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Key Points
- Torrential rains struck a region of Texas last Friday, unleashing deadly flooding.
- The death toll has risen past 100, including children.
- There have been questions raised about the county’s emergency management operations and preparedness.
The death toll from a flash flood that ravaged an area of Texas has risen to 109, many of them children, as search teams press on through mounds of mud-encrusted debris looking for scores of people still missing.
According to figures released by Texas governor Gregg Abbott on Wednesday AEST, authorities were searching for more than 180 people who remain unaccounted for, four days after one of the deadliest US flood events in decades.
The bulk of fatalities and the search for additional victims were concentrated in Kerr County and the county seat of Kerrville, a town of 25,000 residents transformed into a disaster zone when torrential rains struck the region early on Friday, flooding the Guadalupe River basin.
The bodies of 94 flood victims, about a third of them children, have been recovered in Kerr County alone, Abbott said during a news conference after touring the area by air.
The Kerr County dead include 27 campers and counsellors from Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old all-girls Christian summer retreat on the banks of the Guadalupe near the town of Hunt. The camp director also died.
Five girls and a camp counsellor were still unaccounted, Abbott said, along with another child not associated with the camp.
Twenty-seven campers and counsellors from a century-old, all-girls Christian summer retreat called Camp Mystic were among the dead. Source: AAP / AP / Eli Hartman
Fifteen other flood-related fatalities had been confirmed across a swathe of Texas Hill Country known as “flash flood alley”, the governor said, bringing the overall tally of lives lost to 109.
Reports from local sheriffs’ and media have put the number of flood deaths outside Kerr County at 22.
But authorities have said they were bracing for the death toll to climb as flood waters recede and the search for more victims gains momentum.
Law enforcement agencies have compiled a list of 161 people “known to be missing” in Kerr County alone, Abbott said. The roster was checked against those who might be out of touch with loved ones or neighbours because they were away on holiday or out of town, according to the governor.
He said another 12 people were missing elsewhere across the flood zone as a whole, a sprawling area northwest of San Antonio.
Hindered by intermittent thunderstorms and showers, rescue teams from federal agencies, neighbouring states and Mexico have joined local efforts to search for missing victims, though hopes of finding more survivors faded as time passed. The last victim found alive in Kerr County was on Friday.
“The work is extremely treacherous, time-consuming,” lieutenant colonel Ben Baker of the Texas Game Wardens said at a press conference. “It’s dirty work. The water is still there.”
More than a foot of rain fell in the region in less than an hour before dawn last Friday, sending a wall of water cascading down the Guadalupe that killed dozens of people and left mangled piles of debris, uprooted trees and overturned vehicles.
Questions about flood warnings
Local, state and federal emergency officials have faced days of questions about whether they could have alerted people in flood-prone areas sooner.
State emergency management officials had warned on Thursday, on the eve of the disaster, that parts of central Texas faced the possibility of flash floods based on National Weather Service forecasts.
But twice as much rain as 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 has said the outcome was unforeseen and unfolded in a matter of two hours, leaving too little time to conduct a precautionary mass evacuation without the risk of placing more people in harm’s way.
Scientists have said extreme flood events are growing more common as climate change creates warmer, wetter weather patterns in Texas and other parts of the country.
US President Donald Trump plans to visit the devastated region this week, a spokesperson said.
Democrats in Washington have called for an official investigation into whether the Trump administration’s job cuts at the National Weather Service affected the agency’s response to the floods.
