KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Hopes for finding survivors of the devastating flooding in Texas waned on Tuesday, as the death toll surpassed 100 and rescue crews continued their search for those missing in the aftermath.
The rescue efforts were aided by more favorable weather conditions. The storms that had pounded the Hill Country over the past four days began to subside, though isolated areas of heavy rain remained possible.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott planned another visit to Camp Mystic on Tuesday, the historic century-old all-girls Christian summer camp where at least 27 campers and counselors lost their lives in the flash floods. Officials reported Monday that 10 campers and one counselor were still unaccounted for.
A wall of water slammed into camps and homes along the edge of the Guadalupe River before daybreak Friday, pulling people out of their cabins, tents and trailers and dragging them for miles past floating tree trunks and cars. Some survivors were found clinging to trees.
Questions are mounting about what, if any, actions local officials took to warn campers and residents who were spending the July Fourth holiday weekend in the scenic area long known to locals as “flash flood alley.”
At public briefings, officials in hard-hit Kerr County have deflected questions about what preparations and warnings were made as forecasters warned of life-threatening conditions.
“We definitely want to dive in and look at all those things,” Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said Monday. “We’re looking forward to doing that once we can get the search and rescue complete.”
Some camps were aware of the dangers and monitoring the weather. At least one moved several hundred campers to higher ground before the floods. But many were caught by surprise.
Searchers have found the bodies of 84 people, including 28 children, in Kerr County, home to Camp Mystic and several other summer camps near the river, officials said.
Nineteen deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties, local officials said.
Among those confirmed dead were 8-year-old sisters from Dallas who were at Camp Mystic and a former soccer coach and his wife who were staying at a riverfront home. Their daughters were still missing.
Elizabeth Lester, a mother of children who were at Camp Mystic and nearby Camp La Junta during the flood, said her young son had to swim out a cabin window to escape. Her daughter fled up the hillside as floodwaters whipped against her legs. Both survived.
Search-and-rescue teams used heavy equipment to untangle trees and move large rocks as part of the massive search for missing people. Hundreds of volunteers have shown up to help with one of the largest rescue operations in Texas history.
Piles of twisted trees sprinkled with mattresses, refrigerators and coolers littered the riverbanks.
___
Vertuno reported from Austin, and Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama; Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City and Sophia Tareen in Chicago.
