At least 104 dead in Texas floods
In Kerr County, at least 84 bodies have been recovered which includes 56 adults and 28 children.
Kerr County Sheriff’s Office said: “At present, 10 Camp Mystic campers and one counselor remain unaccounted for.
“We share our deepest condolences with all affected by this tragedy.”
Key events
Authorities overseeing the search for flood victims in central Texas have said they will wait to address questions about weather warnings and why some summer camps did not evacuate ahead of the catastrophic flooding.
The Kerr county officials spoke only hours after the operators of Camp Mystic announced they lost 27 campers and counsellors to the flood waters, the Associated Press reports.
Search-and-rescue teams, meanwhile, carried on with the search for the dead, using heavy equipment to untangle trees and wading into swollen rivers. Volunteers covered in mud sorted through chunks of debris, piece by piece, in an increasingly bleak task.
Authorities vowed that one of the next steps would be investigating whether enough warnings were issued and why some camps did not evacuate or move to higher ground in a place long vulnerable to flooding that some local residents refer to as “flash flood alley”.
That would include a review of how weather warnings were sent out and received. One of the challenges was that many camps and cabins were in places with poor cellphone service, said Kerrville city manager Dalton Rice.
We definitely want to dive in and look at all those things. 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.
A spokesperson for the Texas military department told a news conference there had been 525 rescues and evacuations.
At least 104 dead in Texas floods
In Kerr County, at least 84 bodies have been recovered which includes 56 adults and 28 children.
Kerr County Sheriff’s Office said: “At present, 10 Camp Mystic campers and one counselor remain unaccounted for.
“We share our deepest condolences with all affected by this tragedy.”
The Houston Astros are donating $1 million to support the recovery from the flooding that has devastated Texas.
The baseball team said in addition to the initial “short-term” investment in relief efforts, the Astros Foundation will start an initiative to mobilize their fan base to provide sustained support for rebuilding and recovery.
“It’s important to the entire Astros organization to send immediate support to our fellow Texans throughout the Hill Country during this devastating time,” Astros owner and chairman Jim Crane and his wife Whitney Crane said in a statement.
“There is a lot still unknown as recovery efforts are ongoing, but the Astros are committed to supporting Central Texas communities in the long term through the coming days, months and years to help rebuild and heal. We also want to acknowledge and personally thank all of the First Responders for their continued heroic efforts.”
NFL teams the Houston Texans and Dallas Cowboys announced over the weekend that they each are donating $500,000 to the recovery efforts.
Kerr County has enforced a burn ban after fires interfered with search and recovery efforts.
The ban will be in place until at least next Monday.
“People burning debris were causing an issue with ongoing, primary search-and-rescue operations in and along the Guadalupe River,” the county said in a statement shared on social media.
Don Harris, Kerr County commissioner for Precinct Four – where much of the flooding occurred – said: “We understand that everyone has got plenty of debris.
“We know that. But pile it up and wait. “
Death toll from Texas floods increases to 95
The death toll from the Texas floods has risen to at least 95.
Four deaths have been confirmed in Burnet County, officials said, bringing the death toll to 95 across the state of Texas, CNN and NBC are reporting.
The vast majority of those killed by the flash floods were in Kerr County, where 75 people have died.
Following criticism of whether cuts at the National Weather Service affected the forecasting agency’s response to the flooding in Central Texas, the NWS has defended its forecasting and emergency management in a statement.
It added that it assigned extra forecasters to the San Antonio and San Angelo offices over the holiday weekend, Reuters reports.
Here is a montage of images of one of the US’s deadliest floods in decades which has claimed over 90 lives in central Texas, with over 40 still missing.
Five million people in central Texas remain under flood watch
NBC News reports that five million people in central Texas are still covered by flood watches, including residents of San Angelo, Killeen, Kerrville, San Antonio and Austin.
Slow-moving showers and storms with heavy rain continue to impact parts of the already-saturated region, according to NBC.
The day so far
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Donald Trump will travel to Texas later this week, but the White House didn’t provide further details about the timing of the trip other than it was tentatively scheduled to go forward on Friday.
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The extreme flash flood disaster along the Guadalupe River and parts of the Texas hill country over the 4 July holiday weekend, which killed at least 91 people, also caused an estimated $18bn to $22bn in total damage and economic loss, according to a preliminary estimate from AccuWeather. Contextualizing the disaster, AccuWeather climate expert and senior meteorologist Brett Anderson added: “A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, which can unleash extreme rainfall rates that rivers, streams and drainage systems are struggling to handle. We face a future with warmer air and higher ocean temperatures, increasing the odds of more extreme rainfall events and more people in harm’s way living and visiting in flood-prone and high-risk areas.”
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The White House conflated concerns over whether adequate warnings were sent out to people soon enough (most of the alerts were sent in the middle of the night while people were sleeping) with accusing the administration of responsibility for the flooding. “That was an act of God; it’s not the administration’s fault the floods hit when it did,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, before insisting that “there were early and consistent warnings”. As we’ve reported, there have been a number of questions raised over whether the flood alerts were sent quickly and widely enough, and if Trump’s job cuts hampered the work of the National Weather Service.
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Leavitt also attacked “some members of the media” as well as Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader who has reportedly called for an investigation from the commerce department inspector general into whether the National Weather Service had enough staff in offices that would have forecast the storms. Schumer wrote a letter to acting Commerce Department inspector-general Roderick Anderson today calling for an investigation into vacancies at the National Weather Service, according to the letter obtained by Politico. He asked the inspector general to look into whether staffing shortages contributed to deaths during the flooding, the letter said.
Texas flash flooding causes estimated $18-22bn in damage and loss, according to AccuWeather
The extreme flash flood disaster along the Guadalupe River and parts of the Texas hill Country over the 4 July holiday weekend, which killed at least 91 people, caused an estimated $18bn to $22bn in total damage and economic loss, according to a preliminary estimate from AccuWeather.
“This is the latest disaster in an area with a long and tragic history of deadly and destructive flash floods,” AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter said. “The damage, impacts on future tourism, cost of search and recovery efforts, extensive cleanup that will be needed, as well as insurance claims after this catastrophic flash flood, will have long-lasting economic impacts in the Hill Country region of Texas.”
A dangerous combination of meteorological conditions culminated in the disaster, the organization said, with heavy rainfall that exceeded 12 inches in some areas sending river levels rapidly rising roughly 30 feet in the span of one hour.
Contextualizing the disaster, AccuWeather climate expert and senior meteorologist Brett Anderson added:
A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, which can unleash extreme rainfall rates that rivers, streams and drainage systems are struggling to handle. We face a future with warmer air and higher ocean temperatures, increasing the odds of more extreme rainfall events and more people in harm’s way living and visiting in flood-prone and high-risk areas.
Here are some pictures from Camp Mystic, where at least 27 camp counsellors and children lost their lives.
At least 91 dead in Texas floods, says White House
Karoline Leavitt began the press briefing by stating that 91 people have now died in the floods – two more than we previously knew of.
Floods were ‘an act of God … it’s not the administration’s fault,’ says White House
Karoline Leavitt again conflated concerns over whether adequate warnings were sent out to people soon enough (most of the alerts were sent in the middle of the night while people were sleeping) with accusing the administration of responsibility for the flooding.
“The alerts were sent out before the flood when people were sleeping because the flood hit in the very early hours of the morning,” said Leavitt.
“People were sleeping in the middle of the night when the flood came. That was an act of God; it’s not the administration’s fault the floods hit when it did,” she went on, before insisting that “there were early and consistent warnings”.
There have been a number of questions raised over whether the flood alerts were sent quickly and widely enough, and if Donald Trump’s job cuts hampered the National Weather Service.
