24 dead in Texas floods and more than 20 children missing from a girls summer camp
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KERRVILLE, Texas - Months worth of heavy rain fell in a matter of hours on Texas Hill Country, leaving 24 people dead and many more unaccounted for Friday, including more than 20 girls attending a summer camp, as search teams conducted boat and helicopter rescues in fast-moving floodwaters.Desperate pleas peppered social media as loved ones sought any information about people caught in the flood zone. At least 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain poured down overnight in central Kerr County, causing flash flooding of the Guadalupe River.At a news conference late Friday Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said 24 people had been killed. Authorities said 237 people had been recued so far, including 167 by helicopter.The missing children were attending Camp Mystic, a Christian camp along the Guadalupe River in the small town of Hunt. Elinor Lester, 13, said she and her cabin mates had to be helicoptered to safety.A raging storm woke up her cabin around 1:30 a.m., and when rescuers arrived, Lester said they tied a rope for the girls to hold as the children in her cabin walked across bridge with floodwaters whipping around the calves and knees."The camp was completely destroyed," she said. "A helicopter landed and started taking people away. It was really scary."The situation was still developing and officials said the death toll could change, with rescue operations ongoing for an unspecified total number of missing.Authorities were still working to identify the dead.Pleading for information after flash flood A river gauge at Hunt recorded a 22 foot rise (6.7 meters) in about two hours, according to Bob Fogarty, meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Austin/San Antonio office. The gauge failed after recording a level of 29 and a half feet (9 meters)."The water's moving so fast, you're not going to recognize how bad it is until it's on top of you," Fogarty said.On the Kerr County sheriff's office Facebook page, people posted pictures of loved ones and begged for help finding them.At least 400 people were on the ground helping in the response, Patrick said. Nine rescue teams, 14 helicopters and 12 drones were being used, with some people being rescued from trees.About 23 of the roughly 750 girls attending Camp Mystic were among those who were unaccounted for, Patrick said.Search crews were doing "whatever we can do to find everyone we can," he said.'Pitch black wall of death' In Ingram, Erin Burgess woke to thunder and rain at 3:30 a.m. Just 20 minutes later, water was pouring into her home directly across from the river, she said. She described an agonizing hour clinging to a tree and waiting for the water to recede enough so they could walk up the hill to a neighbor's home."My son and I floated to a tree where we hung onto it, and my boyfriend and my dog floated away. He was lost for a while, but we found them," she said.Of her 19-year-old son, Burgess said: "Thankfully he's over 6 feet tall. That's the only thing that saved me, was hanging on to him."Matthew Stone, 44, of Kerrville, said police came knocking on doors at 5:30 a.m. but that he had received no warning on his phone."We got no emergency alert. There was nothing," Stone said. Then: "a pitch black wall of death."Stone said police used his paddle boat to help rescue a neighbor. He and the rescuers thought they heard someone yelling "help!" from the water but couldn't see anyone, he said.'I was scared to death' At a reunification center set up in Ingram, families cried and cheered as loved ones got off vehicles loaded with evacuees. Two soldiers carried an older woman who could not get down a ladder. Behind her, a woman in a soiled T-shirt and shorts clutched a small white dog.Later, a girl in a white "Camp Mystic" T-shirt and white socks stood in a puddle, sobbing in her mother's arms.Barry Adelman, 54, said water pushed everyone in his three-story house into the attic, including his 94-year-old grandmother and 9-year-old grandson. The water started coming trough the attic floor before finally receding."I was horrified," he said. "I was having to look at my grandson in the face and tell him everything was going to be OK, but inside I was scared to death."'No one knew this kind of flood was coming' The forecast had called for rain, with a flood watch upgraded to a warning overnight for at least 30,000 people. But totals in some places exceeded expectations, Fogarty said.Patrick noted that the potential for heavy rain and flooding covered a large area."Everything was done to give them a heads up that you could have heavy rain, and we're not exactly sure where it's going to land," Patrick said. "Obviously as it got dark last night, we got into the wee morning of the hours, that's when the storm started to zero in."Asked about how people were notified in Kerr County so that they could get to safety, Judge Rob Kelly, the county's chief elected official, said: "We do not have a warning system."When reporters pushed on why more precautions weren't taken, Kelly responded: "Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming.""We have floods all the time," he added. "This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States."Popular tourism area prone to flooding The area is known as "flash flood alley" because of the hills' thin layer of soil, said Austin Dickson, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, which was collecting donations to help nonprofits responding to the disaster."When it rains, water doesn't soak into the soil," Dickson said. "It rushes down the hill."River tourism industry is a key part of the Hill Country economy, said Dickson. Well-known, century-old summer camps bring in kids from all over the country, he said. Between Hunt and Ingram are many river homes and cabins for rent."It's generally a very tranquil river with really beautiful clear blue water that people have been attracted to for generations," Dickson said.
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But as authorities launch one of the largest search-and-rescue efforts in recent Texas history, they have come under intensifying scrutiny over preparations and why residents and youth summer camps that are dotted along the river were not alerted sooner or told to evacuate. The National Weather Service sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies a rare alert notifying of imminent danger. Local officials have insisted that no one saw the flood potential coming and have defended their actions. There's going to be a lot of finger-pointing, a lot of second-guessing and Monday morning quarterbacking, said Republican US Rep Chip Roy, whose district includes Kerr County. There's a lot of people saying why' and how,' and I understand that. When the warnings began An initial flood watch which generally urges residents to be weather-aware was issued by the local National Weather Service office at 1:18 pm Thursday. It predicted between12.7 to 17.8 centimetres of rain. Weather messaging from the office, including automated alerts delivered to mobile phones to people in threatened areas, grew increasingly ominous in the early morning hours of Friday, urging people to move to higher ground and evacuate flood-prone areas, said Jason Runyen, a meteorologist in the National Weather Service office. At 4:03 am, the office issued an urgent warning that raised the potential of catastrophic damage and a severe threat to human life. Jonathan Porter, the chief meteorologist at AccuWeather, a private weather forecasting company that uses National Weather Service data, said it appeared evacuations and other proactive measures could have been undertaken to reduce the risk of fatalities. 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, Porter said in a statement. Officials say they didn't expect this Local officials have said they had not expected such an intense downpour that was the equivalent of months' worth of rain for the area. We know we get rains. We know the river rises, said Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county's top elected official. But nobody saw this coming. Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said he was jogging along the river early in the morning and didn't notice any problems at 4 am A little over an hour later, at 5:20 am, the water level had risen dramatically and we almost weren't able to get out of the park, he said. Rice also noted that the public can become desensitized to too many weather warnings. No county flood warning system Kelly said the county considered a flood warning system along the 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 of the expense. We've looked into it before The public reeled at the cost, Kelly said. He said he didn't know what kind of safety and evacuation plans the camps may have had. 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 said. "I don't know what kind of alarm systems they had. That will come out in time." US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said Saturday it was difficult for forecasters to predict just how much rain would fall. She said the Trump administration would make it a priority to upgrade National Weather Service technology used to deliver warnings. We know that everyone wants more warning time, and that's why we're working to upgrade the technology that's been neglected for far too long to make sure families have as much advance notice as possible, Noem said during a press conference with state and federal leaders. Weather service had extra staffers The National Weather Service office in New Braunfels, which delivers forecasts for Austin, San Antonio and the surrounding areas, had extra staff on duty during the storms, Runyen said. Where the office would typically have two forecasters on duty during clear weather, they had up to five on staff. 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, Runyen said. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
