Now Reading: Death toll climbs as searches intensify
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Death toll climbs as searches intensify
Death toll climbs as searches intensify
Texas flooding: authorities search for Camp Mystic campers
Floods have overwhelmed the Guadalupe River in Texas, killing at least 24 people and prompting a frantic and ongoing rescue effort.
A desperate search for flood victims in Texas intensified Sunday after the Guadalupe River gushed over its banks in darkness days earlier, swallowing homes and vehicles and leaving a staggering toll of destruction.
At least 68 people have died in flooding triggered by unrelenting rain that drenched central Texas, officials announced, and most of the deaths have been reported in the Kerr County area, about 85 miles northwest of San Antonio.
Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said at a news conference Sunday that 38 of the bodies recovered in the county have been adults and 21 were children.
Anguished parents were waiting for word Sunday on the 11 children still missing from Camp Mystic, a Christian girls’ camp at the river’s edge. A camp counselor is also being sought, Leitha said.
The National Weather Service said Kerr County, located in Texas Hill Country, was inundated by as much as 15 inches of rain triggered by intense thunderstorms − half of the total the region sees in a year. The Guadalupe River rose more than 26 feet in just 45 minutes, weather.com reported.
Crews have been working around the clock, scouring riverbanks littered with mangled trees and rubble. Rescuers have pulled residents from rooftops and found some survivors still clinging to trees. As search and rescue operations remain underway, meteorologists warned about additional rain worsening flooding across central Texas.
“We will not stop until every single person is found,” Leitha vowed.
President Donald Trump said in a statement Sunday that he signed a major disaster declaration for Kerr County, unlocking federal funding that the president says will ensure first responders “immediately have the resources they need.”
“These families are enduring an unimaginable tragedy, with many lives lost, and many still missing,” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social. “The Trump Administration continues to work closely with State and Local Leaders.”
He also praised the U.S. Coast Guard, which together with state first responders, have rescued more than 850 people in central Texas since the disastrous flooding began. “GOD BLESS THE FAMILIES, AND GOD BLESS TEXAS!” Trump said.
Reece Zunker, the coach of a high school boys soccer team in Kerrville, and his wife, Paula, are among the dozens killed in the flooding that has ravaged central Texas. Their two children are reportedly missing.
The Tivy High School soccer team said in a statement that it was “heartbroken with the loss of our leader and inspiration.”
“Coach Reece Zunker was not just a soccer coach, he was a mentor, teacher and a role model for our Kerrville kids,” the statement said, crediting him with rebuilding the school’s soccer program. “His passion for his players, students, co-workers, community and his family will never be forgotten.”
Multiple local news outlets reported that the family’s two children are still missing. The family was spending Independence Day weekend at a house on the Guadalupe River between Camp La Junta and Camp Mystic, according to the Kerrville Daily Times.
Luis Maldonado heard rain around midnight Friday in San Angelo and thought nothing of it. But around 4 a.m., the father of three woke up and realized water was seeping through the family’s new carpet.
“I turn on the light, and I just hear a squishing as I keep stepping,” Luis told the San Angelo Standard-Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. “I turn on more lights, and I just see water all over the ground.”
Luis immediately woke up his wife. Then he opened his front door and saw a wall of water rushing through the neighborhood. Maldonado, whose truck and minivan were also flooded in the deluge, was one of many people filling out relief paperwork at a church in the west-central Texas city of San Angelo.
Local officials said over 12,000 homes have been damaged in the flooding, and one death in San Angelo has been tied to the storm.
– Ronald W. Erdrich and Trish Choate, San Angelo Standard-Times
Pope Leo XIV issued a statement on social media offering his condolences to the families of those killed in the historic Texas flooding.
“I would like to express sincere condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones, in particular their daughters, who were at the summer camp, in the disaster caused by flooding of the Guadalupe River in Texas in the United States,” the pope wrote on X. “We pray for them.”
Leo, who was elected as the head of the Roman Catholic Church in May, is the first U.S.-born pontiff.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said on X that he visited Camp Mystic and the nearby Guadalupe River and was stunned by the devastation.
The girls’ camp was “horrendously ravaged in ways unlike I’ve seen in any natural disaster,” the governor said late Saturday, adding: “The height the rushing water reached to the top of cabins was shocking.”
Abbott, who issued a disaster declaration for nearly two dozen Texas counties, said: “We won’t stop until we find every girl who was in those cabins.”
More rain was expected to fall Sunday across the Texas Hill Country, threatening to trigger new floods and worsen the deluge in the devastated, rain-soaked region.
The National Weather Service in Austin and San Antonio said flood watches were extended into Sunday, when 2 to 4 inches of rain was expected to fall across parts of the region. Some isolated areas could see as much as 10 inches of rain.
“Any additional heavy rain will lead to flash flooding where it occurs and downstream,” the weather service said.
Rescue crews worked feverishly at the site of Camp Mystic. The camp had 700 girls in residence at the time of the flood, according to Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick.
As of late Saturday, there were 27 missing campers from the camp, Kerrville City Manager Manager Dalton Rice said.
Nick Sorter, a member of the volunteer rescue group United Cajun Navy, told CNN “there was nowhere for these kids to go. The buildings were washed out, just carved out from the inside.”
Elinor Lester, 13, told the Associated Press the camp “was completely destroyed. A helicopter landed and started taking people away. It was really scary.”
The National Weather Service in San Antonio said the risk of flash flooding remains in Hill Country, a low-lying and flood-sensitive area of west-central Texas.
The region stretches over 11 million acres across 18 counties in central Texas, according to the Texas Hill Country Conservation Network. It includes the cities of San Antonio and Austin, as well as extensive rural areas such as the site of the July Fourth flooding in Kerr County. The cities of Sonora, Fredericksburg, San Marcos, Bandera and New Braunfels area also located within the region.
Texas’ Hill Country mainly sits atop the Edwards Plateau and is named for the area’s grassy rolling hills. Three rivers – the Colorado, Nueces and Guadalupe – run through the area. Friday’s devastating flash floods engorged the banks of the Guadalupe.
The area is known for being especially vulnerable to floods, earning it the nickname “flash flood alley,” and it has experienced several major flood events in the past two decades.
– Kathryn Palmer
Tonia Fucci, a Pennsylvania resident visiting her grandmother for the Independence Day weekend, woke early Friday to the sound of heavy rain “coming down in buckets.”
She heard something more ominous: loud, startling cracking noises.
“It’s indescribable, the sounds, of how loud they were, which turned out to be … the massive cypress trees that came down along the river,” she told Reuters.
Fucci, who was staying near the Guadalupe River, filmed on her phone a torrent of muddy water flooding the road to her grandmother’s house. She said she received National Weather alerts on her phone hours after the flood had already hit. She recalled residents running to their neighbors to help before rescue teams arrived.
“Something I’ve never seen before. You knew it was tragedy,” Fucci said. “It wasn’t slowing, it wasn’t slowing. And debris and furniture and RVs were coming down the river.”
Photos inside the nearly century-old Camp Mystic revealed a horrifying picture of the devastation that unfolded.
Campers’ bunkbeds were caked in mud; bed sheets, clothing and suitcases were jumbled about the rooms. One wall of a camp building had been ripped from the foundation.
One Camp Mystic camper, 8-year-old Sarah Marsh of Alabama, was confirmed among the dead, according to Mountain Brook, Alabama, Mayor Stewart Welch. Janie Hunt, 9, was also among the dead, The New York Times and CNN both reported. Other campers were also reported dead by news outlets.
Generations of Texas families sent their daughters to Camp Mystic, a place where they formed lifelong friendships, former camper Clair Cannon told USA TODAY. Cannon’s mother and daughter both also attended.
Summer after summer, they’d take Highway 39 as it winds along the Guadalupe River until arriving at the grounds on the riverbank.
“What that area is like when it’s in its prime − when it’s not devastated like this − is probably one of the most serene and peaceful places that I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Cannon, a commercial and residential real estate agent in Dallas.
Another girls’ camp a few miles away from Mystic, Heart O’ the Hills, said on its website that co-owner Jane Ragsdale had died in the flood. The camp was not in session when the flooding hit, and officials said everyone else has been accounted for.
Texas Hill Country is no stranger to extreme flooding. In the rugged, rolling terrain it’s known for, heavy rains collect quickly in its shallow streams and rivers that can burst into torrents like the deadly flood wave that swept along the Guadalupe River on July Fourth.
The Guadalupe has flooded more than a dozen times since 1978, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, but the Independence Day flood is among the worst in its history.
Several factors came together at once – in one of the worst possible locations – to create the “horrifying” scenario that dropped up to 16 inches of rainfall in the larger region over July 3-5, said Alan Gerard, a recently retired storm specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Read more here.
− Dinah Voyles Pulver
The sheriff’s office in Kerr County said more than 800 people had been evacuated or rescued from the region as floodwaters receded over the weekend.
Rice said “hundreds” have been rescued, but the number of missing is still a question mark. “Right now we’re kind of looking at this in two ways,” Rice said. “Call it the known missing, which is the 27 camp kids that are missing. We will not put a number on the other side because we just don’t know.”
Patrick also said up to 500 rescue workers were searching for an unknown number of missing people, including some who had come to the area for an Independence Day celebration along the river.
“We don’t know how many people were in tents on the side, in small trailers by the side, in rented homes by the side, because it was going to be the Fourth of July holiday,” he said on Fox News Live.
The devastation extended beyond Kerrville. About 150 miles away, the community of San Angelo and surrounding Tom Green County were hit with a record-breaking 14 inches of rain.
Police discovered the body of Tanya Burwick, 62, on Saturday, several blocks from her SUV, which was engulfed in 12 feet of water during Friday’s flood, San Angelo police said.
“Our hearts are heavy as we extend our deepest condolences to Ms. Burwick’s family and loved ones during this incredibly difficult time,” police said in the media release. “The San Angelo Police Department stands with the entire community in mourning this tragic loss.”
− Trish Choate
The extreme flooding struck before dawn with little or no warning, Rice said, precluding authorities from issuing advance evacuation orders.
State emergency management officials had warned as early as Thursday that west and central Texas faced heavy rains and flash flood threats, citing National Weather Service forecasts ahead of the holiday weekend.
The forecasts, however, “did not predict the amount of rain that we saw,” W. Nim Kidd, director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, told a news conference Friday night.
Contributing: Jeanine Santucci; Mike Snider; Reuters
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