Texas flood.
Credit: International New York Times.
Kerrville, Texas: A rain-swelled Guadalupe River swept through a summer camp and nearby areas before dawn on Friday in Central Texas, killing at least 13 people and setting off frantic searches for missing children and others.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said that, as of midafternoon, about 20 girls from a camp along the river in Hunt, Texas, were missing.
Hundreds of emergency personnel were searching for stranded people using 14 helicopters, but ground crews were struggling to navigate flooded roads, officials said. They warned the death toll was likely to rise.
"It's going to be a mass casualty event," said Freeman F. Martin, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Some stranded children from Camp Mystic, a Christian camp for girls, were rescued throughout the day, but reuniting them with their parents proved difficult because many roads were impassable.
On social media and in text messages, parents circulated photos of some of the missing girls, and exchanged hopeful stories that they were hearing about dramatic rescues: girls clinging to trees, or floating downriver to a boys' camp 5 miles away.
"I know there are anxious parents watching, wanting information," Patrick said. "We have the best rescue teams and response teams in the world."
Gov. Greg Abbott activated the National Guard. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem deployed the U.S. Coast Guard and Federal Emergency Management Agency, a spokesperson for the agency wrote on social media.
In the city of Kerrville, some flood survivors huddled inside a church's activity center, and others looked distraught, shivering under blankets.
Brian Eads, 52, was hoping for information about his wife, Katherine, after aggressive floodwaters ravaged their trailer around 3:30 a.m.
"I have no idea if she's made it," Eads said. "We both got swept away, and then I lost her."
The couple had been awakened by rushing waters and managed to escape with a man driving a recreational vehicle. But the water caught up with them about 20 feet away, Eads said, and the vehicle's engine died. Both he and his wife were swept underwater. He tried to swim toward her voice, he said, but lost her when he was struck in the head by debris. He survived by holding onto a tree and making his way to dry land.
Up to 15 inches of rain fell in some areas, according to the National Weather Service. In Hunt, where the Guadalupe River forks, more than 7 inches fell on Thursday and Friday -- the highest total that area has seen since the early 1990s.
This led the Guadalupe to rise at an alarming rate in Hunt, from 7 feet at midnight to more than 29 feet at 4 a.m., the second-highest level ever, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The river may have crested even higher, but the surge flooded the instrument used to track water levels, which stopped transmitting at 4:35 a.m. local time.
Throughout the region, torrential downpours prompted evacuation orders and water rescues as the churning river burst its banks.
Police in Kerrville said on social media that they were working with the Kerrville Fire Department to evacuate residents, noting that "many roads and streets are flooding in town."
Patrick urged people in the area not to approach flooded zones. He specifically cautioned that people should not use drones or personal helicopters to assist in rescue efforts because doing so could endanger emergency personnel.
At Ingram Elementary School, a family reunification site, people hoped to find missing relatives, including girls from Camp Mystic. About 750 girls were at the camp this week, Patrick said.
The camp said that it was assisting with search-and-rescue operations, but that it did not have power, water or Wi-Fi and was struggling to obtain additional help because a nearby highway had washed away.
By midafternoon, emergency crews had started to bring some of the stranded girls to the school. One man saw his daughter sitting in the passenger seat of an emergency vehicle and ran after it with a smile.
An elated grandmother said her granddaughter had been rescued from a tree. She said she was happy the girl had been found, but that she remained worried about the other missing children.
Randy Bush, 59, said he had not heard from his fiancee, Charlotte Buff, 55, since Thursday night. He had looked for her at a local Walmart that was also being used as a reunification center.
"I have no idea what happened to her," he said.
Buff lives at an RV park in the Kerrville area. As soon as Bush heard about the floods, he rushed to the park, but he was blocked by road closures and emergency vehicles.
"When I was there this morning, they were doing water rescues with helicopters," Bush said.
"From what I saw, that park was gone," he added as he made his way to the school. "It was just all water. It didn't look like there was anything there."
Betty Gerlach, whose 14-year-old grandson is a camper at Camp La Junta, the boys' camp about 5 miles from Camp Mystic, said the camp had informed families that all campers were safe and had been fed. But an evacuation plan was still in development, and it was not slated to begin until Friday evening.
The camp asked families from out of state, Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth area to begin traveling to the region. But families in nearby Austin and San Antonio were told to "stay put for now," to avoid overcrowding.
With several camp buildings washed away by the flooding, campers had taken shelter in two small cabins while they waited to be evacuated, Gerlach said.
Kerrville canceled its Fourth of July celebration, which draws thousands of festivalgoers each year. In a statement posted on Instagram, festival organizers instead offered the Arcadia Live theater as a shelter.
The Guadalupe River, which flows from the Texas Hill Country region to the Gulf, is a popular summer destination for rafting, tubing and camping.
The flooding Friday surfaced memories of deadly flooding along the Guadalupe in 1987. The river rose 29 feet on the morning of July 17, sweeping away a school bus and a van that were carrying teenagers from a church camp.
Ten of the teenagers drowned; 33 others and four adults were rescued. Some who survived held onto the upper branches of cypress and pecan trees, praying until helicopters arrived to carry them to safety.
At a news conference Friday morning, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge, said the flooding might exceed that event, based on the waterline at his property along the river.
"This far surpasses the '87 flood," he said.