Death toll in central Texas flash floods rises to 70 as sheriff says 11 campers remain missing
Rescuers maneuvering through challenging terrain continued their desperate search for the missing, including 11 girls and a counselor from the camp. How many more remain unaccounted for across the Texas Hill Country and beyond remains unclear as authorities haven't given an estimate even though it has been three days since the storm began pounding the state.
In Kerr County, home to Camp Mystic and other youth camps, searchers have found 16 bodies since Saturday afternoon, bringing the total number of dead there to 59, including 21 children, said Sheriff Larry Leitha.
He pledged to keep searching until 'everybody is found' from Friday's flash floods. Four deaths also were reported in Travis County, three in Burnet, two in Kendall and one each in Tom Green and Williamson counties.
Families were allowed to look around the camp beginning Sunday morning. One girl walked out of a building carrying a large bell. A man, who said his daughter was rescued from a cabin on the highest point in the camp, walked a riverbank, looking in clumps of trees and under big rocks.
A woman and a teenage girl, both wearing rubber waders, briefly went inside one of the cabins, which stood next to a pile of soaked mattresses, a storage trunk and clothes. At one point, the pair doubled over, sobbing before they embraced.
One family left with a blue footlocker. A teenage girl had tears running down her face looking out the open window, gazing at the wreckage as they slowly drove away.
While the families saw the devastation for the first time, nearby crews operating heavy equipment pulled tree trunks and tangled branches from the water as they searched the river.
With each passing hour, the outlook of finding more survivors became even more bleak. Volunteers and some families of the missing who drove to the disaster zone searched the riverbanks despite being asked not to do so.
Authorities faced growing questions about whether enough warnings were issued in an area long vulnerable to flooding and whether enough preparations were made.
President Donald Trump signed a major disaster declaration Sunday for Kerr County, activating the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Texas. 'These families are enduring an unimaginable tragedy, with many lives lost, and many still missing,' Trump posted on social media.
The destructive, fast-moving waters rose 26 feet (8 meters) on the river in only 45 minutes before daybreak 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.
Gov. 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, '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 century-old 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.
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 wouldn't 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 8-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.
At the Mo-Ranch Camp in the community of Hunt, officials had been monitoring the weather and opted to move several hundred campers and attendees at a church youth conference to higher ground. At nearby Camps Rio Vista and Sierra Vista, organizers also had mentioned on social media that they were watching the weather the day before ending their second summer session Thursday.
Authorities and elected officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour, the equivalent of months' worth of rain for the area.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, whose district includes the ravaged area, acknowledged that there would be second-guessing and finger-pointing as people look for someone to blame.
___
Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press writers Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee; Cedar Attanasio in New York; Sophia Tareen in Chicago; Michelle Price in Bridgewater, N.J.; and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed.
Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
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 linger about level of coordination 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.' ___ Contact AP's global investigative team at Investigative@ or
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Camp Mystic Director Dies Trying to Save Young Campers from Floods as Death Toll Surpasses 50
For more than 50 years, Richard "Dick" Eastland, 70, has been at the heart of Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian camp that he purchased in 1974. Tragedy stuck the campgrounds on Friday with historic floodwaters in Texas. With multiple cabins washed away in the floodwaters, many of Camp Mystic's young campers are among the heartbreaking casualties and those still missing. On Saturday, Eastland himself was counted among the deceased, as reported by The Kerville Daily Times. His nephew was first to announce his death on Facebook, per KSAT, in a post that is no longer available. Talking to the Washington Post after his death was announced, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said that Eastland died in a helicopter on the way to a hospital. He'd reportedly been rescued after trying to save girls at his camp, rushing to one of the camp's 23 cabins when floodwaters swept it away. "It doesn't surprise me at all that his last act of kindness and sacrifice was working to save the lives of campers," wrote a former camper in a column written for the Daily Times. She wrote that she and many of the girls who attended Camp Mystic saw Eastland as a father-figure, and looked forward to spending time with him and his wife Tweety each summer. Tweety was found alive in the couple's home on the camp grounds, according to Texas Public Radio. As search-and-rescue operations continue in and around Kerrville on Sunday, more than 43 people are confirmed dead in Kerr County alone, and 59 total from the devastating floodwaters of the Guadalupe River which rose 26 feet in just 45 minutes early Friday morning, per ABC News. Officials in Kerr County said that the speed at which the water rose made it impossible for them to issue evacuation orders in time, with Kerrville city manager Dalton Rice telling the outlet, "This happened very quickly, over a very short period of time, that could not be predicted, even with the radar." Among the dead are 21 children, while 23 girls from Camp Mystic remain missing and have not been since the flash flood washed away many of the cabins. The total amount of people reported missing, beyond the children, has not been released by authorities. "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," Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a statement, vowing that search efforts will continue working around the clock as the water recedes, opening up new areas. Founded in 1926, the Eastlands are third-generation owners of Camp Mystic, per The Daily Mail. The camp's mission is for the camp to "bring out the best" in its young campers, emphasizing the forging of lifelong friendships and a "wholesome Christian atmosphere." NBC News states there were approximately 750 girls at Camp Mystic when the flooding began. The camp told parents via email in the aftermath that if they had not been contacted directly, then their daughter or daughters have been accounted for. In the four-week summer sessions, girls enjoy horseback riding, dances, fishing, and water activities. The river, which is usually idyllic and peaceful, is prone to flash flooding, but officials are calling this a 100-year-flood after receiving what they characterized as months of rain in an extremely short span. Several families have confirmed the deaths of their own daughters in heartbroken social media posts and statements to the media, but as the identities of the missing and deceased have not yet been released, it is not known if officials are acknowledging those losses yet in their figures. At least five Camp Mystic girls are confirmed dead, according to family members, including Renee Smajstrla, 8; Sarah Marsh, 8; Janie Hunt, 9; and Lila Bonner, 9, and Eloise Peck, 8, as reported by the New York Post.
USA Today
19 minutes ago
- USA Today
Watch: Timelapse video shows floodwaters rising rapidly in Texas' Llano River
At least 90 people have died in the catastrophic flash floods that hit Texas over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, including 27 children and counselors at beloved all-girls Camp Mystic. Dozens of people were known to be missing across the state and areas affected by the flooding, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said at a news conference July 6, adding search and rescue efforts were still underway. Extreme flooding began in the Texas Hill Country around 4 a.m. on July 4, as thunderstorms dropped more than 10 inches of rain on the region. The rain overwhelmed the Guadalupe River, causing it to quickly rise and surge over 26 feet in less than an hour on July 4, said Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. The hardest-hit area is Kerr County. Timelapse footage captured by an eyewitness shows floodwaters from the nearby Llano River rising over a causeway in Kingsland, about 65 miles north of Austin, completely submerging it in just a few minutes. The video was captured around 6 p.m. CST June 4 over 50 minutes by a resident Robert Ivey. "It really only took a few minutes to shut down the roadway," Ivey said. Watch the video at the top of the story. The water in the river had subsided slightly as of Monday morning, Ivey told USA TODAY on Monday, June 7. Extreme flooding in Texas: USA TODAY answers your FAQs Texas devastated by flash flooding The Llano, a spring-fed stream, is formed in Kimble County by the meeting of the North and South Llano Rivers, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife. The main stream flows east through Kimble, Mason, and Llano Counties for approximately 100 miles before joining the Colorado River and forming Lake Lyndon B. Johnson, a reservoir on the Colorado River in the Texas Hill Country about 45 miles northwest of Austin. As search and rescue efforts are underway, more downpours and flash flooding are expected in the region and the National Weather Service extended a flood watch July 7 through 7 p.m. local time for much of central Texas, anticipating that slow-moving thunderstorms will drop heavy rain across the region. 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 causing flash floods. 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. Contributing: Karissa Waddick, Dinah Voyles Pulver, Christopher Cann, USA TODAY Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at sshafiq@ and follow her on X and Instagram @saman_shafiq7.
