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Texas Floods Kill at Least 51 with Dozens Missing

At least 51 people, including 15 children, died when flash flooding ripped through parts of Texas. A frantic search continues to find 27 children who were swept away while staying at a Christian summer camp in Kerr County on the edge of the Guadalupe River.

These pictures from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department show the sheer impact of the floodwaters with debris strewn across the river as it heads downstream.

The Guadalupe River burst its banks during heavy rain in an area near Camp Mystic, northwest of San Antonio. Officials say the river rose more than 5 meters in just 45 minutes.

Our correspondent Gary O’ Donahghue sent this report.

The torrential rain early Friday morning took everyone by surprise. In some places, between 12 and 15 inches fell in a matter of a couple of hours as the Guadalupe River rose by 26 feet in 45 minutes, its second highest level on record.

Among the terrible devastation wrought by the floodwaters, a glimmer of good news. These people among the hundreds who’ve been rescued.

But for many families, the anxious wait continues, gathered at centers around the town of Kerrville, hoping for news of those still missing.

Much of the focus is on a camp for young Christian girls close to the Guadalupe River. 750 children were staying here. At least two dozen girls are still missing.

State and federal officials, including the Secretary for Homeland Security, have said nothing will be spared to find those still missing.

The number one priority now is people, making sure we’re finding people as fast as possible and we’re returning them to their families.

You can see this house has been completely washed away by the water. Just the foundations left where I’m standing. And over here beyond this blue greenhouse through the trees is the red roof that was on this house. And we’ve just spoken to some relatives of people who lived in this house who were here. And they told us that of the five people that were here when the water came, two are unaccounted for, including a young toddler.

You got to keep hope. I guess you know that. I couldn’t believe that they’re gone unless, you know, someone actually told me, you know, I would have hope that they’re still out there somewhere.

As we were speaking to Jonathan and Britney, relatives of those who’d been in this house, a neighbor dashed up, she’d found the piggy bank or money jar for one of the boys who’d been in the house and had survived.

Yeah. At least give it to him because they’re going to go see him in the hospital today.

This will be a long and painstaking recovery operation, but the local authorities unable to say just how many visitors there were in the area at the time because of the Fourth of July holiday weekend. A normally joyous moment for this country, marking its independence marred by tragedy.

The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, said he had signed an expanded disaster declaration to help search and rescue efforts and requested assistance from the Trump administration.

We will be relentless in going after and ensuring that we locate every single person who’s been a victim of this flooding event. We’re not going to stop today or tomorrow. We will stop when the job is completed.

President Trump, he loves Texas for one. He’s deeply concerned about all the families who’ve been affected, but also knows about the magnitude of the devastation that we’re suffering. And so what I’m about to sign now is going to be the first step in a process. This document is a request for a federal disaster declaration coming from the governor to seek the immediate and ongoing help of the federal government.

Andrew Desler is a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. He predicts that more extreme weather will become the norm and says unless elected officials acknowledge that there will be more problems.

I think that we need to accept that we’re going to be living in a world with more extreme weather and we have to be planning for it and that there’s a problem when your elected officials won’t admit that the climate is changing and so I think we’ve got a real public policy problem given the elected representatives in the US and, you know, until you admit that things are changing and start coming up with a plan of how to deal with it, you’re really just damned to continue to repeat this.

Well, despite the suffering, there have been remarkable tales of survival as well. Scott Walden and his wife live in Kerrville where they were washed away. Kerrville, beg you pardon, where they were washed away as floodwaters quickly inundated their home.

About 6:30 in the morning or six o’clock in the morning, we heard some thumps. I had a shed around the corner and the shed started banging against the house and my wife jumped up and she looked out the back and she said, “There’s a river back there.” And so we ran to the front and by the time we grabbed two dogs and a set of keys, the water had risen, covered four motorcycles and floated a jeep and then floated a big truck. By the time like over the last five minutes, the water went from like right there to right here and then another 10 minutes the water was like this high. It was scary. It was really scary. The big question was what do we do? And you know things were getting dicey by the moment. We couldn’t tell if the water was going to continue to rise.

So I said we need to get out of the house. So, I grabbed my wife and we literally jumped in the water and it swept us down to about 200 feet down that way and there was a crepe myrtle tree that we grabbed hold of and we waited for rescue. I literally pulled up my waterproof phone and started calling people going, “Hey, get Swiftwater Rescue to come get us because we are like in extremists. We are in bad shape.”

I never knew that it could do that. I’ve seen it come up a little bit. I’ve seen it cover over the hike and bike trail there, but I never seen it come up any further than that. And yeah, this is like a once in I don’t know 200 year kind of flood.

We’ll keep you updated on that developing story in Texas throughout the day