As the search in Texas continued Wednesday for more than 160 people believed to be missing days after a destructive wall of water killed over 100 people, the full extent of the catastrophe had yet to be revealed as officials warned that unaccounted victims could still be found amid the massive piles of debris that stretch for miles.
“Know this: We will not stop until every missing person is accounted for. Know this also: There very likely could be more added to that list,” Gov. Greg Abbott said during a news conference Tuesday.
Abbott said officials have been seeking more information about those who were in the state’s Hill Country during the Fourth of July holiday but did not register at a camp or a hotel and may have been in the area without many people knowing.
The lowlands of Kerr County along the Guadalupe River, where most of the victims of the flash flooding have been recovered so far, are filled with youth camps and campgrounds, including Camp Mystic, the century-old all-girls Christian summer camp where at least 27 campers and counselors died. Officials said Tuesday that five campers and one counselor have still not been found.
Crews in airboats, helicopters and on horseback along with hundreds of volunteers are part of one of the largest search operations in Texas history.
The flash flood is the deadliest from inland flooding in the U.S. since Colorado’s Big Thompson Canyon flood on July 31, 1976, killed 144 people, said Bob Henson, a meteorologist with Yale Climate Connections. That flood surged through a narrow canyon packed with people on a holiday weekend, Colorado’s centennial celebration.
Public officials in charge of locating the victims are facing intensifying questions about who was in charge of monitoring the weather and warning that floodwaters were barreling toward camps and homes.
Abbott promised that the search for victims will not stop until everyone is found. He also said President Donald Trump has pledged to provide whatever relief Texas needs to recover. Trump plans to visit the state Friday.
Camp Mystic's disaster plan approved 2 days before floods: records
Outside the cabins at Camp Mystic where the girls had slept, mud-splattered blankets and pillows were scattered on a grassy hill that slopes toward the river. Also in the debris were pink, purple and blue luggage decorated with stickers.
Among those who died at the camp were a second grader who loved pink sparkles and bows, a 19-year-old counselor who enjoyed mentoring young girls and the camp’s 75-year-old director.
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The flash floods erupted before daybreak Friday after massive rains sent water speeding down hills into the Guadalupe River, causing it to rise 26 feet (8 meters) in less than an hour. Some campers had to swim out of cabin windows to safety while others held onto a rope as they made their way to higher ground.
Just two days before the flooding, Texas inspectors had signed off on the camp’s emergency planning. But five years of inspection reports released to The Associated Press don’t provide any details about how the camp would instruct campers about evacuating and specific duties each staff member and counselor would be assigned.
The Department of State Health Services released records Tuesday showing the camp complied with a host of state regulations regarding “procedures to be implemented in case of a disaster.” Among them: instructing campers what to do if they need to evacuate and assigning specific duties to each staff member and counselor.
The inspection found no deficiencies or violations at the camp in a long list of health and safety criteria. The camp had 557 campers and more than 100 staffers at the time between its Guadalupe and Cypress Lake locations.
Camps are responsible for developing their own emergency plan. Inspectors evaluate the plans to ensure they meet several state requirements, including procedures for evacuation.
“The inspector checked that they had plans posted for those elements in every building,” said Lara Anton, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services, “and that they had trained staff and volunteers on what to do.”
Camp Mystic is licensed by the state and a member of the Camping Association for Mutual Progress, which says its goal is to “raise health and safety standards” for summer camps. Leaders of that association didn’t return messages.
The American Camp Association said Tuesday that Camp Mystic is not accredited with that organization, whose standards focus on safety and risk management. Spokesperson Lauren McMillin declined to say whether the camp previously had been accredited with the association, which describes itself as “the only nationwide accrediting organization for all year-round and summer camps.”
The camp, established in 1926, did not evacuate and was especially hit hard when the river rose from 14 feet (4.2 metres) to 29.5 feet (nine metres) within 60 minutes in the early morning hours. Flooding on that stretch of the Guadalupe starts at about 10 feet (three metres).
Charlotte Lauten, 19, spent nine summers at Camp Mystic, mostly recently in 2023. She said she didn’t recall ever receiving instructions as a camper on what do in the case of a weather emergency.
“I do know that the counselors go through orientation training for a week before camp starts,” she said. “They do brief them on all those types of things.”
One thing that likely hindered the girls’ ability to escape was how dark it would have been, Lauten said. Campers don’t have access to their phones while at camp, she said, adding they wouldn’t have cell service anyway because of the remote location.
“This is the middle of nowhere and they didn’t have power,” she said. “It would have been pitch black, like could not see 5 feet in front of you type of darkness. I’ve never seen stars like there because there’s just no light.”
Although it’s difficult to attribute a single weather event to climate change, experts say a warming atmosphere and oceans make catastrophic storms more likely.
Where were the warnings?
Questions mounted about what, if any, actions local officials took to warn campers and residents who were in the scenic area long known to locals as “flash flood alley.”
Leaders in Kerr county, where searchers have found about 90 bodies, said their first priority is recovering victims, not reviewing what happened in the moments before the flash floods.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s chief elected official, said the county does not have a warning system.
Generations of families in the Hill Country have known the dangers. A 1987 flood forced the evacuation of a youth camp in the town of Comfort and swamped buses and vans. Ten teenagers were killed.
Local leaders have talked for years about the need for a warning system. Kerr County sought a nearly $1 million grant eight years ago for such a system, but the request was turned down by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Local residents balked at footing the bill themselves, Kelly said.
Recovery and cleanup goes on
The bodies of 30 children were among those that have been recovered in the county, which is home to Camp Mystic and several other summer camps, the sheriff said.
The devastation spread across several hundred miles in central Texas all the way to just outside the capital of Austin.
Aidan Duncan escaped just in time after hearing the muffled blare of a megaphone urging residents to evacuate Riverside RV Park in the Hill Country town of Ingram.
All his belongings — a mattress, sports cards, his pet parakeet’s bird cage — now sit caked in mud in front of his home.
“What’s going on right now, it hurts,” the 17-year-old said. “I literally cried so hard.”
—Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press writers Joshua A. Bickel in Kerrville, Texas, Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, Jim Mustian in Miami, Christopher Keller in Albuquerque, N.M., Ryan Foley in Iowa City, and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.
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