Youth camp confirms 27 dead as Texas flood toll nears 90
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The United States was shocked at the disaster over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, and forecasters warned of more flooding as rain falls on saturated ground.
"Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy,"
Camp Mystic
said in a statement confirming the 27 deaths at the all-girls camp that was located next to a river.
State officials on Monday put the overall number of dead from the flooding at 88, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz told reporters that the toll was continuing to rise.
"Texas is grieving right now -- the pain, the shock of what has transpired these last few days has broken the heart of our state," Cruz told reporters.
"The children, little girls, who were lost at Camp Mystic, that's every parent's nightmare."
Camps are a beloved tradition in the long US summer holidays, with children often staying in woods, parks and other rural areas.
Cruz described them as a chance to make "lifetime friends -- and then suddenly it turns to tragedy."
President Donald Trump has said he may visit Texas later this week, but brushed off concerns his cuts to weather forecasting and related federal agencies had weakened warning systems.
Instead, he described the floods in the early hours of Friday as a "100-year catastrophe" that "nobody expected."
Grim search
Trump, who previously said disaster relief should be handled at the state level, signed a major disaster declaration, activating fresh federal funds and freeing up resources.
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Helicopters and boats were taking part in the search across an area popular with tourists as well as summer camps.
Camp Mystic was an all-girl Christian camp where about 750 people had been staying when the floodwaters struck.
In a terrifying display of nature's power, the rain-swollen waters of the Guadalupe River reached treetops and the roofs of cabins as girls at the camp slept.
Blankets, teddy bears and other belongings were caked in mud.
Windows in the cabins were shattered, apparently by the force of the water.
"We've recovered 75 deceased bodies here in Kerr County, including 48 adults and 27 children," County Sheriff Larry Leitha told reporters Monday. At least 13 other deaths were confirmed in the state.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott warned that more heavy rainfall could bring further flooding, as officials cautioned people to avoid still-raging rivers.
'Flash Flood Alley'
Months' worth of rain fell in a matter of hours on Thursday night into Friday, and rain has continued in bouts since then.
The Guadalupe surged around 26 feet (eight meters) -- more than a two-story building -- in just 45 minutes.
Flash floods, which occur when the ground is unable to absorb torrential rainfall, are not unusual in this region of south and central Texas, known colloquially as "Flash Flood Alley."
Human-driven climate change has made extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heat waves more frequent and more intense in recent years.
"There's debris all over the place that makes roads impassable, that makes reconstruction projects unachievable," Abbott said.
People from elsewhere in the state converged on Kerr County to help look for the missing.
Some residents also flew personal drones to help look, but officials urged them to stop, citing a danger to rescue aircraft.
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Ramachandra Guha: Remembering Yusuf Meherally, the Muslim socialist mayor of Mumbai
Back in 2006, I wrote a column in the now defunct Time Out Mumbai setting out the criteria for an urban agglomeration to be considered a ' world city'. To qualify for that appellation, I argued, a city had to be massive in size, have historical depth, a thriving cultural life, appreciable social (including linguistic and religious) diversity, and be an economic powerhouse. I concluded that there were only three world cities: London, New York, and Mumbai. I remembered that piece when reading about Zohran Mamdani's campaign for the mayoralty of New York. Christian-dominated London, remarkably, already has a Muslim mayor; might New York, known so far for being Christian and Jewish (and atheist), also soon have one? In considering this question, it struck me that our third world city, Mumbai, comfortably beat them in this race, for it has had as many as six Muslim mayors, the first in 1934 and the last in 1963. This column focuses on one of these Muslim mayors of Bombay, for whom his brief stint in that post was not his only or even his most important distinction. His name was Yusuf Meherally, and among the reasons for writing about him now is that he died 75 years ago this month. An articulate leader Born in Bombay in 1903, Meherally studied at the Bharda High School and at Elphinstone College, where he acquired a formidable reputation as a debater. He also took a law degree, but was denied a licence to practice on account of his political views. For he had thrown himself into the freedom struggle, playing an active part in the protests against the all-White Simon Commission in 1928, and being jailed in the Salt Satyagraha two years later. In 1934, the Congress Socialist Party was formed, seeking to give an egalitarian direction to the parent party led by Gandhi. Meherally became one of the CSP's most articulate leaders, with a particular interest in workers' rights and in anti-colonial movements in other parts of Asia and Africa. Through the 1930s he travelled tirelessly across India promoting the credo of grassroots socialism, while also visiting Europe and America to build bridges with democratic socialists there. In April 1942, Yusuf Meherally was elected mayor of Bombay. In August of the same year, Gandhi launched the Quit India movement. In his capacity as mayor, it fell to Meherally to formally welcome Gandhi when he arrived by train in Bombay for the All Indian Congress Committee session which passed that historic resolution. Folklore has it that Yusuf Meherally came up with the slogan 'Quit India'; this may be a misattribution, though it was indeed Meherally who came up, in 1928, with that other resonant slogan, 'Simon Go Back!' Notably, Madhu Dandavate's biography, published in 1986, does not make the claim, merely writing that 'with the blessings of Mahatma Gandhi, Meherally's Padma Publications, brought out on the eve of the 1942 August Revolution a booklet with the caption, Quit India.' The book Quit India by #MahatmaGandhi & edited by Yusuf Meherally, was published by Padma Prakashan. In Sept 1942, C.I.D raided the premises of Padma Prakashan at Pherozshah Mehta Rd Mumbai/Bombay for the copies of 'Quit India'. #QuitIndiaMovement — Mani Bhavan Mumbai (@GandhiInMumbai) August 8, 2023 In one of his jail terms, Meherally was incarcerated in Lahore, far away from his native city. He noted in his prison diary that it moved him to be so close to the barracks in which Lala Lajpat Rai was imprisoned, so close to the yard where Bhagat Singh and his companions, Sukhdev and Rajguru, were executed, so close to 'the famous well whose water Maharaja Ranjit Singh loved so much and which today [1942] serves the entire jail population'. I myself first heard of Yusuf Meherally in the early 1980s, when a friend worked at a centre for urban studies named for him. Some years later, I bought, in a New York bookshop, a collection of essays by the American journalist and historian, Bertram D Wolfe. The book was called Strange Communists I Have Known, and it had an essay on Meherally, intriguingly titled: 'Gandhi versus Lenin'. Wolfe and Meherally became friends in the mid 1930s, on the latter's first visit to the United States of America. Before he met Meherally, the species of Leftists Wolfe was most familiar with were American communists, who swore a blind fealty to the Soviet dictators, Lenin and Stalin, and fanatically believed that allegedly worthy ends justified using the most immoral means. Speaking to Meherally, Wolfe was struck by the compassionate humanism of his socialism and came to understand how 'it was the influence of Gandhi within the Congress Socialist Party which had immunized it against the moral corruption of the communists'. Wolfe tells a lovely story of taking Yusuf Meherally to the tip of Cape Cod, where the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Massachusetts Bay meet. Meherally got out of the car, leaving his sandals behind, and waded into the waters. When Meherally walked back to the road, recalled Wolfe, 'his face was lit up with an expression of happiness that I had not seen before. 'We Indians believe that every confluence of waters is a sacred place', he explained to me.' Indian Socialist heads: Jayaprakash Narayan and Yusuf Meherally — Socialist Swaraj (@SocialistSwj) February 27, 2023 On Meherally's first visit to the US, Wolfe found him full of righteous indignation against the horrors of British colonial rule. However, on his second trip, made in 1946 when it was clear that India would soon be independent, Meherally was heard speaking in fonder terms of the oppressor, telling his American friend 'of the good things the British had contributed to Indian civilisation and culture, above all the safeguarding of individual and civil rights that are inherent in the British tradition'. Wolfe was taken aback by this change of heart. He asked Meherally how he could now praise 'the British sense of justice' when it had kept him in jail for so long. Meherally answered: 'Even while they oppressed us, they were uncomfortable about it. A hunger strike in a British jail could get me… your book or other books to read. 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