At least 51 people killed in Texas flooding - five members of one man's family among missing
An unknown number of people remain missing, including 27 girls from Camp Mystic in Kerr County, a Christian summer camp along the Guadalupe River.
Xavier Ramirez told NBC News, Sky's US partner network, that five members of his family - his mother, stepfather, uncle, aunt and cousin - were missing following the floods, while another cousin had been found in a tree 20 miles down river from the campground outside the town of Ingram where they had all been staying.
Mr Ramirez, 23, from Midland in central Texas, said his uncle had been "lost" to the waters but his mother, stepfather and cousin managed to reach higher ground.
One of the trucks the group had taken shelter in was found "in Ingram, against a tree, crushed and flipped, not far from the campground," he said.
Rescuers have already saved hundreds of people and would work around the clock to find those still unaccounted for, Texas governor Greg Abbott said.
The overflowing water began sweeping into Kerr County and other areas around 4am local time on Friday, killing at least 43 people in the county.
This includes at least 15 children and 28 adults - among those are five children and 12 adults pending identification - Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said at a news conference.
In nearby Kendall County, one person has died. At least four people were killed in Travis County, while at least two people died in Burnet County. Another person has died in the city of San Angelo in Tom Green County.
But as rescue teams are searching for the missing, Texas officials are facing scrutiny over their preparations and why residents and summer camps for children that are dotted along the river were not alerted sooner or told to evacuate.
AccuWeather said the private forecasting company and the National Weather Service (NWS) sent warnings about potential flash flooding hours before the devastation, urging people to move to higher ground and evacuate flood-prone areas.
The NWS later issued flash flood emergencies - a rare alert notifying of imminent danger.
"These warnings should have provided officials with ample time to evacuate camps such as Camp Mystic and get people to safety," AccuWeather said in a statement that called Texas Hill County one of the most flash-flood-prone areas of the US because of its terrain and many water crossings.
But one NWS forecast earlier in the week had called for up to six inches of rain, said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. "It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw," he said.
Officials said they had not expected such an intense downpour of rain, equivalent to months' worth in a few short hours, insisting that no one saw the flood potential coming.
One river near Camp Mystic rose 22ft in two hours, according to Bob Fogarty, meteorologist with the NWS's Austin/San Antonio office. The gauge failed after recording a level of 29.5ft.
"People, businesses, and governments should take action based on Flash Flood Warnings that are issued, regardless of the rainfall amounts that have occurred or are forecast," Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at AccuWeather, said in a statement.
"We know we get rain. We know the river rises," said Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county's top elected official. "But nobody saw this coming."
Judge Kelly said the county considered a flood warning system along the Guadalupe River that would have functioned like a tornado warning siren about six or seven years ago, before he was elected, but that the idea never got off the ground because "the public reeled at the cost".
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was asked during a news conference on Saturday whether the flash flood warnings came through quickly enough: She said: "We know that everyone wants more warning time, and that is why we are working to upgrade the technologies that have been neglected for far too long."
Presidential cuts to climate and weather organisations have also been criticised in the wake of the floods after Donald Trump 's administration ordered 800 job cuts at the science and climate organisation NOAA, the parent organisation of the NWS, which predicts and warns about extreme weather like the Texas floods.
A 30% cut to its budget is also in the pipeline, subject to approval by Congress.
Professor Costa Samaras, who worked on energy policy at the White House under President Joe Biden, said NOAA had been in the middle of developing new flood maps for neighbourhoods and that cuts to NOAA were "devastating".
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
North Wales Chronicle
18 minutes ago
- North Wales Chronicle
Death toll rises after devastating flooding in central Texas
Dozens of people have been killed since raging floodwaters slammed into central Texas on Friday. The death toll rose to nearly 70 on Sunday after searchers found more more bodies in the hardest-hit Kerr County. The victims include children who were camping along the banks of the Guadalupe River. Officials have said they will not stop searching until every person is found. Besides the 59 dead in Kerr County — 38 adults and 21 children — additional deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet and Kendall counties. Rescuers dealt with broken trees, overturned cars and muck-filled debris in a difficult task to find survivors. Authorities still have not said how many people are missing beyond the children from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp where most of the dead were recovered. With each passing hour, the outlook became more bleak. Volunteers and some families of the missing who drove to the disaster zone began searching the riverbanks despite being asked not to do so. Authorities faced growing questions about whether enough warnings were issued in an area vulnerable to flooding and whether enough preparations were made. The destructive, fast-moving waters rose 26ft on the river in only 45 minutes before daybreak on Friday, washing away homes and vehicles. The danger was not over as flash flood watches remained in effect and more rain fell in central Texas on Sunday. Searchers used helicopters, boats and drones to look for victims and to rescue people stranded in trees and from camps isolated by washed-out roads. Officials said more than 850 people were rescued in the first 36 hours. Governor Greg Abbott vowed that authorities will work around the clock and said new areas were being searched as the water receded. He declared Sunday a day of prayer for the state. 'I urge every Texan to join me in prayer this Sunday — for the lives lost, for those still missing, for the recovery of our communities, and for the safety of those on the front lines,' he said in a statement. In Rome, Pope Leo XIV offered special prayers for those touched by the disaster. History's first American pope spoke in English at the end of his Sunday noon blessing, saying 'I would like to express sincere condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones, in particular their daughters who were in summer camp, in the disaster caused by the flooding of the Guadalupe River in Texas in the United States. We pray for them.' The hills along the Guadalupe River are dotted with youth camps and campgrounds where generations of families have come to swim and enjoy the outdoors. The area is especially popular around the Independence Day holiday, making it more difficult to know how many are missing. 'We don't even want to begin to estimate at this time,' Kerrville City manager Dalton Rice said on Saturday. Survivors shared terrifying stories of being swept away and clinging to trees as rampaging floodwaters carried trees and cars past them. Others fled to attics inside their homes, praying the water would not reach them. At Camp Mystic, a cabin full of girls held onto a rope strung by rescuers as they walked across a bridge with water whipping around their legs. Among those confirmed dead were an eight-year-old girl from Mountain Brook, Alabama, who was at Camp Mystic, and the director of another camp up the road. Locals know the area as ' flash flood alley' but the flooding in the middle of the night caught many campers and residents by surprise even though there were warnings. The National Weather Service on Thursday advised of potential flooding and then sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours of Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies — a rare alert notifying of imminent danger.
The Guardian
27 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Texas floods reveal limitations of disaster forecasting under climate crisis
The ongoing challenges of forecasting extreme weather during the era of the climate crisis have been brought to the fore again amid catastrophic flash flooding in the 'hill country' region of Texas. As of early Sunday, hundreds of rescuers are searching for at least 12 people still missing as rains taper off outside of San Antonio and Austin. Hundreds of people have already been pulled from floodwaters that have killed nearly 70 people so far, many of them children at a summer camp along the banks of the Guadalupe River. July is peak flash flood season in the US, and central Texas is known as 'flash flood alley' because the necessary ingredients of tropical moisture and slow-moving storms come together often over hilly terrain there. National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters caution that more floods could come this weekend and into next week. The scale of this latest climate disaster became apparent on Saturday as drone footage taken on Saturday morning showed entire neighborhoods inundated and rushing waters streaming through small town streets. Tales of survival and heartbreak were plentiful. An initial analysis of the downpours and the decisions by forecasters that led up to them by the Guardian shows that rainfall of this magnitude was exceedingly rare and difficult to predict, even for this flood-prone region. Friday's totals of more than 10in (25cm) of rain in three hours could be expected just once in a 'typical' 500-year period for Kerrville, Texas – three months' worth of rain in just a few hours. Radar data show that more than 4in per hour fell during the peak of Friday's rains. That rainfall intensity was in excess of a similar flash flood in 1987 that also ended in tragedy for campers along the Guadalupe. Saturday's rainfall totals actually exceeded Friday's rainfall for a region slightly north of Friday's peak rains. Nearly 14in of rain fell in five hours just west of Austin, Texas – rains that would be expected just once in nearly 1,000 years given a stable climate. Despite funding cuts and widespread staffing shortages implemented by the Trump administration, NWS forecasters in both the local San Angelo office and at the NWS national specialty center responsible for excessive rainfall provided a series of watches and warnings in the days and hours leading up to Friday's flooding disaster. The forecast office in San Angelo has two current vacancies – typical for the pre-Trump era and fewer than the current average staff shortage across the NWS – and has not been experiencing any lapses in weather balloon data collection that have plagued some other offices. In fact, weather balloon data gathered on Thursday from Del Rio showed record amounts of moisture present in the upper atmosphere above central Texas and added to the confidence that severe flash flooding was possible. The Del Rio office then began issuing a series of flood watches starting on Thursday afternoon that cautioned the region to prepare for 'excessive runoff' from '5 to 7 inches of rain'. The NWS's Weather Prediction Center, based in College Park, Maryland, also issued a series of mesoscale precipitation discussions on Thursday – highly detailed advance notices to other weather forecasters that a particularly rare event might be underway. In one of the discussions, forecasters noted that moisture content in central Texas was 'above the 99th climatological percentile' – far in excess of normal and a clue that historic flooding was possible. In a final escalation, the NWS office in San Angelo issued a flash flood emergency about an hour before the water started rapidly rising beyond flood stage at the closest US Geological Survey river monitoring gauge. A flash flood emergency is the highest level of flood warning available to the NWS, and sufficient to set off the Wireless Emergency Alert system, which would have triggered cellphone alarms in the region. The National Weather Service issued dozens of additional flash flood warnings throughout the day on Friday and Saturday after the second wave of extremely heavy rains compounded the flooding's scope across central Texas during the early morning hours. Even though watches and warnings were issued on time throughout the disaster – contrasting what local officials have said in press conferences – rainfall totals specified in the first flash flood watch were about half of what ultimately fell. Current weather forecasting technology is capable of knowing that near-record rainfall may occur somewhere in a given region about a day in advance, but knowing exactly how much and in which part of a specific river's drainage basin over hilly terrain makes flood forecasting much more difficult – analogous to prediction exactly which neighborhood a tornado might strike a day ahead of time. Donald Trump's staffing cuts have particularly hit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Environmental Modeling Center, which aims to improve the skill of these types of difficult forecasts. Though it's unclear to what extent staffing shortages across the NWS complicated the advance notice that local officials had of an impending flooding disaster, it's clear that this was a complex, compound tragedy of a type that climate warming is making more frequent. Rainfall intensity in central Texas has been trending upward for decades, and this week's rains were enhanced by the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry, which made landfall in northern Mexico last week. Barry's circulation pulled record amounts of atmospheric moisture up to central Texas from the near-record warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The mix of Barry's circulation and climate warming helped create conditions of record-high atmospheric moisture content over central Texas – in line with the trend towards increasing atmospheric moisture content globally as the world warms and the air can hold more water vapor.
Daily Mail
30 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Texas flood victims furious as local officials blame Trump's National Weather Service over failed warnings
Victims of the flash floods wrecking havoc on Central Texas are infuriated as local officials blame the National Weather Service (NWS) for failing to warn communities of the dire threat before it was too late. At least 59 people - including 21 children - have been killed by the devastating floods that have been sweeping the Lone Star State since the early hours of the Fourth of July - when rapid rainfall caused the Guadalupe River to surge more than 30 feet above its normal level. Rescue teams are frantically searching for missing victims, including 11 girls and a counselor who were at Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along the river in Kerr County, when tragedy struck. As search, rescue and recover efforts are underway - with Donald Trump signing a 'major disaster declaration' to support first responders - local officials have accused the NWS of rolling out warnings too late, especially in Kerr County where the devastation has been the greatest. The agency issued a flood watch on Thursday at 1:18pm, estimating up to seven inches of rain on Friday morning in South Central Texas. A flash flood warning was issued at 1:14am on Friday, with a more extreme warning coming at 4:03am, urging people to immediately evacuate to high grounds as the situation became 'extremely dangerous and life-threatening.' The warnings from the NWS existed - but they got through too late. 'This wasn't a forecasting failure,' meteorologist Matt Lanza told the Texas Tribune. 'It was a breakdown in communication.' 'The warnings were there. They just didn't get to people in time.' Further complicating matters, these warnings were issued during hours many Texans were asleep. 'The Weather Service was on the ball,' Chris Vagasky, a Wisconsin-based meteorologist told Wired. 'I really just want people to understand that the forecast office in San Antonio did a fantastic job. They got the warning out, but this was an extreme event.' But local officials have shifted the blame to the NWS, claiming the agency cost people their lives. At a Friday press conference, Texas Emergency Management Chief W. Nim Kidd said the amount of rain that slammed the Hill Country and Concho Valley was drastically underestimated. 'The amount of rain that fell at this specific location was never in any of those forecasts,' he said. Dalton Rice, the city manager for Kerrville, Texas, agreed that communities were under prepared for the sheer amount of rainfall. The NWS is in the process of hiring 100 new employees, as nearly 600 employees have left over the last few months after the Trump administration fired probationary federal employees and offered buyouts and early retirements. By April, nearly half of NWS forecast offices had 20 percent vacancy rates. But NWS meteorologist Jason Runyen said the New Braunfels office, which delivers forecasts for Austin, San Antonio and surrounding areas, had extra staff on duty during the storms. 'There were extra people in here that night, and that's typical in every weather service office - you staff up for an event and bring people in on overtime and hold people over,' he said. While Texas officials point fingers at the federal government, victims are frustrated with the lack of an efficient emergency response system to circulate emergency warnings. 'What they need is some kind of external system, like a tornado warning that tells people to get out now,' Christopher Flowers, 44, said. Flowers was staying at a friends house along the Guadalupe River as the chaos erupted. When he checked the forecast in the hours before the floods surged, he was unalarmed. It was not until he woke up in the pitch black, surrounded by water, that he knew something was wrong. Bud Bolton, a resident of Blue Oak RV Park in Kerrville, told the Houston Chronicle he and others did not receive any warning before the community was destroyed. 'You have the river authorities and I know what they do,' the enraged Texan told the outlet. 'You cannot tell me it's not their f***ing job to oversee this river and monitor this river, because that's what they do. That's their job. 'Where was the notification for all these families that needed to get out of here, because it had to be rising up that way first.' Lorena Guillen, a local restaurant owner, who also lives in the RV park, said when she called her sheriff's office before 3am, she was not told to evacuate her home. 'We started seeing the cabins floating from the other RV Parks floating down the river,' she told the Houston Chronicle. 'We started seeing cars with lights on and people honking inside their cars and they were just floating away.' Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly revealed the county most devastated by the floods has no unified emergency response system to notify residents of an oncoming disaster. 'We've looked into it before … The public reeled at the cost,' he said. He also did not know what kind of alert system Camp Mystic had to try and get all 750 of its campers to safety. 'What I do know is the flood hit the camp first, and it came in the middle of the night. I don't know where the kids were,' he added. 'I don't know what kind of alarm systems they had. That will come out in time.' Jonathan Porter, the chief meteorologist at AccuWeather, said measures could have been taken beforehand to reduce the harm done. 'People, businesses, and governments should take action based on Flash Flood Warnings that are issued, regardless of the rainfall amounts that have occurred or are forecast,' he said. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined Governor Greg Abbott at a Saturday press conference, vowing to update the 'ancient system' in place. 'The weather is extremely difficult to predict,' Noem said. 'But also that the National Weather Service, over the years at times, has done well and at times, we have all wanted more time and more warning and more notification.' She said the Trump Administration is working to 'fix' and 'update the technology.' 'We needed to renew this ancient system that has been left in place with the federal government for many, many years and that is the reforms that are ongoing there.' In a Sunday morning Truth Social Post, where Trump announced he signed the emergency declaration, he wrote: 'These families are enduring an unimaginable tragedy, with many lives lost, and many still missing.' 'Our incredible US Coast Guard, together with State First Responders, have saved more than 850 lives.' But victims including Guillen, feel they have been left in the dust, with these efforts being no match for the extent of the destruction. 'There was too much loss - human loss and property loss,' she told the Houston Chronicle.
