More than 2 dozen dead, search for missing continues after flooding in Texas
Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said that 27 people are dead, including nine children, after flash flooding along the Guadalupe River in Texas on Friday, July 4. Leitha said at a press conference on Saturday, July 5, that 850 people were evacuated.
Authorities cautioned that information is rapidly changing. “Tragic incidents like this affect us all,” Leitha said, adding that officials will not stop “until every person is found.”
Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said at the conference that 27 people remain unaccounted for at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp in Hunt, Texas. Those who died in the flooding include Jane Ragsdale, the co-owner and director of Heart O’ the Hills, another camp in Hunt.
“We are mourning the loss of a woman who influenced countless lives and was the definition of strong and powerful,” Heart O’ the Hills said in a statement. The camp was not in session during the flooding.
The National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio on Saturday, July 5, put out a flood watch for several counties, including Kerr, stating that rainfall amounts of two to four inches, or even an “isolated 10 inches” are possible for the region.
Extreme flooding from Friday started just before dawn “within less than a two-hour span,” Rice previously said, according to Reuters.
“This happened very quickly, over a very short period of time that could not be predicted, even with radar,” Rice said.
Authorities said the Guadalupe River surged to 22 feet in just half an hour on Friday, NBC News wrote. In Comfort, Texas, it reached a height of 30 feet.
Texas Game Wardens wrote Friday that they made entry into Camp Mystic and were evacuating campers. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that the U.S. Coast Guard was also in central Texas to “evacuate Americans.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a disaster declaration for 15 counties affected by flooding.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
