Search teams plodded through muddy riverbanks and flew aircraft over a flood-ravaged central Texas landscape on Monday as hopes dimmed for finding more survivors among dozens 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, killer torrent, a Christian girls' summer camp devastated by the flash flood confirmed 27 campers and counsellors were among those who had died.
On Monday officials said 10 girls and a camp counsellor were unaccounted for as search and rescue personnel faced the potential of more heavy rains and thunderstorms while clawing through muck-laden debris.
Most of the death toll from Friday's flooding was concentrated in and around the riverfront Hill Country town of Kerrville, including the ill-fated grounds of Camp Mystic.
By Monday afternoon the bodies of 84 flood victims — 56 adults and 28 children — were recovered in Kerr County, most in the county seat of Kerrville, according to the local sheriff.
As of midday on Sunday, state and local officials said 12 other flood-related fatalities had been confirmed across five neighbouring south-central Texas counties, and 41 other people were listed as missing outside Kerr County.
The New York Times, one many news media outlets publishing varying death tolls on Monday, reported at least 104 people had been killed across the entire flood zone.
While authorities continued to hold out hope that some of the missing would turn up alive, the likelihood of finding more survivors diminished as time passed.
“This will be a rough week,” mayor Joe Herring Jnr said at a briefing on Monday morning.
Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian girls' retreat on the banks of the Guadalupe, was at the epicentre of the disaster.
“Our hearts are broken alongside our families who are enduring this unimaginable tragedy,” the camp on Monday.
Richard “Dick” Eastland, 70, Mystic's co-owner and director, died trying to save children at his camp, media reported. He and his wife, Tweety Eastland, owned the camp since 1974, according to its website.
“If he wasn't going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way, saving the girls he so loved and cared for,” Eastland's grandson, George Eastland, wrote on Instagram.
Authorities lost one of their aviation assets on Monday when a privately operated drone collided with a search helicopter in restricted airspace over the Kerr County flood zone, forcing the chopper to make an emergency landing. No injuries were reported, but the aircraft was put out of commission, according to the Kerr County sheriff's office.
National Weather Service (NWS) forecasts on Monday predicted up to 10cm more of rain could douse Texas Hill Country, with isolated areas possibly receiving as much as 25cm.
Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the NWS weather prediction centre in College Park, Maryland, said the potential for renewed flooding was particularly heightened by the saturated condition of the soil and mounds of debris strewn around the river channel. A flood watch was posted until 7pm.
State emergency management officials had warned on Thursday, ahead of the July 4 holiday, that parts of central Texas faced the possibility of flash floods based on NWS forecasts.
However, twice as much rain as was predicted fell over two branches of the Guadalupe upstream of the fork where they converge, sending all the water racing into the single river channel where it slices through Kerrville, city manager Dalton Rice said.
Rice said the outcome, the result of an unpredictable combination of circumstances, was unforeseen and unfolded in two hours.
“Why didn't we evacuate? Evacuation is a delicate balance,” he said in response to reporters' questions on Monday.
“If you evacuate too late you risk putting buses, cars, vehicles and campers on roads into low water areas, trying to get them out, which can make it more challenging.
“It's very tough to make those calls because what we also don't want to do is cry wolf.”
The chief meteorologist for commercial forecaster AccuWeather, Jonathan Porter, said authorities had ample time to move people to higher ground before the flood struck.
Rice and other public officials, including governor Greg Abbott, said the circumstances of the flooding, and the adequacy of weather forecasts and warning systems, would be scrutinised once the immediate situation was brought under control.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer on Monday asked a government watchdog to investigate whether budget cuts imposed by US President Donald Trump's administration contributed to delays or inaccuracy in forecasting the floods.
Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said there would be time to examine whether more could have been done to prevent the loss of life but it was not the time for “partisan finger-pointing.”
Reuters
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