Grim milestone as rescuers search for US flood victims
Jim Vertuno and Nadia Lathan |
The death toll from catastrophic flooding in Texas over the July Fourth weekend has surpassed 100 as the massive search continues for missing people.
The number of deaths reached 104 on Monday. In hard-hit Kerr County, home to Camp Mystic and several other summer camps, searchers have found the bodies of 84 people including 28 children, county officials said.
Authorities overseeing the search for flood victims in Texas said they will wait to address questions about weather warnings and why some summer camps did not evacuate ahead of the catastrophic flooding.
The officials spoke hours after the operators of Camp Mystic, a century-old all-girls Christian summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, announced they lost 27 campers and counsellors to the floodwaters.
Search-and-rescue teams meanwhile carried on with the search for the dead, using heavy equipment to untangle trees and wading into swollen rivers. Volunteers covered in mud sorted through chunks of debris, piece by piece, in an increasingly bleak task.
With additional rain on the way, more flooding still threatened in saturated parts of central Texas. Authorities said the death toll was sure to rise.
The announcement by Camp Mystic confirmed the worst fears after a wall of water slammed into cabins built along the edge of the Guadalupe River.
The raging flash floods – among the nation’s worst in decades – slammed into riverside camps and homes before daybreak on Friday, pulling sleeping people out of their cabins, tents and trailers and dragging them for miles past floating tree trunks and cars. Some survivors were found clinging to trees.
Piles of twisted trees sprinkled with mattresses, refrigerators and coolers now litter the riverbanks. The debris included reminders of what drew so many to the campgrounds and cabins in the Hill Country – a volleyball, canoes and a family portrait.
Nineteen deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties, according to local officials.
Among those confirmed dead were eight-year-old sisters from Dallas who were at Camp Mystic and a former soccer coach and his wife who were staying at a riverfront home. Their daughters were still missing.
Authorities vowed that one of the next steps would be investigating whether enough warnings were issued and why some camps did not evacuate or move to higher ground in a place long vulnerable to flooding that some local residents refer to as “flash flood alley”.
That will include a review of how weather warnings were sent out and received. One of the challenges is that many camps and cabins are in places with poor mobile phone service, said Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice.
Some camps, though, were aware of the dangers and monitoring the weather. At least one moved several hundred campers to higher ground before the floods.
AP
