The death toll from catastrophic floods in Texas reached at least 78 on Sunday, including 28 children, as the search for girls missing from a summer camp continued, and fears of more flooding prompted evacuations of volunteer responders.
Larry Leitha, sheriff of Kerr County in Texas Hill Country, said 68 people had died in flooding in his county, the epicentre of the flooding, among them 28 children.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, speaking at a press conference on Sunday afternoon, said another 10 had died elsewhere in Texas and confirmed 41 were missing.
US President Donald Trump sent his condolences to the victims and said he would probably visit the area on Friday. His administration had been in touch with Abbott, he added.
“It’s a horrible thing that took place, absolutely horrible. So we say, God bless all of the people that have gone through so much, and God bless, God bless the state of Texas,” he told reporters as he left New Jersey.
Among the most devastating impacts of the flooding occurred at Camp Mystic summer camp, a nearly century-old Christian girls camp where 10 Camp Mystic campers and one counsellor were still missing, according to Leitha.
“It was nothing short of horrific to see what those young children went through,” said Abbott, who noted he toured the area on Saturday and pledged to continue efforts to locate the missing.
The flooding occurred after the nearby Guadalupe River broke its banks after torrential rain fell in the central Texas area on Friday, the US Independence Day holiday.
Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said the destruction killed three people in Burnet County, one in Tom Green County, five in Travis County and one in Williamson County.
“You will see the death toll rise today and tomorrow,” said Freeman Martin, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, also speaking on Sunday.
Officials said on Saturday that more than 850 people had been rescued, including some clinging to trees, after a sudden storm dumped up to 15 inches (38 cm) of rain across the region, about 140 kilometres northwest of San Antonio.
Kidd said he was receiving unconfirmed reports of “an additional wall of water” flowing down some of the creeks in the Guadalupe Rivershed, as rain continued to fall on soil in the region already saturated from Friday’s rains.
“We’re evacuating parts of the river right now because we are worried about another wall of river coming down in those areas,” he said, referencing volunteers from outside the area seeking to help locate victims.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency was activated on Sunday and is deploying resources to first responders in Texas after Trump issued a major disaster declaration, the Department of Homeland Security said. US Coast Guard helicopters and planes were aiding search and rescue efforts.
Scaling back federal disaster response
Trump 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.
Spinrad said he did not know if those staff cuts factored into the lack of advance warning for the extreme Texas flooding, but that they would inevitably degrade the agency’s ability to deliver accurate and timely forecasts.
Trump pushed back when asked on Sunday if federal government cuts hobbled the disaster response or left key job vacancies at the National 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.”
He declined to answer a question about FEMA, saying only, “They’re busy working, so we’ll leave it at that,” Trump said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees FEMA and NOAA, said a “moderate” flood watch issued on Thursday by the National Weather Service had not accurately predicted the extreme rainfall and said the Trump administration was working to upgrade the system.
Joaquin Castro, a Democratic US congressman from Texas, told CNN’s “State of the Union” program that fewer personnel at the weather service could be dangerous.
“When you have flash flooding, there’s a risk that if you don’t have the personnel … to do that analysis, do the predictions in the best way, it could lead to tragedy,” Castro said.
‘Complete devastation’
Katharine Somerville, a counsellor on the Cypress Lake side of Camp Mystic, on higher ground than the Guadalupe River side, said her 13-year-old campers were scared as their cabins sustained damage and lost power in the middle of the night.
“Our cabins at the tippity top of hills were completely flooded with water. I mean, y’all have seen the complete devastation, we never even imagined that this could happen,” Somerville said in an interview on Fox News on Sunday.
Somerville said the campers in her care were put on military trucks and evacuated, and that all were safe.
The disaster unfolded rapidly on Friday morning as heavier-than-forecast rain drove river waters rapidly to as high as nine metres.
A day after the disaster struck, the summer camp, where 700 girls were in residence at the time of the flooding, was a scene of devastation. Inside one cabin, mud lines indicating how high the water had risen were at least six feet (1.83m) from the floor.
Bed frames, mattresses and personal belongings caked with mud were scattered inside. Some buildings had broken windows, and one had a missing wall.
