Months worth of heavy rain fell in a matter of hours on south-central Texas, leaving at least 13 people dead and many more unaccounted for on Friday, including about 20 girls attending a summer camp, as search teams conducted boat and helicopter rescues in fast-moving floodwaters.
Desperate pleas peppered social media as loved ones sought any information available about people caught in the flooding. At least 25 centimetres of heavy rain poured down overnight in central Kerr County, causing flash flooding of the Guadalupe River.
Authorities stressed the situation was still developing and that the death toll could change, with rescue operations ongoing for an unspecified number who are missing. Dan Patrick, the lieutenant-governor of Texas, said six to 10 bodies had been found so far. Around the same time, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha reported 13 deaths from the flooding.
Authorities are still working to identify the dead.
“Some are adults, some are children,” Patrick said at a news conference.
On the Kerr County sheriff’s office Facebook page, people posted pictures of loved ones and begged for help finding them.
At least 400 people were on the ground helping in the response, Patrick said. Nine rescue teams, 14 helicopters and 12 drones were being used in the search, with some people being rescued from trees.
About 23 of the roughly 750 girls attending Camp Mystic were among those who were unaccounted for, he said.
Search crews were doing “whatever we can do to find everyone we can,” Patrick said.
KSAT, an ABC News affiliate station in San Antonio, Texas, reported that Mystic is a girls-only camp on the Guadalupe River.
Clinging to a tree
In Ingram, Texas, Erin Burgess woke up to thunder at 3:30 a.m. local time on Friday. Just 20 minutes later, water was pouring into her home directly across from the river, she said. She described an agonizing hour clinging to a tree and waiting for the water to recede enough that she and family members were able to walk up the hill to a neighbour’s.
“My son and I floated to a tree where we hung onto it, and my boyfriend and my dog floated away. He was lost for a while, but we found them,” she said.
Of her 19-year-old son, Burgess said, “Thankfully he’s over six feet tall. That’s the only thing that saved me, was hanging on to him.”
Matthew Stone, 44, of Kerrville, said police came knocking on doors at 5:30 a.m. but that he had received no emergency warning on his phone.
“We got no emergency alert. There was nothing,” he said. Then: “a pitch black wall of death.” Stone said police used his paddle boat to help rescue a neighbour.
Stone said he and the rescuers thought they heard someone yelling “help!” from the water but couldn’t see anyone.
At a reunification centre set up in Ingram, families cried and cheered as loved ones got off vehicles loaded with evacuees. Two soldiers carried an older woman who could not get down a ladder. Behind her, a woman in a soiled T-shirt and shorts clutched a small white dog.
Later, a girl in a white “Camp Mystic” T-shirt and white socks stood in a puddle, sobbing in her mother’s arms.
Barry Adelman, 54, said water pushed everyone in his three-storey house into the attic, including his 94-year-old grandmother and nine-year-old grandson. The water started coming through the attic floor before finally receding.
“I was horrified,” he said. “I was having to look at my grandson in the face and tell him everything was going to be OK, but inside I was scared to death.”
‘No one knew this … was coming’
The forecast had called for rain, with a flood watch upgraded to a warning overnight for at least 30,000 people. But totals in some places exceeded expectations, said Bob Fogarty, a meteorologist with the U.S. National Weather Service’s Austin/San Antonio office.
Patrick, Texas’s lieutenant-governor, noted that the potential for heavy rain and flooding covered a large area. “Everything was done to give them a heads up that you could have heavy rain, and we’re not exactly sure where it’s going to land,” he said.
“Obviously as it got dark last night, we got into the wee morning of the hours, that’s when the storm started to zero in.”
Asked about how people were notified in Kerr County so that they could get to safety, Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s chief elected official, said: “We do not have a warning system.”
When reporters pushed on why more precautions weren’t taken, Kelly responded: “Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming.
“We have floods all the time,” he added. “This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States.”
It’s in an area of Texas known as “flash flood alley” because of the hills’ thin layer of soil, said Austin Dickson, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, which was collecting donations to help non-profits responding to the disaster.
“When it rains, water doesn’t soak into the soil,” he said. “It rushes down the hill.”
The affected region, a scenic and rocky area known as Texas Hill Country, begins west of the state capital and is a popular outdoor summer getaway. Parts of the region are prone to flash flooding.
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