Kerrville — Teams searched muddy riverbanks and flew aircraft over flood-ravaged central Texas as hopes dimmed of finding survivors among the dozens still missing from 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 torrent, a Christian girls’ summer camp devastated by the flash flood confirmed that 27 campers and counsellors were among those who had perished.
Ten girls and a camp counsellor 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 tonnes of debris.
The bulk of the death toll from Friday’s calamity was concentrated in and around the riverfront town of Kerrville and the grounds of Camp Mystic, situated in a swathe of Texas known as “flash flood alley”.
By Monday afternoon, the bodies of 84 flood victims — 56 adults and 28 children — were recovered in or near Kerrville, according to the sheriff.
On Sunday, state and local officials said 12 other flood-related fatalities had been confirmed across five neighbouring 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, reported that at least 104 people had been killed across the entire flood zone.
Debate also intensified over questions about how state and local officials reacted to weather alerts forecasting the possibility of a flash flood and the lack of an early warning siren system that might have mitigated the disaster.
Lieutenant-governor Dan Patrick has vowed the state will “step up” to pay for installing a flash-flood warning system in Kerrville by next summer if local governments “can’t afford it”.
“There should have been sirens,” Patrick said in a Fox News interview. “Had we had sirens here along this area...it’s possible that we would have saved some lives.”
“This will be a rough week,” Kerrville mayor Joe Herring Jnr said at a briefing on Monday morning. Reuters
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