KERRVILLE, TXOn Sunday, families in central Texas rummaged over soggy rubble and entered deserted cabins at Camp Mystic, which was torn apart by flash floods that swept houses off their foundations.
Rescuers continued their frantic search for the missing, who included ten girls and a camp counselor, navigating through difficult terrain, snakes, and water moccasins. Governor Greg Abbott reported that 41 individuals were officially unaccounted for throughout the state, and that more might be missing, for the first time since the storms started battering Texas.
Suggested Videos
Sheriff Larry Leitha announced in the afternoon that searchers had discovered the dead of 68 individuals, including 28 children, in Kerr County, which is home to Camp Mystic and other youth camps in the Texas Hill Country.
He promised to continue looking until all victims of Friday’s flash floods were located. According to local officials, there are ten other counties: Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green, and Williamson. According to Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Freeman Martin, the death toll will undoubtedly increase over the coming days.
The governor issued a warning that fresh rounds of intense rains that continue into Tuesday might result in more potentially fatal flooding, particularly in areas that are already saturated. Emergency notifications warning of “high confidence of river flooding” blared on cell phones in Kerr County as he spoke at a news conference in Austin, while a megaphone outside Camp Mystic encouraged people to evacuate. Authorities on the scene, however, declared there was no concern a few minutes later.
Starting Sunday morning, families were given the opportunity to tour the camp. One girl carried a big bell as she left a building. On a riverbank, a guy who claimed to have saved his daughter from a cabin on the camp’s highest point peered beneath large rocks and around clusters of trees.
One of the cabins, which was near to a stack of wet mattresses, a storage trunk, and clothing, was briefly entered by a woman and a teenage girl wearing rubber waders. The couple once broke down in tears and then embraced.
A blue footlocker was taken by one family. As they slowly drove away, a teenage girl with tears streaming down her face stared out the open window at the devastation.
Investigating the disaster area
Nearby workmen using heavy machinery retrieved tree trunks and tangled branches from the water as they scoured the river while the families witnessed the destruction for the first time.
The prospect of discovering more survivors seemed increasingly grim with every hour that went by. Despite being instructed not to, volunteers and some missing persons’ families drove to the disaster area and scoured the riverbanks.
Authorities had to decide if enough warnings had been given in a certain location and if adequate preparations had been undertaken.
On Sunday, President Donald Trump activated the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Texas by signing a major disaster designation for Kerr County.
The president stated that he will probably come on Friday. After spending the weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, he told reporters, “I would have done it today, but we’d just be in their way,” before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington. It was a terrible, terrible incident that happened.
Homes and cars were washed away when the water climbed 26 feet (8 meters) in just 45 minutes before daylight on Friday. With fresh rain falling in central Texas on Sunday and flash flood watches still in effect, the threat was far from gone.
In order to find casualties and rescue individuals trapped in trees and in camps cut off by washed-out roadways, searchers deployed helicopters, boats, and drones. Over 850 individuals were saved in the first 36 hours, according to officials.
Prayers from the Vatican and in Texas
Authorities will work around the clock, Gov. Greg Abbott promised, adding that as the water receded, additional areas were being explored. He works for the government.
In a statement, he urged all Texans to join him in prayer this Sunday for the lives lost, the missing, our towns’ recovery, and the security of those fighting on the front lines.
Pope Leo XIV of Rome said particular prayers for everyone affected by the tragedy. At the conclusion of his Sunday noon blessing, the first American pope in history spoke in English. I would like to offer my deepest sympathies to all the families who have lost loved ones in the Guadalupe River flooding disaster in Texas, especially their daughters who were attending summer camp. We offer up prayers for them.
Generations of families have come to swim and enjoy the outdoors at the century-old youth camps and campers scattered throughout the hills around the Guadalupe River. It is more challenging to determine the number of missing people because the location is particularly crowded around the Independence Day vacation.
Intense escapes from flooding
As raging floodwaters dragged cars and trees past them, survivors told horrifying tales of being swept away and clinging to branches. Others escaped to their homes’ attics in the hopes that the water wouldn’t get to them.
Water whipped over the legs of a cabin full of girls at Camp Mystic as they crossed a bridge while clinging to a rope strung by rescuers.
Among them were the director of another camp across the street and an 8-year-old girl from Mountain Brook, Alabama, who was at Camp Mystic.
The cabin of two Dallas school-age girls was washed away, and they went missing. The girls’ grandparents were missing, but their parents were safe and staying in another cabin.
The Hill Country is known to the locals as “alley,” but despite warnings, many campers and inhabitants were taken off guard by the overnight floods.
The catastrophe was preceded by warnings.
Before issuing flash flood emergencies, a rare alert indicating impending danger, the National Weather Service issued a succession of flash flood warnings in the early hours of Friday after warning of possible flooding on Thursday.
After keeping an eye on the weather at the Mo-Ranch Camp near the town of Hunt, administrators decided to relocate several hundred campers and guests of a church youth conference to higher ground. The day before their second summer session ended on Thursday, organizers at neighboring Camps Rio Vista and Sierra Vista likewise posted on social media that they were keeping an eye on the weather.
Authorities and political leaders have stated that they were not prepared for the area to see such a heavy downpour.
Authorities are dedicated to a thorough examination of the emergency response, including how the public was informed of the storm threat, according to Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice.
In response to a question about whether he still intended to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Trump stated that while he was busy working at the time, he may discuss the matter later. He has been harshly critical of FEMA’s performance and has previously stated that he wants to restructure, if not abolish, the agency.
The question of whether Trump intended to rehire any of the federal meteorologists who were let go this year due to widespread government expenditure cuts was also posed to him.
I doubt it. This occurred in a matter of seconds. No one anticipated it. It went unnoticed. The president added, “There were very talented people there, and they didn’t see it.”
___
From Toledo, Ohio, Seewer provided a report. Christopher Weber in Los Angeles, Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee; Cedar Attanasio in New York; Sophia Tareen in Chicago; Michelle Price in Morristown, N.J.; and Nicole Winfield in Rome were among the Associated Press reporters who contributed to this story.
