Nine children among 27 dead in Texas flooding as search continues for missing girls
THE death toll from flash floods in Texas has risen to 27 from 24, authorities said on Saturday. Among the victims, nine are children, according to a Reuters report.
The rise in fatalities comes as search operations continue for dozens of girls who went missing from the Mystic summer camp. Between 23 and 25 individuals, most of them young girls, are still unaccounted for, the report added.
Meanwhile, around 800 people have been evacuated from Kerr County, according to the sheriff’s office.
The US National Weather Service said the flash flood emergency has largely ended for Kerr County, the epicenter of the flooding, following thunderstorms that dumped as much as a foot of rain early on Friday.
A flood watch, however, remains in effect until 7 p.m. on Saturday from the San Antonio-Austin, Texas, region, with scattered showers expected throughout the day, said Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the NWS Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
US President Donald Trump said the federal government is working with state and local officials to respond to the flooding. "Melania and I are praying for all of the families impacted by this horrible tragedy. Our Brave First Responders are on site doing what they do best," he said on social media.
Dalton Rice, city manager for Kerrville, the county seat, told reporters on Friday that the extreme flooding struck before dawn with little or no warning, precluding authorities from issuing advance evacuation orders as the Guadalupe River swiftly rose above major flood stage.
"This happened very quickly, over a very short period that could not be predicted, even with radar," Rice said. "This happened within less than two hours."
State emergency management officials had warned as early as Thursday that west and central Texas faced heavy rains and flash flood threats "over the next couple of days," citing National Weather Service forecasts ahead of the holiday weekend.
The weather forecasts, however, "did not predict the amount of rain that we saw," W. Nim Kidd, director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, told a news conference on Friday night.
The weekend disaster echoes a catastrophic flood almost 40 years ago along the Guadalupe River where a bus and a van leaving a church camp encountered flood waters and 10 teenagers drowned trying to escape, according to a National Weather Service event summary of the 1987 storm. Hundreds of people were evacuated, it said.
