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The search for 11 girls missing from a summer camp in Texas continued for a third day as the death toll from flash flooding climbed to more than 80 people, including 28 children.
The Guadalupe River that runs through the Hill Country in central south Texas rose by 26ft (8 metres) in 45 minutes in the early hours of Friday, according to officials, bursting its banks and destroying roads and property, including Camp Mystic where the 11 missing girls and one counsellor were staying.
“We continue 24/7 operations to search for anybody who was affected by that deadly storm,” Texas governor Greg Abbott said on Sunday afternoon.
More than 400 first responders from at least 20 agencies were working in Kerr County on search and rescue efforts, alongside more than 100 air, water and ground vehicles combing the area.
The torrential downpours that hit the Texas Hill Country over the July 4 holiday weekend claimed the lives of 68 people in Kerr County with 12 more confirmed deaths reported in another five of the 20 counties affected. Bodies have been recovered up and down the 30-mile riverfront.
“The bad news it that you will see the death toll rise today and tomorrow,” said Texas Department of Public Safety director Colonel Freeman Martin on Sunday.
There has been no total estimate given for the number of missing because so many people were camping near the river for the holiday weekend.
There are known to be 41 people unaccounted for across the state as a result of the storm fronts, but Abbott cautioned that “there are missing who are not known” and asked the public to contact local officials with information on people who are suspected missing.
More than 850 people had been rescued as of Saturday, officials said.
In addition to search and rescue efforts, state and local officials are also removing tonnes of debris to make roads passable.
“This is tough work,” said Martin. “It’s hot. They’re in the mud. They’re removing debris There’s snakes, there’s water moccasins. This is God’s work they’re doing.”
Kerrville officials refused to address questions about whether sufficient warnings were given, and why people were not evacuated before the floods hit, saying their focus was on rescue and recovery efforts.
“Local and regional partners are committed to a full review of the events and systems in place,” said Kerrville city manager Dalton Rice. “At the appropriate time, we will take clear steps to strengthen our future preparedness.”
The Trump administration has slashed thousands of jobs from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency that oversees the National Weather Service, leading to questions about whether staff shortages had resulted in a lack of adequate warnings.
Abbott said he raised the issue with US secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem when she visited Kerrville on Saturday.
The NWS issued a flood watch for the area on Thursday at around 1pm local time, with the first flash flood warning for Kerr County issued in the early hours of Friday when many were asleep.
Initial forecasts from the NWS predicted 4 inches to 8 inches (10cm to 20cm) of rain for the Hill Country. The area eventually received as much as 15 inches (38cm) of rain in the deluge.
“It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw,” Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said on Friday.
A flood watch remains in effect for the Texas Hill Country, including San Antonio and Austin, with warnings of possible flash flooding across central Texas.
Rain continued to fall on saturated ground on Sunday and weak winds meant developing thunderstorms with heavy downpours would move very slowly, the weather service said.
State and local officials are evacuating parts of the Guadalupe River because of unconfirmed reports of an additional wall of water moving down some of the creeks and into the forks of the river, Kidd said. Kerrville sits downstream of those two forks.
“Any rain that falls can be perceived as life threatening rain,” said Kidd.
The Texas Hill Country, called “flash flood alley”, is marked by narrow, serpentine valleys and steep rocky hillsides that funnel water downstream into nearby creeks and rivers.
When heavy rains come, the water cannot soak quickly into the ground because of the area’s thin layer of topsoil overlying limestone and granite.
Scientists have warned that climate change is increasing the risk of devastating storms and intense rainfall because warmer air holds more moisture. Every one degree of warming results in an estimated 7 per cent more water in the atmosphere on average.
The world has warmed by at least 1.1C since pre-industrial times, according to the UN body of scientists’ IPCC report released in 2023, and some scientists estimate the long term trend to have already risen to more than 1.35C.
“We will need to learn how to respond to warnings,” said Hayley Fowler, professor of climate change impacts at Newcastle University in the UK. “It will not be possible to make all of our infrastructure resilient to these catastrophically large floods, and we can expect to experience many more of these.”
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