, washing away homes and vehicles. Ever since, searchers have used helicopters, boats and drones to look for victims.
The floods laid waste to the Hill Country region of Texas. The riverbanks and hills of Kerr County are filled with vacation cabins, youth camps and campgrounds, including Camp Mystic, the century-old, all-girls Christian summer camp.
Located in a low-lying area along the Guadalupe River in a region known as flash flood alley, Camp Mystic lost at least 27 campers and counselors.
The flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 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.
Associated Press reporters Sophia Tareen in Chicago; Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York; Juan Lozano in Houston and Michael Weissenstein in Dobbs Ferry, New York, contributed to this report.
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Chicago Tribune
34 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Chicago-area officials are bracing as summer storms roll in following Texas tragedy and weather service budget cuts
When more than a month's worth of rain fell in 90 minutes just west of the United Center late Tuesday night, federal weather forecasters warned of possible flash flooding, triggering a chain of events that alerted some Chicago residents about potential danger. Among them was Sandra Mason, 55, who lives in a ground-floor apartment on the Near West Side. After receiving an alert on her phone at 10 p.m. Tuesday, Mason began lining her back door with blankets to stop any water from seeping in. Just a few blocks east, the National Weather Service recorded 5 inches of rain falling in an hour and a half, as a thunderstorm stalled over downtown and nearby neighborhoods. The torrent inundated basements, flooded viaducts and closed expressway lanes. Emergency responders rescued stranded motorists. During the evening of July 8, 2025, a stationary thunderstorm produced a very localized area of 2 to 5"+ of rain. At one station, 5.14" of rain fell in just 90 minutes! Such torrential rain rates led to flooded viaducts, water rescues, and basements in the impacted area. #ILwx — NWS Chicago (@NWSChicago) July 9, 2025Previous storms have flooded Mason's building, damaging appliances and furniture, but this time she was mostly spared. Still, she said she was grateful for the federal weather agency alerts. 'You don't know if your house is going to flood,' Mason said. 'You just don't know, you just have to be on your toes.' Weather-related anxiety is high across the country following flash floods in central Texas that killed at least 120 people over the Fourth of July weekend. One of the central concerns is whether Trump administration cuts to the National Weather Service — the backbone of the country's weather warning system — will hamper local governments and residents from staving off disaster when severe weather strikes. The Trump administration this spring eliminated nearly 600 National Weather Service jobs across the country through early retirement, the firing of probationary employees and a hiring freeze across the federal government. It has since made an exception to its hiring freeze and started filling more than 100 weather service vacancies. So far, the Chicago area has felt less of an impact from those staffing reductions than other regions, particularly less-populated areas served by weather service offices in the Quad Cities and downstate Lincoln, 30 miles northeast of Springfield. But Trump's budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts in October, calls for further cuts at other agencies within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including the elimination of research centers that study climate. While Chicago has so far been spared, Illinois Democrats in Washington, D.C., remain critical of the cuts and note that any trims to weather service offices downstate will have an impact on Illinois residents. The office in Lincoln, which serves much of central Illinois, doesn't have a technician to fix radars on other equipment, meaning it has to bring somebody in from another office if something breaks, said U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, who worked as a physicist at Fermilab before joining Congress. 'It hasn't broken yet, but (scientists in the Chicago office are) having to do heroic work, and frankly they're wasting a lot of money because of the DOGE cuts in particular,' Foster, a Naperville Democrat, said about the Trump administration team formerly led by Elon Musk that tried to eliminate thousands of federal jobs earlier this year. 'They're coming under great stress, but I'm very proud of the fact that, at least so far, they haven't dropped the ball in Chicago.' Other offices covering Illinois have been harder hit. The Davenport, Iowa, office that covers northwest Illinois saw a 42% reduction in staffing as of June, and its top two positions were vacant. 'That's not OK, since this stuff has to be available in emergencies, right?' Foster said, noting some people in Naperville escaped a 2021 tornado with just minutes of warning. 'What you're seeing is sort of a thinning out of the capabilities you'll need in an emergency with no disasters yet.' U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who sits on the committee that oversees the National Weather Service, said 'any cuts to Illinois's two NWS offices (in future federal budgets) would jeopardize timely weather warnings that are critical to protecting Illinoisans, especially as we continue to see the effects of climate change through more intense and more frequent extreme weather events.' The Trump administration's efforts to trim the National Weather Service payroll faced bipartisan opposition even before the Texas flooding. Republican lawmakers in Nebraska, for example, objected to the weather service ceasing daily weather balloon launches from smaller offices as Democratic lawmakers rallied against cuts at NOAA's headquarters in the Maryland suburbs of Washington. But scrutiny about the budget moves and their impact on the weather services' performance grew as the death toll climbed in Texas. The NWS issued several warnings at least three hours before the Guadalupe River in Texas' Hill Country rose by more than 25 feet in two hours. But many residents and young campers died as the floods swelled in the middle of the night, fueling fierce debates over who was to blame for so many people not knowing about the imminent danger. One of the top concerns has been about the role NWS staffing reductions had on the agency's response. The weather service's San Angelo office had vacancies in key leadership roles, including a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster and meteorologist in charge. The neighboring San Antonio office also had several crucial roles open. The Senate's top Democrat, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, called on an inspector general to investigate whether staffing cuts hampered the weather service's response. 'The roles left unfilled are not marginal, they're critical,' Schumer wrote. 'To put it plainly: They help save lives.' Erica Grow Cei, an NWS spokesperson, said the agency moved personnel to those offices over the Fourth of July weekend in response to the storms that caused the flooding. 'All forecasts and warnings were issued in a timely manner,' she wrote in an email message. 'Additionally, these offices were able to provide decision support services to local partners, including those in the emergency management community.' Grow Cei said the weather service is temporarily assigning and hiring 'a targeted number of permanent, mission-critical positions' to 'further stabilize frontline operations.' At a confirmation hearing last week, Neil Jacobs, Trump's nominee to lead NOAA, told senators he would make increasing staffing at the agency a 'top priority.' But many scientists worry about the long-term effects of the existing staffing shortages. 'Even before this terrible tragedy in Texas, which is still unfolding, we have been worried about the cuts that were done by the Trump administration' to federal agencies that handle weather-related emergencies, including the National Weather Service, said Juan Declet-Barreto, the bilingual social scientist for climate vulnerability at the Union of Concerned Scientists. 'There has been a degradation in the alerts and in the capacity of the National Weather Service to do its job.' Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University, said it appeared the NWS had adequate staffing during the Texas flooding because it brought in extra scientists for the storms. The offices had five people working overnight instead of the usual two. 'I do worry, though, about how many times you can roll the dice,' Gensini said. 'Maybe next time, there won't be five people. It's dangerous to continue this understaffing of the weather service at large, because these events are not going to stop.' In Illinois, as in the rest of the country, the National Weather Service is at the forefront of preparing for weather-related disasters. But warnings from the federal forecasters are only the first step of a coordinated effort by government agencies to alert the public about imminent weather dangers. 'It's not just having good forecasts and good, accurate, timely warnings for these events; it's also communicating them to the potential affected areas and having these individuals react in the proper manner,' Gensini said. 'That requires emergency management, it requires planning, it requires the infrastructure and technology to disseminate that message properly.' Kevin Doom, a meteorologist at the NWS Chicago office, said one of the biggest challenges in responding to severe weather is making sure information flows to residents. 'That's where we have to put a little bit of trust in some of our partners to do that,' he said. In severe weather events like last Tuesday's flash flooding, Chicago's Office of Emergency Management & Communications played a key role. It operates nonstop with five to 10 people working there daily, emergency manager Matt Doughtie said. The city agency typically amplifies messages from the federal weather service while employees monitor the effects of the emergency. For instance, the city has computer systems that automatically send messages from the weather service through texts or emails from NotifyChicago, the agency's app and city social media accounts. When necessary, those automated systems also help activate the city's 118 tornado sirens. Additionally, Chicago's emergency management office can take control of select digital billboards around the city for emergency messaging. It also can send wireless emergency alerts, which broadcast emergency messages directly to cell phones. The city and National Weather Service coordinate to avoid overlap on shared resources like wireless alerts, Doughtie said. While the weather service generally sounds out announcements directly related to weather, the city agency handles more localized directions to residents, including evacuation or shelter-in-place orders, he added. Doughtie said the weather service is a strong partner that often sends representatives to help with planned city events, like parades and festivals, as well as emergencies. 'One of our strongest relationships is with their warning coordination meteorologist, who's been with them for a long time,' Doughtie said. 'If we were to lose somebody like that, that would hurt and we would feel that pinch. Thus far, we haven't really seen any real degradation of their services this year.' For weather events that stretch beyond the city's boundaries, Chicago's emergency management office collaborates with Cook County's Emergency Management and Regional Security department. Doughtie said the county's role is crucial because there are more than 130 municipalities in the county. In addition to coordinating information among municipalities, Cook County's emergency management department runs its own text notification system, AlertCook, for residents. It also can help broadcast shelter or evacuation orders, especially for suburban municipalities in the county. Angela Gilkes, interim executive director of Cook County's emergency department, said her agency also relies on National Weather Service data for its emergency responses. Specifically, localized forecasts about where storms of flooding might hit hardest allow the county to move portable pumps and generators to those sites in advance, she said. In the Texas floods, the role of local governments relaying the warnings from the National Weather Service has also come under scrutiny. In the Chicago area, the mechanisms for alerting the public vary county by county, and, in some cases, city by city. Emergency management officials in DuPage, Lake, Kane, McHenry and Kendall counties all said communication between federal and local authorities is key to ensuring residents know what is happening when a significant weather system hits. 'We are sharing weather intelligence (with partners) right away,' said Daniel Eder, manager of the Lake County Emergency Management Agency. Scott Buziecki, Kane County's emergency management director, said he relies on relationships with neighboring counties and agencies, many of which were 'built during disasters and emergencies,' while Roger Bonuchi, Kendall County's emergency management director, said he also teaches a NWS-certified storm spotter course that allows volunteers to report signs of unusual weather. The county currently has about 22 storm spotters who work with Bonuchi. Many Illinois counties use the Federal Emergency Management Agency's national alerting system to send alerts from the federal meteorologists. The system, called the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, or IPAWS, also lets local jurisdictions broadcast public safety announcements to television and radio stations. McHenry County strongly encourages farmers to have a solar, hand-crank or battery-powered NOAA weather radio, said county Emergency Management Director David Christensen, adding he doesn't want residents 'to rely on social media' where posts from unreliable sources could mislead or unnecessarily frighten residents. Outside of emergency systems and communications, another key difference between what happened in Texas and weather emergencies in Illinois is the two states' terrain. 'It's not the same type of flooding that happens in the Texas Hill Country, because we don't have the topography that they do, but what we do have that they don't is a significant amount more of impervious surfaces,' said Gensini, the NIU professor. 'You saw this (last Tuesday). There were water rescues on Ashland Avenue … from people trapped in their cars because of really just normal — what I would consider kind of run-of-the-mill — rainfall.' Chicago-area residents saw similar scenes on Thursday night when more rain fell and the National Weather Service issued its second flood-related alert of the week. It was a reminder to everyone who got those alerts that they should always be paying attention, said Doom, the NWS meteorologist. 'This may not be like the last time,' Doom said.
an hour ago
Texas flooding live updates: Search continues for missing with 130 confirmed deaths
Kerr County was hit the hardest, with at least 106 deaths. 3:21 More than 130 people are dead after devastating flooding in the Texas Hill Country that began early on the Fourth of July. More than 160 people are missing. Search operations continued overnight in Kerr County, which was hit the hardest, with at least 106 deaths, including 36 children, according to officials.
Boston Globe
6 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Search for Texas flood victims to resume after pause due to heavy rains
In Kerrville, where local officials have come under scrutiny over whether residents were adequately warned about the rising water in the early morning hours of July 4, authorities went door-to-door to some homes after midnight early Sunday to alert people that flooding was again possible. Authorities also pushed phone alerts to those in the area. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up During the pause in searches, Ingram Fire Department officials ordered crews to immediately evacuate the Guadalupe River corridor in Kerr County, warning the potential for a flash flood was high. Advertisement Late Sunday afternoon, the Kerr County Sheriff's Office announced that search teams in the western part of that county could resume their efforts. The Ingram Fire Department would resume its search and rescue efforts Monday morning, said agency spokesman Brian Lochte. Latest flooding damages dozens of homes Gov. Greg Abbott said on X the state conducted rescues of dozens of people in San Saba, Lampasas and Schleicher counties, and that evacuations were taking place in a handful of others. Advertisement The latest round of flooding damaged about 100 homes and knocked down untold lengths of cattle fencing, said Ashley Johnson, CEO of the Hill Country Community Action Association, a San Saba-based nonprofit. 'Anything you can imagine in a rural community was damaged,' she said. 'Our blessing is it was daylight and we knew it was coming.' With more rain on the way, county officials ordered everyone living in flood-prone areas near the San Saba River to evacuate, with people moved to the San Saba Civic Center, Johnson said. A wide-ranging weather system brings heavy rains The weather system brought slow-moving storms and multiple rounds of heavy rain across a widespread area, pushing rivers and streams over their banks. The rains caused waterways to swell further north in Texas, where emergency crews rescued one motorist who was left stranded in waist-high rapids on a submerged bridge over the Bosque River. 'He drove into it and didn't realize how deep it was,' said Jeff Douglas, president of the McGregor Volunteer Fire Department. In the west Texas city of Sonora, authorities called for evacuations of some neighborhoods due to rising flood waters. Sonora is located about 110 miles (177 kilometers) northwest of Kerrville. Kerrville residents get support from police, alerts Under heavy rain, Matthew Stone on Sunday cleared branches and a log from a storm sewer in front of his home on Guadalupe Street in Kerrville as several inches of water pooled up on the road. Multiple houses on the street overlooking the Guadalupe River were severely impacted by the July 4 floods. Stone said he felt safe for now. 'The cops have been coming back and forth, we're getting lots of alerts, we're getting a lot of support,' he said. Advertisement Just before daybreak on the Fourth of July, destructive, fast-moving waters rose 26 feet (8 meters) on the Guadalupe River, washing away homes and vehicles. Ever since, searchers have used helicopters, boats and drones to look for victims. The floods laid waste to the Hill Country region of Texas. The riverbanks and hills of Kerr County are filled with vacation cabins, youth camps and campgrounds, including Camp Mystic, the century-old, all-girls Christian summer camp. Located in a low-lying area along the Guadalupe River in a region known as flash flood alley, Camp Mystic lost at least 27 campers and counselors. The flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 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. Associated Press reporters Sophia Tareen in Chicago; Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York; Juan Lozano in Houston and Michael Weissenstein in Dobbs Ferry, New York, contributed to this report.
