Search teams trudged through muddy riverbanks and flew over flood-hit central Texas on Monday, as hopes faded of finding more survivors among the dozens still missing in a disaster that has claimed at least 96 lives, many of them children.
Three days after a torrential predawn downpour transformed the Guadalupe River into a raging, killer torrent, a Christian girls’ summer camp devastated by the flash flood confirmed that 27 campers and counselors were among those who had perished.
Ten girls and a camp counselor were still unaccounted for, officials said on Monday, as search-and-rescue personnel faced the potential of more heavy rains and thunderstorms while clawing through tons of muck-laden debris.
The bulk of the death toll from Friday’s flooding was concentrated in and around the riverfront Hill Country town of Kerrville, including the ill-fated grounds of Camp Mystic.
By Monday afternoon, the bodies of 84 flood victims – 56 adults and 28 children – were recovered in Kerr County, most of them in the county seat of Kerrville, according to the local sheriff.
As of midday Sunday, state and local officials said 12 other flood-related fatalities had been confirmed across five neighboring south-central Texas counties, and that 41 other people were still listed as missing outside Kerr County.
The New York Times, one of numerous news media outlets publishing varying death tolls on Monday, reported that at least 104 people had been killed across the entire flood zone.
‘Rough Week’ Ahead
While authorities continued to hold out hope that some of the missing would turn up alive, the likelihood of finding more survivors diminished as time passed.
“This will be a rough week,” Mayor Joe Herring Jr said at a briefing on Monday morning.
Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian girls’ retreat on the banks of the Guadalupe was at the epicenter of the disaster.
“Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy,” the camp said in a statement on Monday.
Richard “Dick” Eastland, 70, Mystic’s co-owner and director, died trying to save children at his camp from the flood, multiple media, including the Austin American-Statesman reported. He and his wife, Tweety Eastland, have owned the camp since 1974, according to its website.
“If he wasn’t going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way, saving the girls that he so loved and cared for,” Eastland’s grandson, George Eastland, wrote on Instagram.
Mishap In The Sky
Authorities lost one of their aviation assets on Monday when a privately operated drone collided in restricted airspace over the Kerr County flood zone with a search helicopter, forcing the chopper to make an emergency landing. No injuries were reported, but the aircraft was put out of commission, according to the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office.
National Weather Service forecasts on Monday predicted that up to 4 more inches of rain could douse Texas Hill Country, with isolated areas possibly receiving as much as 10 inches (25 cm).
Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the NWS Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said the potential for renewed flooding was particularly heightened by the saturated condition of the soil and mounds of debris already strewn around the river channel. A flood watch was posted until 7 p.m.
State emergency management officials had warned on Thursday, ahead of the July Fourth holiday, that parts of central Texas faced the possibility of flash floods based on National Weather Service forecasts.
But twice as much rain as was predicted ended up falling over two branches of the Guadalupe just upstream of the fork where they converge, sending all of that water racing into the single river channel where it slices through Kerrville, City Manager Dalton Rice said.
Rice said the outcome, the result of an unpredictable combination of circumstances, was unforeseen and unfolded in a matter of two hours.
“Why didn’t we evacuate? Well, evacuation is a delicate balance,” he said in response to reporters’ questions on Monday. “If you evacuate too late, you then risk putting buses, or cars, or vehicles or campers on roads into low-water areas, trying to get them out, which then can make it even more challenging.”
“It’s very tough to make those calls, because what we also don’t want to do is cry wolf.”
‘Partisan Finger-Pointing’
The chief meteorologist for commercial forecaster AccuWeather, Jonathan Porter, said authorities had ample time to move people to higher ground before the flood struck.
Rice and other public officials, including Governor Greg Abbott, said the circumstances of the flooding, and the adequacy of weather forecasts and warning systems, would be scrutinized once the immediate situation was brought under control.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday asked a government watchdog to investigate whether budget cuts imposed by the Trump administration contributed to any delays or inaccuracy in forecasting the floods.
US Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said there would be time to examine whether more could have been done to prevent the loss of life but that now was not the time for “partisan finger-pointing.”
(With inputs from Reuters)
