Girls camp grieves loss of 27 children and staff in Texas floods

Crews picked through mountains of debris and waded into swollen rivers in the search for victims of catastrophic flooding that killed more than 100 people over the July Fourth weekend in Texas, including more than two dozen campers and counsellors from an all-girls Christian camp.

With additional rain on the way, more flooding still threatened in saturated parts of the US state.

Authorities said the death toll could still rise as crews looked for many people who were missing.

Operators of Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, said they lost 27 campers and counsellors, confirming their worst fears after a wall of water slammed into cabins built along the edge of the Guadalupe River.

Officials ride a boat as they arrive to assist with a recovery effort at Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas. PA Media

“We have been in communication with local and state authorities who are tirelessly deploying extensive resources to search for our missing girls,” the camp said in a statement.

Authorities later said that 10 girls and a counsellor from the camp remain missing.

The raging flash floods — among the nation’s worst in decades — slammed into riverside camps and homes before daybreak on Friday, pulling sleeping people out of their cabins, tents and trailers and dragging them for miles past floating tree trunks and automobiles.

Some survivors were found clinging to trees.

First responders carry out search and rescue operations near the Guadalupe River in Texas. PA Media

Piles of twisted trees sprinkled with mattresses, fridges, coolers and canoes now litter the riverbanks.

Search-and-rescue teams used heavy equipment near Kerrville to remove large branches while volunteers covered in mud sorted through chunks of debris, piece by piece.

In the Hill Country area, home to Camp Mystic and several other summer camps, searchers have found the bodies of 75 people, including 27 children, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said.

Fourteen other deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties, according to local officials.

Governor Greg Abbott said on Sunday that 41 people were unaccounted for across the state and more could be missing.

Authorities vowed that one of the next steps will be investigating whether enough warnings were issued and why some camps did not evacuate or move to higher ground in areas long vulnerable to flooding.

– Warnings came before the disaster

On Thursday the National Weather Service advised of potential flooding and then sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours of Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies — a rare step that alerts the public to imminent danger.

Authorities and elected officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour, the equivalent of months of rain.

Kerrville city manager Dalton Rice said one of the challenges is that many camps are in places with poor mobile phone service.

US President Donald Trump signed a major disaster declaration on Sunday for Kerr County and said he would likely visit on Friday.

He said it was not the time to talk about whether he was still planning to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency and added that he does not plan to rehire any of the federal meteorologists who were fired this year as part of widespread government spending cuts.

“This was a thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it,” the president said.

Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said recent cuts to Fema and the National Weather Service did not delay any warnings.

“There’s a time to have political fights, there’s a time to disagree. This is not that time,” Mr Cruz said.

There will be a time to find out what could been done differently. My hope is in time we learn some lessons to implement the next time there is a flood.”