[News]
At least 80 people killed in Texas flooding including 27 campers and counsellors from girls camp
Crews trudged through debris and waded into swollen riverbanks on Monday in the search for victims of catastrophic flooding over the 4 July weekend that killed more 80 people in Texas, including more than two dozen campers and counselors from an all-girls Christian camp.
With more rain on the way, the risk of more flooding was still high in saturated parts of central Texas, the Associated Press reports, with authorities sure the death toll would rise as crews looked for the many people who were still missing.
The floods, among the nation’s worst in decades, swept away people sleeping in tents, cabins and homes along the river in the middle of the night on Friday.
Reagan Brown told the AP his parents, in their 80s, managed to escape uphill as water inundated their home in the town of Hunt. When the couple learned that their 92-year-old neighbor was trapped in her attic, they went back and rescued her.
Then they were able to reach their tool shed up higher ground, and neighbors throughout the early morning began to show up at their tool shed, and they all rode it out together.
A few miles away, rescuers manoeuvring through challenging terrain filled with snakes kept up the search for the missing.
Governor Greg Abbott said yesterday that 41 people were unaccounted for across the state and more could be missing.
In the Hill Country area, home to several summer camps, searchers have found the bodies of 68 people, including 28 children, Kerr County sheriff Larry Leitha said.
Ten other deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties, according to local officials.
Key events
Edward Helmore
Texas senator Ted Cruz was in Kerr County today talking to reporters about the warnings that were issued before the Guadalupe river burst its banks after heavy rains, killing 82 including 27 children.
Amid criticisms of the lack of warnings about the severity of the storm to local residents, Cruz said:
Now, obviously, most people at 1am and 4am are sleeping, so I think we will have a reasonable conversation about are there any ways to have earlier detection? Some of the limits of the flash flood are that they’re very difficult because they can arise so quickly. But everyone would agree, in hindsight, if we could go back and do it again, we would evacuate, particularly those in the most vulnerable areas.
He then pushed back on what he called “partisan finger-pointing” that has blamed staff cuts at the National Weather Service for failures to predict the intensity of the rainfall last week over the Guadalupe river headwaters.
Some are eager to point at the National Weather Service and saying that cuts there led to to a lack of warning. I think that’s contradicting by the facts and and if you look in the facts in particular number one and these warnings went out hours before the flood became a true emergency.
It’s worth noting that the National Weather Service Union, which has been very critical of the Doge cuts, has publicly said that they don’t believe that a reduction of staffing had any impact whatsoever on their ability to warn of this event.
Here is a clip featuring timelapse footage provided by a witness shows flood waters rising over a causeway in Kingsland, Texas, and completely submerging it in the span of a few minutes.
The flooding occurred after torrential rain fell in the central Texas area on Friday 4 July, the US Independence Day holiday.
The death toll from catastrophic floods reached at least 80 on Monday, including 28 children, as the search for girls missing from a summer camp continued and fears of more flooding prompted evacuations of volunteer responders.
The news conference has ended.
“Evacuation is a delicate balance” Dalton Rice, the Kerrville city manager, said at the news conference. “If you evacuate too late, you then risk putting buses, or cars, or vehicles or campers on roads, into low water areas, trying to get them out, which then can make it even more challenging.”
“It’s very tough to make those calls, because what we also don’t want to do is cry wolf” he said. “It’s very difficult, very challenging.”
Rice explained that some of these areas take a lot of time to get out to so even when the first responders were on the ground at 3:30 in the morning, “we had first responders that were getting swept away, actually responding to the first areas of rainfall” he said, “that’s how quick it happened.”
In a post on Facebook Monday morning, Kerrville city officials said search and rescue efforts remain underway across both the city and Kerr County.
“Rescue teams worked throughout the night and ground teams are searching the river corridor” officials wrote. “We are not slowing down.”
City leaders urged the public to stay away from affected areas, noting that heavy traffic – largely from sightseers – slowed emergency response efforts on Sunday.
Sightseers, they said, “are making things worse.”
“If you’re not from here, don’t come here to see flood damage” officials added. “If you live here, avoid the river corridor so our first responders can do their jobs.”
Cruz insists ‘now is not a time for partisan finger pointing and attacks’
“After we come through search and rescue, after we come through the process of rebuilding, there will naturally be a period of retrospection, where you look back and said what exactly transpired, what was the timeline, and what could have been done differently to prevent this loss of life” the Texas senator said.
“My hope is, in time, we learn some lessons to implement the next time there is a flood” he added.
“Those children, those little girls, who were lost at Camp Mystic, that’s every parent’s nightmare” Cruz said. “The pain and agony of not knowing your children’s whereabouts is the worst thing imaginable.”
Ted Cruz: ‘Texas is grieving right now’
“Texas is grieving right now” said Texas senator Ted Cruz at the news conference on Monday morning.
“The pain, the shock, of what has transpired these last few days has broken the heart of our state” he said. “As of yesterday the confirmed death toll was 82 and those numbers are continuing to go up.”
Cruz said that there have been over 850 high water rescues since this flooding began.
“This will be a rough week” Joe Herring Jr, the mayor of Kerrville, said at the news conference.
“Primary search continues, and we remain hopeful, every foot, every mile, every bend of the river, our work continues” he said.
“We need your prayers” Herring Jr added.
Dalton Rice, the City Manager of Kerrville, said at the news conference said that search and rescue operations will continue today in North Kerr County to Canyon Lake and Comal County.
“This is unprecedented, unprecedented flood events” Rice said. “We are still currently in the primary search phase, which is the rapid one, they are running it, we have different segments that are gridded out. Each one of those segments are taking anywhere between an hour to three hours, up to 2km for each segment.”
“They are running into a lot of technical challenges with terrain, with water, even potentially with weather and the rising fields” he added.
10 campers and one counsellor remain missing from Camp Mystic
Larry Leitha, the Kerr County sheriff, said that 10 campers and one counsellor from Camp Mystic remain missing.
“We continue to offer our condolences to those affected” he said. “Reuniting the families remains our top priority.”
75 killed in Kerr county
As of Monday morning, 75 people have died in Kerr county, including 27 children and 48 adults, Kerr county sheriff Larry Leitha said.
Leitha added that the identities of 15 adults and 9 children are still pending confirmation.
[English News]
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