By Evan Garcia
KERRVILLE, Texas (Reuters) -Search teams plodded through mud-laden riverbanks and flew aircraft over the flood-stricken landscape of central Texas for a fourth day on Monday, looking for dozens of people still missing from a disaster that has claimed at least 78 lives.
The bulk of the death toll from Friday’s flash floods was concentrated in the riverfront Hill Country Texas town of Kerrville, accounting for 68 of the dead, including 28 children, according to Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha.
The Guadalupe River, transformed by predawn torrential downpours into a raging, killer torrent in less than hour, runs directly through Kerrville.
The loss of life there included an unspecified number of fatalities at the Camp Mystic summer camp, a nearly century-old Christian girls retreat on the banks of the Guadalupe where authorities reported two dozen children unaccounted for in the immediate aftermath of the flooding on Friday.
On Sunday, Leitha said search teams were still looking for 10 girls and one camp counselor, but he did not specify the fate of others initially counted as missing.
As of late Sunday afternoon, state officials said 10 other flood-related fatalities were confirmed across four neighboring south-central Texas counties, and that 41 other people were still listed as unaccounted for in the disaster beyond Kerr County.
Freeman Martin, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, predicted the death toll would rise further as floodwaters receded and the search gained momentum.
Authorities also warned that continued rainfall – even if lighter than Friday’s deluge – could unleash additional flash floods because the landscape was so saturated.
State emergency management officials had warned on Thursday, ahead of the July Fourth holiday, that parts of central Texas faced the possibility of heavy showers and flash floods based on National Weather Service Forecasts.
CONFLUENCE OF DISASTER
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, according to City Manager Dalton Rice.
Rice and other public officials, including Governor Greg Abbott, vowed that the circumstances of the flooding, and the adequacy for weather forecasts and warning systems would be scrutinized once the immediate situation was brought under control.
In the meantime, search and rescue operations were continuing around the clock, with hundreds of emergency personnel on the ground contending with a myriad of challenges.
“It’s hot, there’s mud, they’re moving debris, there’s snakes,” Martin said during a news briefing on Sunday.
Thomas Suelzar, adjutant general of the Texas Military Department, said airborne search assets included eight helicopters and a remotely piloted MQ-9 Reaper aircraft equipped with advanced sensors for surveillance and reconnaissance missions.
Officials said on Saturday that more than 850 people had been rescued, some clinging to trees, after a sudden storm dumped up to 15 inches (38 cm) of rain across the region, about 85 miles (140 km) northwest of San Antonio.
In addition to the 68 lives lost in Kerr County, three died in Burnet County, one in Tom Green County, five in Travis County and one in Williamson County, according to Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency was activated on Sunday and was deploying resources to Texas after President Donald Trump issued a major disaster declaration, the Department of Homeland Security said. U.S. Coast Guard helicopters and planes were aiding search and rescue efforts.
SCALING BACK FEDERAL DISASTER RESPONSE
Trump, who said on Sunday he would visit the disaster scene, probably this coming Friday, has previously outlined plans to scale back the federal government’s role in responding to natural disasters, leaving states to shoulder more of the burden themselves.
Some experts questioned whether cuts to the federal workforce by the Trump administration, including to the agency that oversees the National Weather Service, led to a failure by officials to accurately predict the severity of the floods and issue appropriate warnings ahead of the storm.
Trump’s administration has overseen thousands of job cuts from the National Weather Service’s parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, leaving many weather offices understaffed, former NOAA director Rick Spinrad said.
Ahead of Friday’s floods, the Weather Service office near San Antonio, which oversees warnings issued in Kerr County, had one key vacancy – a warning coordination meteorologist, who is responsible for working with emergency managers and the public to ensure people know what to do when a disaster strikes.
The person who served in that role for decades was among hundreds of Weather Service employees who accepted early retirement offers and left the agency at the end of April, media reported.
Trump pushed back when asked on Sunday if federal government cuts hobbled the disaster response or left key job vacancies at the Weather Service under Trump’s oversight.
“That water situation, that all is, and that was really the Biden setup,” he said referencing his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden. “But I wouldn’t blame Biden for it, either. I would just say this is 100-year catastrophe.”
(Reporting by Sergio Flores and Evan Garcia in Kerrville, Texas. Additional reporting by Marco Bello and Sandra Stojanovic in Comfort, Texas; Rich McKay in Atlanta; Alexandra Alper, Tim Reid and Deborah Gembara in Washington; Nathan Howard in Morristown, New Jersey; Ryan Jones and Bhargav Acharya in Toronto; Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; and Nathan Layne in New York; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Will Dunham and Diane Craft and Stephen Coates)
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