The number of dead following catastrophic floods in Texas during the July 4 weekend has already surpassed 100, while continuing search for still missing people continues.
Most of the deadly victims and search operations for more missing focused on Kerr County and County headquarters, the city of Kerrville, a locality with 25,000 inhabitants who became a disaster zone when torrential rains hit the region at dawn last Friday, causing deadly floods along the Guadalupe River.
Until Tuesday, the bodies of 94 victims of flooding-more than a third of them children-were recovered only in Kerr County, Texas governor Greg Abbott reported at a late afternoon press conference after flying over the area. Abbott added that another 161 people remain given as missing in the flood -affected area.
Among the counting of the dead in Kerr County are 27 Camp Mystic campers and monitors, an exclusive summer retreat for almost a century of existence girls, located on the banks of the Guadalupe River, near the town of Hunt. The camp director also lost his life. Five girls and a field monitor were still missing on Tuesday, Governor Abbott said, along with another child without camping.
The announcement made by Camp Mystic confirmed the worst fears, after a Wall wall has hit the huts built along the bank of the Guadalupe River. The local sheriff later said that 10 girls and a camp advisor was still missing.
According to the governor, until noon there had been 15 more flood-related deaths in other areas of the Texas Central Mountainous Region, known as the “Sudden Full Corridor”, raising the total number of deadly victims from the Catastrophe to 109. Reports of local authorities and the press point to 22 deaths from floods outside Kerr.
Despite the intermittent thunderstorms and departments that continued to make work difficult, federal agencies rescue teams, neighboring states and Mexico joined local efforts to look for missing victims, although hopes of finding survivors have diminished over time. The last victim of the floods to be found alive in Kerr County was on Friday.
“The work is extremely dangerous and time consuming,” said Lieutenant Colonel Ben Baker of Texas Forest Guards at a press conference. “It’s a dirty job. The water is still there.”
Worst Full of the United States in decades
The sudden floods – the worst in the country in decades – reached camps and riverside houses before the dawn last Friday, Treating sleeping people from their huts, tents and linked and dragging them for kilometers, passing through tree trunks and floating cars. Some survivors were found clinging to trees.
Stacks of twisted trees, partially covered with mattresses, refrigerators and refrigerators, now cover the banks of the river. Wreckage also include memories of many who were attracted to campshop and hill country — A ball of volleyball, canoes and a family portrait.
According to the local authorities, Dezanoe deaths were recorded in the counties of Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson.
However, there are appeals to find out why the warnings were not heard.
Authorities have promised that one of the next steps will be to investigate whether sufficient notices were issued and why in some camps people were not taken or moved to higher areas, in a place there is long vulnerable to floodsto which some local residents refer as “alley of sudden floods.”
To this end, it will be necessary to review the way the weather warnings were sent and received. One of the challenges is that many camps and cabins meet in places with a weak network, said Dalton Rice, mayor of Kerrville, a city in Kerr County.
Some camps, however, were aware of the dangers and to monitor time. At least one transferred several hundred campers to higher land before flooding.
Senator Ted Cruz, Texas’s republican, said the recent cuts in government expenses with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Meteorology Service did not delay any warning.
“There is a moment to have political struggles, there is a moment to disagree. This is not the right time,” he said. “There will be time to find out what could have been done differently. My hope is that, over time, we learn some lessons to apply the next time there is a flood,” he added.
The meteorology service began to warn of the possibility of flooding on Thursday and then sent a series of rapid flood warnings in the early hours of Friday, before issuing sudden flood emergencies — A rare measure that warns the public to the possibility of flooding.