{"id":243216,"date":"2025-07-06T17:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T17:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/243216\/"},"modified":"2025-07-06T17:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T17:38:09","slug":"texas-floods-death-toll-rises-as-search-and-rescue-turns-into-grim-recovery-operation-texas-floods-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/243216\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas floods: death toll rises as search and rescue turns into grim recovery operation | Texas floods 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Residents in central Texas were observing a day of prayer on Sunday for at least 69 people killed and others missing in Friday\u2019s devastating flash flooding<\/a>, as a search and rescue operation for survivors began to morph into a grim exercise of recovering bodies.<\/p>\n

Relatives continued an anxious wait for news of 11 girls and one camp counsellor still unaccounted for from a riverside summer camp that was overwhelmed by flash flooding from the Guadalupe River, which rose 26ft (8 meters) in 45 minutes on Friday morning after torrential pre-dawn rain north of San Antonio.<\/p>\n

At least 59 people were confirmed killed in Kerr county, many of them children, with <\/strong>more fatalities being reported in neighboring counties.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing bodies recovered all over up and down,\u201d Kerrville city manager Dalton Rice told reporters at a news briefing on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Authorities said about 850 people had been rescued, with more than 1,700 people involved in the search and rescue operation.<\/p>\n

By Sunday morning, water levels had fallen to just a foot or two higher than before the flood.<\/p>\n

Further rain on Saturday and into Sunday morning hampered search efforts of crews using boats, helicopters and drones. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, promised responders would remain at the scene until every individual was recovered. He said he instructed responders to assume all missing persons were still alive.<\/p>\n

Map<\/a><\/p>\n

The US homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, was in Texas ahead of Donald Trump signing a federal emergency declaration that would free additional resources to support local efforts.<\/p>\n

Noem defended the federal response to the disaster at a press conference Saturday afternoon, promising that \u201crelief will be coming\u201d. Yet questions continued to swirl over the Trump administration\u2019s actions that some believe could have contributed to the severity of the event.<\/p>\n

In particular, harsh budget cutbacks affecting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) have left numerous key weather forecasting offices short of staff<\/a>, including the Austin-San Antonio office of the National Weather Service (NWS).<\/p>\n

Officials defended the service on Sunday, insisting warnings of flash flooding were issued in advance<\/a>. But some residents said they hadn\u2019t received them \u2013 which Texas\u2019s lieutenant governor Dan Patrick acknowledged Sunday on Fox News. And an initial NWS forecast had called for only 3-6in of rain \u2013 not the intense downpour that triggered the deadly flooding.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post reported<\/a> that 1.8tn gallons of rain fell over the Texas Hill Country \u2013 which includes Kerrville \u2013 and Edwards Plateau on Friday morning.<\/p>\n

Matthew Stone, 44, of Kerrville, said police came knocking on doors \u2013 but that he had received no warning on his phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got no emergency alert. There was nothing\u201d until suddenly there was \u201ca pitch-black wall of death\u201d, Stone said.<\/p>\n

Republican Texas congressman Chip Roy, whose district includes Kerr county, said at the Sunday press conference that actions taken before and during the flooding would be scrutinized.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s going to be a lot of finger-pointing, a lot of second-guessing,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people saying \u2018why\u2019 and \u2018how,\u2019 and I understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas decision of emergency management, said Friday that early NWS forecasts \u201cdid not predict the amount of rain that we saw\u201d. His comments prompted a defense of the service Sunday by the private weather service AccuWeather, which said in a statement that Friday\u2019s pre-dawn warnings \u201cshould have provided officials with ample time to evacuate camps such as Camp Mystic and get people to safety\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Tom Fahy, legislative director for the NWS employees organization, told CNN that he believed the service\u2019s Texas offices had \u201cadequate staffing and resources\u201d. Yet he said the Austin-San Antonio office was missing a warning coordination meteorologist, a crucial link between the NWS and emergency managers.<\/p>\n

A Noaa official told the network that the vacancy, along with several other key roles, were the result of the White House offering early retirement incentives after Trump\u2019s second presidency began in January.<\/p>\n

Abbott said late Saturday that he had visited Camp Mystic, a popular Christian summer retreat for youths on the banks of the Guadalupe River in Hunt.<\/p>\n

The camp, which had more than 700 girls in attendance at the time of the flood, was overrun by a torrent of water, sweeping away 27 that were initially missing. The number of missing from there by Sunday had dropped to 11, as the death toll climbed, according to officials.<\/p>\n

Sarah Marsh, an eight-year-old girl from Mountain Brook, Alabama, who was at the camp, was found dead Saturday<\/a>, as was Jane Ragsdale, director of the nearby Heart O\u2019the Hills camp, who was described by friends as a \u201cpillar of the community<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt, and the river running beside it, were horrendously ravaged in ways unlike I\u2019ve seen in any natural disaster,\u201d Abbott said in a post to X after touring the ruins of the Camp Mystic with rescue crews.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe height the rushing water reached to the top of cabins was shocking. We won\u2019t stop until we find every girl who was in those cabins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Identities of more of those killed were becoming known on Sunday, as survivors shared extraordinary stories<\/a> of how they were spared.<\/p>\n

Two children from Dallas, Blair Harber, 13, and her 11-year-old sister Brooke, were among those confirmed dead, by officials at the Catholic high school they attended. They were staying at a riverside cabin with their grandparents, who are missing.<\/p>\n

Their father, RJ Harber, who was staying with his wife in an adjacent cabin, told CNN that Blair \u201cwas a gifted student and had a generous kind heart\u201d and that Brooke \u201cwas like a light in any room, people gravitated to her and she made them laugh and enjoy the moment\u201d.<\/p>\n

High school soccer coach Reece Zunker and his wife, Tina, were among the Kerr county victims, the Kerryville Daily Times reported<\/a> \u2013 and their two children are missing.<\/p>\n

The newspaper also identified teacher Jeff Wilson<\/a> among the victims, with his wife, Amber, and son Shiloh unaccounted for.<\/p>\n

Officials in Burnet county told KHOU TV<\/a> that a local fire department chief was among three fatalities there.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed to this report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents in central Texas were observing a day of prayer on Sunday for at least 69 people killed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-243216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114807511948962856","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}