More than 105 people dead as questions intensify over handling of disaster
Authorities leading the search for victims of the devastating flooding in Texas deflected intensifying questions Tuesday about who was responsible for monitoring the weather that killed more than 100 people and warning that flash floods were barreling toward camps and homes.
Local officials in Kerr county, where 87 bodies have been found so far, said their priority was finding victims, not reviewing what happened in the hours before the floods inundated the state’s Hill Country. The total death toll now exceeds 105.
During a sometimes tense news conference, officials faced questions about quickly they responded and who was in charge. “Right now, this team up here is focused on bringing people home,” said Lt Col Ben Baker, of the Texas Game Wardens.
Hope of finding survivors was increasingly bleak. Four days have passed since anyone was found alive in the aftermath of the floods, officials said Tuesday.
The search efforts benefited from improving weather. The storms that battered the Hill Country for the past four days began to lighten up, although isolated pockets of heavy rain were still possible.
Key events
In remarks to reporters alongside his cabinet, Donald Trump repeated that he will be in Texas on Friday. Melania Trump, the first lady, will accompany him.
The president said: “Texas, and the governor, has been obviously very good for years with me.”
Noem: ‘The state’ manages disasters, not the federal government
At Donald Trump’s cabinet meeting Tuesday afternoon, Kristi Noem spoke about leading the federal response to the flooding disaster and said she was overcome with emotion during her trip to Texas, the Associated Press reported.
“Very emotional, but also just so tragic,” the homeland security secretary said.
Noem said “Texas is strong” but also noted, “We, as a federal government, don’t manage these disasters. The state does.”
“We’re cutting through the paperwork of the old Fema streamlining it, much like your vision of how Fema should operate,” Noem said of Trump’s promise to scrap the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).
Noem added, that Americans helping one another after such tragic events is proof, “God created us to take care of each other.”
Here are some images coming over the newswires as search and recovery efforts continue:
A search and recovery team prepares a fan boat to launch on Guadalupe River while in search of remains of people swept up in the flash floods. Photograph: Jim Vondruska/Getty ImagesDebris lays along the Guadalupe River after it was swept up in the flash flooding in Ingram, Texas. Photograph: Jim Vondruska/Getty ImagesCharles Hanson, 91, cleans up flood debris in Kerrville, Texas. Photograph: Joshua A Bickel/APDebris lays along the Guadalupe River in Ingram, Texas. Photograph: Jim Vondruska/Getty Images
Intense rainstorms are becoming more frequent in most of the US – though experts tell the Associated Press where they occur and whether they cause catastrophic flooding is largely a matter of chance.
Although it can be difficult to attribute a single weather event to climate change, experts told the AP that a warming atmosphere and oceans due to the burning of fossil fuels make catastrophic storms more likely.
That’s because the atmosphere can hold 7% more water for every 1C (1.8F), creating a giant sponge of sorts that sucks up moisture from bodies of water and vegetation. The moisture later falls back to earth in increasingly intense, unpredictable and destructive downpours.
“It’s just loading the dice toward heavy rainfall when the situation is right,” said Kenneth Kunkel, a climate scientist at North Carolina State University, told the AP.
Among the Texas flood victims: campers, staff, grandparents and teachers
Anna Betts
As search-and-rescue operations continue across central Texas, the death toll from the devastating and catastrophic flash flooding of the Guadalupe River continues to rise. On Sunday, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, said more than 40 people remain missing.
Many of the victims have been identified by their relatives. Click the link below to read what we know so far about some of those whose lives were taken by the floods:
What’s more, despite the National Weather Service’s first public warning alert at 1.14am on 4 July, Sheriff Larry Leitha told reporters he was not made aware of the flash floods until “between 4 and 5” that morning.
NBC News has more on the heated press briefing just now, during which officials faced accusations of “ducking” questions from reporters regarding Kerr county’s alert system.
Sheriff Larry Leitha told reporters that the county is working on a timeline of how it alerted residents about the flash floods. Responding to a question about the alerts, he said:
As I’ve told you several times, that is not my priority this time. There are three priorities, thats locating the people out there, identifying, notifying the next of kin – that is what I’m taking as my job as sheriff.
When a reporter pressed him on a response, asking if the emergency manager was awake during flooding and “push[ed] the button to issue an emergency alert”, Leitha said: “It’s not that easy.”
It’s not that easy as you just push a button, OK, there’s a lot more to that, and we’ve told you several times.
Reporters continued to ask about the county’s alert system, but officials evaded the questions to focus on recovery efforts.
Officials said the next press conference will be held at 5pm CT.
Things got a bit heated at the news conference with the sheriff facing questions over the actions that were taken by local officials when the first flood emergency alert was sent out and whether people were notified quickly enough.
Asked whether the emergency manager was awake at the time to issue an emergency alert, the sheriff said: “I can’t tell you at this time.”
There is then much back-and-forth over the question of who was in charge of the emergency operations center receiving monitoring briefings from the National Weather Service and who would have made the decision to evacuate.
Questions are cut off to focus on recovery and rescue efforts.
Death toll in Kerr county, Texas, rises to 87, sheriff says
As of 8am CT, 87 people have been recovered in Kerr county, including 56 adults and 30 children.
Identification is pending for 19 adults and seven adults with one additional person still unidentified, the sheriff said.
At Camp Mystic, five campers and one counsellor remain unaccounted for.
This brings the overall death toll across the affected areas of Texas to 108.
Texas officials to give update on rescue and recovery efforts
Texas officials are due to brief reporters shortly on rescue and recovery efforts after a deadly flood took the lives of more than 100 people in Kerrville. We’ll bring you any key lines here.
First responders from Mexico help with search after devastating Texas floods
A team of first responders from Mexico joined search efforts yesterday in central Texas, where at least 23 people remain missing after deadly flash flooding over the weekend.
The team traveled from Acuña, in the state of Coahuila, which borders Del Río, Texas, and includes nine members from the civil protection and fire department of Ciudad Acuña and four members from the Fundación 911 organization.
The team told CBS News they were committed to staying until the last victim was found. Jesus Gomez, a dual citizen from Acuña who also answered the call for help, said:
There’s a bunch of firefighters that have visas and we were like, ‘Let’s just go and help.’ Sometimes people from the other side cross and help us. It’s time to give a little bit.
The US ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, thanked the rescuers for their help and collaboration in the area. He wrote on X:
The United States and Mexico are united, not only as neighbors but as family, especially in times of need.
Mexican canine teams, trained with US support for security missions, are also in Texas, Johnson said.
We reiterate our commitment to working together with Mexico at times like this.
Staff cuts at a local National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather forecast office may have been contributed to the inability of local emergency managers to respond to rising flood waters on Friday in a timely manner, former NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad has told CNN.
As we reported yesterday, the position of warning coordination meteorologist at the Austin-San Antonio weather forecast office – a role that serves as a direct link between forecasters and emergency managers – was vacant on 4 July, after that person took early retirement recently offered by the Trump administration.
Spinrad told CNN:
The staffing was just fine – and the White House has concurred with this – to get the forecast out, to get the watches and warnings issued. But when you send a message, there’s no guarantee it’s being received, so someone needs to follow up, and that’s the warning coordination meteorologist, a position that was vacant.
There is a small chance of more storms and rain, but forecasters say the flood-ravaged TexasHill Country should see a break in storms today. And as of early this morning, all flood watches have been dropped for Texas, but a few flood warnings remain in effect.
Those flood warnings include the Leon River at Gatesville affecting Coryell county, Cowhouse Creek near Pidcoke, and the San Saba River affecting San Saba county, according to the National Weather Service.
My colleagues have put together this visual guide to one of Texas’s worst natural disasters, which has killed at least 105 people, many of them children, after torrential rain and extreme flash flooding.
An elite Missouri taskforce has been activated by Fema to deploy to Texas for up to 14 days, focusing on water rescue operations and capabilities for detecting human remains.
The 50-member team, which includes four human-remains-detection canines and their handlers, as well as an additional search team manager, departed from Columbia, Missouri, to Kerr county, Texas, last night. “The team will support search and rescue operations in response to the historic flooding affecting the region,” according to a press release.
