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At least 50 people are dead in central Texas after devastating flash floods slammed Hill Country, with water rescues taking place along the Guadalupe River. While officials couldn’t confirm an exact number of those who remain unaccounted for, they said more than two dozen were still missing from Camp Mystic in Kerr County, a children’s summer camp.
Pope Leo extended a prayer to the flooding victims during Sunday mass at the Vatican, saying, “I express my sincere condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones, in particular their daughters who were at summer camp, in the disaster caused by the flooding of the Guadalupe river in Texas in the United States.”
At least 43 fatalities have been reported so far in Kerr County, its sheriff, Larry Leitha, said at a news conference Saturday evening. The dead include 28 adults and 15 children. Twelve of the adults and five children are unidentified, Leitha said. At least 27 Camp Mystic campers are missing, Dalton Rice, city manager for Kerrville, told reporters.
There were about 750 children at Camp Mystic when the floods hit, the sheriff said.
At least four deaths were confirmed in Travis County, county spokesperson Hector Nieto told CBS News by phone Saturday night. Travis County includes the Texas capital city of Austin.
In Burnet County, at least two people were confirmed dead and another six were missing, according to Derek Marchio, emergency management coordinator for the county. More than 50 rescues had been conducted countywide since the flooding crisis unfolded, Marchio said.
In Tom Green County, the San Angelo Police Department confirmed Saturday the death of a 62-year-old woman identified as Tanya Burwick. Police said Burwick was driving when her vehicle became submerged by floodwaters.
Officials have conducted more than 160 air rescues, Leitha said in an earlier update, adding that 850 uninjured and eight injured people have been rescued overall as of Saturday. U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a social media post that the U.S. Coast Guard was responsible for saving 223 of those people, as dramatic video showed Guard members conducting aerial rescues near Kerrville on Thursday, while dark water covered the ground.
The Department of Homeland Security oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“We’ve been rescuing people out of these camps by the hundreds, you know, all day,” Rice said Saturday night. “There’s a lot of folks that are shelter in place, so we leave them in place to make sure that we get them food, water.”
Some of the hundreds of people who were rescued in the last 36 hours were hanging onto trees, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in Saturday’s news conference. The governor said he signed an updated federal disaster declaration to include several other counties in Texas that have been damaged by storms.
Noem, who was also in attendance at the news conference, said President Trump has indicated that he will honor Abbott’s declaration. Earlier, on Thursday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said in a social media post that he had spoken to Mr. Trump, who “committed ANYTHING Texas needs” to respond to the tragedy.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said in Saturday’s briefing that his property was also devastated by the flooding and he “barely got home” on Friday. Kelly also said he had visited a funeral home and “got to see firsthand many of the body bags” before going on a helicopter ride with Sen. John Cornyn and Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring to survey the damage.
“It’s gonna be a long time before we’re ever going to be able to clean it up much less rebuild it,” Kelly said. “We didn’t know. We knew we’d get rain, we know the river rises but nobody saw this coming.”
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said in a news briefing on Friday that there hadn’t been “a drop of rain until the tragedy struck” earlier in the day, and that the Guadalupe River had risen about 26 feet in 45 minutes. An alert went out around 4 and 5 a.m. local time Friday, he said.
Speaking to reporters late Friday night aboard Air Force One, Mr. Trump called the floods a “terrible thing.” On Saturday, he said his administration was working with state and local officials “on the ground” in Texas to respond to the flooding.
“Melania and I are praying for all the families impacted by this horrible tragedy,” Mr. Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Our Brave First Responders are on site doing what they do best. GOD BLESS THE FAMILIES, AND GOD BLESS TEXAS!”
Rice, Kerrville’s city manager, explained how the Guadalupe River flooded so quickly.
“When you look at the headwaters of the Guadalupe… there’s a north and a south fork,” Rice said Friday night. “Since 1987, under normal conditions, if you can call it that, you’ll hit water in one of those areas, and those two forks will converge into the Guadalupe, which comes through the city of Kerrville.”
“This rain event sat on top of that and dumped more rain than what was forecasted on both of those forks,” Rice continued. “When we got the report, it was about 7 feet or so on the south fork, and within a matter of minutes it was up to 29 feet, and all of that converged at Guadalupe.”
The Guadalupe River at Hunt reached its second-highest height on record, higher than the famous 1987 flood, the city said, citing the National Weather Service.
The Texas Division of Emergency Management had multiple meetings since Thursday to prepare, but the National Weather Service “did not predict the amount of rain” that actually fell, officials said, adding that forecasters originally estimated up to 8 inches of rainfall for the area.
Kerr County judge Rob Kelly said the area does “not have a warning system,” and authorities were shocked by the ferocity of the floods.
“We had no reason to believe that this was gonna be any, anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever,” Kelly told CBS Evening News.
Texas issued flash flood emergencies in five counties in West Texas on Friday as Hill Country continued to be slammed by severe rain and flooding. Between 5 and 11 inches of rain have fallen in northwestern Bandera County, Central Kerr County, Northeastern Tom Green County, East Central Kerr County and West Central Kendall County, according to the National Weather Service.
There are hundreds of people on the ground from various units helping with search and rescue operations, officials said. The operations have included drones, helicopters, rescue divers, boats and high-water vehicles, after Abbott signed a disaster declaration for several counties hit by flooding.
At a news conference, the governor said his declaration “ensures all the counties will have access to every tool, strategy, personnel that the state of Texas can provide to them, which will be limitless.”
“We will stop at nothing to ensure that every asset and person and plane, whatever is needed, is going to be involved in the process of rescuing every last person and ensure everybody involved in this is going to be fully accounted for,” Abbott said.
Lorena Gullen, who owns a restaurant right next to an RV park that was affected by the floods, said “raging water” swept away vehicles, some with people still inside. Residents at the park had been celebrating the Fourth of July.
“You could also see vehicles coming from up the river with the lights on and hear somebody honking, and they were washing away but they kept going,” she told CBS Evening News. “It was impossible.”
Three girls from Dallas — 8-year-old Hadley Hanna and 9-year-olds Eloise Peck and Lila Bonner — were identified as missing Camp Mystic campers. Bonner’s family confirmed to CBS Texas on Saturday that she was among the children confirmed dead in the flood.
Two sisters from Dallas — 13-year-old Blair Harber and 11-year-old Brooke Harber — were also confirmed dead Saturday by the St. Rita Catholic Community church in Dallas. The sisters were not attending Camp Mystic, but were staying with their grandparents in an area along the Guadalupe River where the flooding occurred. Their grandparents remain unaccounted for, according to the church. The girls’ parents were in a separate cabin and were not harmed.
Meanwhile, Rep. August Pfluger of Texas said Saturday that two of his three children were evacuated from Camp Mystic.
“The last day has brought unimaginable grief to many families and we mourn with them as well as holding out hope for survivors,” Pfluger said in a post on X.
On Friday, Patrick addressed the parents of children at Camp Mystic. The lieutenant governor, who briefly acted as governor while Abbott was on vacation, said they are praying for all those missing “to be found alive.”
“If they are alive and safe, we will find them and bring them home to you,” Patrick said Friday.
Camp Mystic is an all-girls summer camp, which runs several camps attended by thousands of children during the summer, Patrick said. In a statement read Friday by the lieutenant governor, the camp said they did not have power, water or Wi-Fi in the aftermath of what it called a “catastrophic level” of flooding. The statement added that “the highway has washed away, so we are struggling to get more help.”
The camp sits on a strip known as “flash flood alley,” Austin Dickson, the CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, told the Associated Press. The foundation is a charitable endowment that collects donations to help nonprofits responding to the disaster.
“When it rains, water doesn’t soak into the soil,” Dickson said. “It rushes down the hill.”
Elinor Lester, 13, told the Associated Press that she and her cabinmates were evacuated by helicopter. Her cabin was on elevated ground, but younger campers bunked in cabins situated along the riverbank, she said. Those were the first to flood. Younger campers came up the hill for shelter.
“The camp was completely destroyed,” she told the Associated Press. “It was really scary. Everyone I know personally is accounted for, but there are people missing that I know of and we don’t know where they are.”
Her mother, Elizabeth Lester, told the Associated Press her son was at Camp La Junta, a nearby summer camp, and also survived after a counselor woke up, saw rising water and helped the boys swim out through a window. Camp La Junta and another camp on the river, Camp Waldemar, said in Instagram posts that all campers and staff there were safe.
“My kids are safe, but knowing others are still missing is just eating me alive,” Elizabeth Lester told the Associated Press.
Cara Tabachnick is a news editor at CBSNews.com. Cara began her career on the crime beat at Newsday. She has written for Marie Claire, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. She reports on justice and human rights issues. Contact her at cara.tabachnick@cbsinteractive.com
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At least 50 dead in devastating central Texas flash floods, over 2 dozen remain missing – CBS News
