Death toll rises to 82 after catastrophic Texas flood
During a separate press conference, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said an additional 10 people were dead in the broader central Texas area. At least 82 are confirmed dead as of Monday morning.
Abbott said another 41 people are still missing across the affected area, including 10 children and one counselor from Camp Mystic, a Christian camp for girls along the Guadalupe River.
Abbottsigned a federal disaster declaration on Saturday, which President Donald Trump signed on Sunday. Abbott also issued a disaster declaration for six Texas counties in addition to the 15 he identified on Friday, when heavy rains first caused the flooding.
On Truth Social, Trump said his administration was working with state and local officials to respond to the flooding.
"Melania and I are praying for all of the families impacted by this horrible tragedy," Trump wrote on Saturday. "Our Brave First Responders are on site doing what they do best. GOD BLESS THE FAMILIES, AND GOD BLESS TEXAS!"
The X account for Elon Musk's Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet system, is offering support to affected residents. Musk has a strong presence in Texas through his companies Tesla, X, and SpaceX.
"In support of those impacted by flooding in Texas, Starlink is providing Mini kits for search and rescue efforts — ensuring connectivity even in dead zones — and one month of free service for thousands of customers in the region, including those who paused service so they can reactivate Starlink during this time," the post said.
Officials said over 12 inches of rain fell in the county on Friday. The National Weather Service first issued a flash flood warning at 4 a.m. on Friday.
It extended the flood watch until Monday at 7 p.m., saying there was "a threat of flash flooding from slow moving heavy rains overnight and through the day on Monday."
The region is a popular vacation destination and home to multiple summer camps for children. Camp Mystic in Hunt has about 750 campers. Two days after disaster struck, officials said they remain hopeful they can find survivors.
In a statement posted to its website, the Heart O' the Hills, another girls' camp based in Hunt, said its director, Jane Ragsdale, had died in the floods.
"We have received word that Jane Ragsdale did not make it," it said. "We are mourning the loss of a woman who influenced countless lives and was the definition of strong and powerful."
It added that the camp was not in session as the flooding hit, and that "most of those who were on camp at the time have been accounted for and are on high ground."
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said during an earlier press conference that the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in just 45 minutes, washing away bridges and buildings in a wide area.
On Facebook, parents and community members have circulated flyers with contact numbers, urging the public to help locate the missing children.
Kerr County has an estimated population of about 53,900, according to a 2024 count by the US Census Bureau. The county sits in the Hill Country region of Central Texas, which includes cities like San Antonio and Austin. Beyond the Guadalupe River, the region is home to several others, including the Colorado, Concho, and Blanco Rivers.
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Newsweek
21 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Texas Summer Camp Tragedy Reminiscent of Similar Flooding 40 Years Ago
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A flash flooding disaster in 1987 mirrors the horrific event in Central Texas over the weekend that killed more than 80 people, including 27 young campers and their Christian summer camp counselors. Why It Matters On Friday, the National Weather Service (NWS) issued urgent warnings to people across Central Texas amid heavy downpours that resulted in months' worth of rain at once, prompting the Guadalupe River to surge 25 feet in only 45 minutes. More than a foot of rain lashed the region before the river flooding on Friday afternoon, National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist James Wingenroth told Newsweek. The downpours caused rivers to surge with little advance notice. Floodwaters inundated Central Texas, sweeping away an RV park with families still inside their vehicles. More than 80 people have died, and search-and-rescue missions continue on Monday as the region is anticipating up to 10 inches of rainfall throughout the day at some locations. What to Know On Friday, floodwaters rushed through Camp Mystic, creating perilous evacuation conditions in which girls were instructed to hold onto a rope to cross a bridge as floodwaters surged past their knees, The Associated Press reported. Helicopters brought some of the girls to safety, but 27 people died, Camp Mystic confirmed on Monday, including some of the young campers. A photo shows flooding caused by a flash flood at the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas, on July 5, 2025. A photo shows flooding caused by a flash flood at the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas, on July 5, 2025. Ronaldo Schemidt/Getty The 1987 Guadalupe River Flood Flash floods in Texas Hill Country have proved lethal more than once, the Guadalupe River flooding in 1987 in a similar way to this past weekend. The area surrounding the Guadalupe River, part of Texas' so-called "Flash Flood Alley," is known for its susceptibility to fast-forming, deadly floods due to unique geography and weather patterns. The Guadalupe River is bedded with limestone rather than mud, which contributes to its susceptibility to flooding and the fast flow of floodwaters. In 1987, sudden and intense rainfall caused the river to surge at an unprecedented rate in mid-July, leading to a tragedy that killed 10 campers at Pot O' Gold Christian Camp, a summer camp near Comfort, Texas. The campers drowned when their bus attempted to evacuate them and was overtaken by floodwater. In the span of just a few hours, heavy rainfall pushed the Guadalupe River well beyond its banks. The rising waters swept through campsites, inundating cabins and cutting off escape routes. The disaster prompted statewide scrutiny of safety protocols at summer camps near rivers. Decades later, the 1987 Guadalupe River flood looms large due to its parallels with subsequent tragedies. During the devastating flood that hit the region over the weekend, cabins at Camp Mystic also were destroyed and more than two dozen people were killed before evacuations could get everyone to safety. What People Are Saying Elinor Lester, a 13-year-old camper at Camp Mystic who was evacuated by helicopter, said according to a report by The Associated Press: "The camp was completely destroyed. It was really scary." Luther Vanlandingham Jr, a deputy for the Kendall County Sheriff's Office in 1987, said of the flood that year, according to a report by KSAT: "It was just a loud rushing noise. I have never seen the river that high before … Unbelievable how fast it was going." NWS Austin said in a Monday forecast: "There remains a threat of flash flooding from slow moving heavy rains overnight and through the day on Monday somewhere over the watch area. Difficult to pinpoint exact locations where isolated heavier amounts will occur. An uptick in coverage and intensity of scattered showers and storms is possible overnight near the I-35 corridor and eastern Hill Country, developing west through the day on Monday. … Any additional heavy rainfall over hardest hit areas of the past few days will lead to rapid runoff and flash flooding." What Happens Next Numerous flood-related weather alerts remain in place across Central Texas on Monday afternoon. Most of the majorly flooded rivers have receded, though some remain in minor flooding.
USA Today
31 minutes ago
- USA Today
Texas flood raises questions about warnings as death toll rises. We deserve answers.
Flash floods are common in Texas. It's not politicizing a tragedy to ask what could have been done to prevent this disaster and to head off others like it in the years ahead. The scene in Kerr County and other areas of the Texas Hill Country is worse than any horror film. The Guadalupe River surged more than 26 feet in less than an hour in the early morning of July 4, sweeping away homes and flooding campgrounds as children and adults slept. At least 90 people died in the flood, including as many as 27 children. Authorities say 10 children from a summer camp are still missing. Amid the horror, heroes and helpers have emerged. Scott Ruskan, 26, is a new Coast Guard rescue swimmer. He has been hailed as a hero for helping save the lives of 165 flood survivors on his first rescue mission. Others gave their lives helping to save lives. Richard Eastland, the director of Camp Mystic, died attempting to rescue campers caught in the raging flood. More than 700 girls were staying at the Christian camp when the flash flood hit. Julian Ryan, 27, also died a hero. As water rose inside the mobile home he shared with his fiancée, two children and his mother, he broke a window, allowing his family to escape the flood. But the broken glass cut an artery in his arm. As he bled to death, Ryan told his family, 'I'm sorry, I'm not going to make it. I love y'all." Young sisters lost their lives in the flood Still, most of the stories emerging from this tragedy offer only heartbreak and devastation. A search crew found sisters Blair and Brooke Harber holding rosaries with their hands locked together. The girls, staying at Camp Mystic, were only 11- and 13-years-old. As a mother of two children the same ages as Blair and Brooke, I'm horrified. I can't imagine the pain and anguish their parents, and so many other parents, are now suffering. My heart also breaks for the family and friends of Chloe Childress, a counselor at Camp Mystic who planned to attend the University of Texas at Austin this fall. Her high school principal described Chloe as having had a "remarkable way of making people feel seen" and "steady compassion that settled a room." So many other stories are being told of children and young people lost to the flood, of adults swept away in an instant, of families devastated forever that we can hardly absorb the magnitude of this horror. 'Flash flood alley': These Texas 'flash flood alley' towns have suffered most in horrific flooding Texas leaders must address questions about warning system Although it is a sensitive moment for grieving families and communities, state leaders in Texas need to address several urgent questions. Flash floods are common in the state. It's not politicizing a tragedy to ask what could have been done to prevent this disaster and to head off others like it in the years ahead. A thorough and transparent review of early warning systems is vital. Opinion: The NWS is understaffed during hurricane season. It keeps me up at night. The National Weather Service issued multiple warnings about the potential for flash floods, and a text alert was sent at 4:03 a.m. July 4 about an imminent threat in Kerr County. But many of the victims were sleeping as the river surged in the early morning darkness. Parents of the hundreds of children staying at Camp Mystic, on the banks of the Guadalupe River, deserve answers as to why the camp was not evacuated before the flood. Nothing can erase the pain of this tragedy. But for the sake of other children, other families, we must learn from this horror, including the addition of early warning systems and improvements in how and when urgent weather information is shared. Those of us who call Texas home are resilient. We're generous in times of need. We will grieve with our neighbors and be grateful for the heroes who rushed into danger. And we will not allow the horror of this flood to pass without demanding the changes needed to protect our children now and in the years ahead. Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, and get it delivered to your inbox.
San Francisco Chronicle
36 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Debate erupts over role job cuts played in weather forecasts ahead of deadly Texas floods
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former federal officials and outside experts have warned for months that President Donald Trump's deep staffing cuts to the National Weather Service could endanger lives. After torrential rains and flash flooding struck Friday in the Texas Hill Country, the weather service came under fire from local officials who criticized what they described as inadequate forecasts, though most in the heavily Republican state stopped sort of blaming Trump's cuts. Democrats, meanwhile, wasted little time in linking the staff reductions to the disaster, which is being blamed for the deaths of at least 80 people, including more than two dozen girls and counselors attending a summer camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River. The NWS office responsible for that region had five staffers on duty as thunderstorms formed over Texas Thursday evening, the usual number for an overnight shift when severe weather is expected. Current and former NWS officials defended the agency, pointing to urgent flash flood warnings issued in the pre-dawn hours before the river rose. 'This was an exceptional service to come out first with the catastrophic flash flood warning and this shows the awareness of the meteorologists on shift at the NWS office,' said Brian LaMarre, who retired at the end of April as the meteorologist-in-charge of the NWS forecast office in Tampa, Florida. ″There is always the challenge of pinpointing extreme values, however, the fact the catastrophic warning was issued first showed the level of urgency.' Questions remain, however, about the level of coordination and communication between NWS and local officials on the night of the disaster. The Trump administration has cut hundreds of jobs at NWS, with staffing down by at least 20% at nearly half of the 122 NWS field offices nationally and at least a half dozen no longer staffed 24 hours a day. Hundreds more experienced forecasters and senior managers were encouraged to retire early. The White House also has proposed slashing its parent agency's budget by 27% and eliminating federal research centers focused on studying the world's weather, climate and oceans. The website for the NWS office for Austin/San Antonio, which covers the region that includes hard-hit Kerr County, shows six of 27 positions are listed as vacant. The vacancies include a key manager responsible for issuing warnings and coordinating with local emergency management officials. An online resume for the employee who last held the job showed he left in April after more than 17 years, shortly after mass emails sent to employees urging them to retire early or face potential layoffs. Democrats on Monday pressed the Trump administration for details about the cuts. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded that the administration conduct an inquiry into whether staffing shortages contributed to 'the catastrophic loss of life' in Texas. Meanwhile, Trump said the job eliminations did not hamper any weather forecasting. The raging waters, he said Sunday, were 'a thing that happened in seconds. No one expected it. Nobody saw it.' Former officials warn that job cuts could hamper future forecasts Former federal officials and experts have said Trump's indiscriminate job reductions at NWS and other weather-related agencies will result in brain drain that imperils the federal government's ability to issue timely and accurate forecasts. Such predictions can save lives, particularly for those in the path of quick-moving storms. 'This situation is getting to the point where something could break,' said Louis Uccellini, a meteorologist who served as NWS director under three presidents, including during Trump's first term. 'The people are being tired out, working through the night and then being there during the day because the next shift is short staffed. Anything like that could create a situation in which important elements of forecasts and warnings are missed.' After returning to office in January, Trump issued a series of executive orders empowering the Department of Government Efficiency, initially led by mega-billionaire Elon Musk, to enact sweeping staff reductions and cancel contracts at federal agencies, bypassing significant Congressional oversight. Though Musk has now departed Washington and had a very public falling out with Trump, DOGE staffers he hired and the cuts he sought have largely remained, upending the lives of tens of thousands of federal employees. Cuts resulted from Republican effort to privatize duties of weather agencies The cuts follow a decade-long Republican effort to dismantle and privatize many of the duties of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency within the Commerce Department that includes the NWS. The reductions have come as Trump has handed top public posts to officials with ties to private companies that stand to profit from hobbling the taxpayer-funded system for predicting the weather. Project 2025, the conservative governing blueprint that Trump distanced himself from during the 2024 campaign but that he has broadly moved to enact once in office, calls for dismantling NOAA and further commercializing the weather service. Chronic staffing shortages have led a handful of offices to curtail the frequency of regional forecasts and weather balloon launches needed to collect atmospheric data. In April, the weather service abruptly ended translations of its forecasts and emergency alerts into languages other than English, including Spanish. The service was soon reinstated after public outcry. NOAA's main satellite operations center briefly appeared earlier this year on a list of surplus government real estate set to be sold. Trump's proposed budget also seeks to shutter key facilities for tracking climate change. The proposed cuts include the observatory atop the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii that for decades has documented the steady rise in plant-warming carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. On June 25, NOAA abruptly announced that the U.S. Department of Defense would no longer process or transmit data from three weather satellites experts said are crucial to accurately predicting the path and strength of hurricanes at sea. 'Removing data from the defense satellite is similar to removing another piece to the public safety puzzle for hurricane intensity forecasting,' said LaMarre, now a private consultant. 'The more pieces removed, the less clear the picture becomes which can reduce the quality of life-saving warnings.' Trump officials say they didn't fire meteorologists At a pair of Congressional hearings last month, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called it 'fake news' that the Trump administration had axed any meteorologists, despite detailed reporting from The Associated Press and other media organizations that chronicled the layoffs. 'We are fully staffed with forecasters and scientists,' Lutnick said June 4 before a Senate appropriations subcommittee. 'Under no circumstances am I going to let public safety or public forecasting be touched.' Despite a broad freeze on federal hiring directed by Trump, NOAA announced last month it would seek to fill more than 100 'mission-critical field positions,' as well as plug holes at some regional weather offices by reassigning staff. Those positions have not yet been publicly posted, though a NOAA spokesperson said Sunday they would be soon. Asked by AP how the NWS could simultaneously be fully staffed and still advertise 'mission critical positions' as open, Commerce spokesperson Kristen Eichamer said the 'National Hurricane Center is fully staffed to meet this season's demand, and any recruitment efforts are simply meant to deepen our talent pool.' 'The secretary is committed to providing Americans with the most accurate, up-to-date weather data by ensuring the National Weather Service is fully equipped with the personnel and technology it needs,' Eichamer said. 'For the first time, we are integrating technology that's more accurate and agile than ever before to achieve this goal, and with it the NWS is poised to deliver critical weather information to Americans.' Uccellini and the four prior NWS directors who served under Democratic and Republican presidents criticized the Trump cuts in an open letter issued in May; they said the administration's actions resulted in the departures of about 550 employees — an overall reduction of more than 10 percent. 'NWS staff will have an impossible task to continue its current level of services,' they wrote. 'Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life. We know that's a nightmare shared by those on the forecasting front lines – and by the people who depend on their efforts.' NOAA's budget for fiscal year 2024 was just under $6.4 billion, of which less than $1.4 billion went to NWS. Experts worry about forecasts for hurricanes While experts say it would be illegal for Trump to eliminate NOAA without Congressional approval, some former federal officials worry the cuts could result in a patchwork system where taxpayers finance the operation of satellites and collection of atmospheric data but are left to pay private services that would issue forecasts and severe weather warnings. That arrangement, critics say, could lead to delays or missed emergency alerts that, in turn, could result in avoidable deaths. D. James Baker, who served as NOAA's administrator during the Clinton administration, questioned whether private forecasting companies would provide the public with services that don't generate profits. 'Would they be interested in serving small communities in Maine, let's say?' Baker asked. 'Is there a business model that gets data to all citizens that need it? Will companies take on legal risks, share information with disaster management agencies, be held accountable as government agencies are? Simply cutting NOAA without identifying how the forecasts will continue to be provided is dangerous.' Though the National Hurricane Center in Miami has been largely spared staff reductions like those at regional NWS offices, some professionals who depend on federal forecasts and data greeted the June start of the tropical weather season with profound worry. In an unusual broadcast on June 3, longtime South Florida TV meteorologist John Morales warned his viewers that the Trump administration cuts meant he might not be able to provide as accurate forecasts for hurricanes as he had in years past. He cited staffing shortfalls of between 20% and 40% at NWS offices from Tampa to Key West and urged his NBC 6 audience in greater Miami to call their congressional representatives. 'What we are starting to see is that the quality of the forecasts is becoming degraded,' Morales said. 'And we may not know exactly how strong a hurricane is before it reaches the coastline.'
