US authorities say 27 people, including nine children, have been confirmed dead after flash floods in central Texas as rescuers continue a frantic search for survivors including dozens still missing from a girls’ summer camp.
The sheriff’s office in Kerr County, Texas said 800 people had been rescued in the region as flood waters receded in the area around the Guadalupe River, about 138km northwest of San Antonio.
At least 23 to 25 people from the Camp Mystic summer camp were missing, most of them reported to be young girls.
The river waters rose almost nine metres rapidly near the camp.
The US National Weather Service said that the flash flood emergency has largely ended for Kerr County, the epicentre of the flooding, following thunderstorms that dumped as much as a foot of rain early on Friday.
A flood watch, however, remains in effect until 7pm on Saturday from the San Antonio-Austin, Texas, region, with scattered showers expected throughout the day, according to Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the NWS Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
US President Donald Trump said the federal government is working with state and local officials to respond to the flooding.
“Melania and I are praying for all of the families impacted by this horrible tragedy. Our Brave First Responders are on site doing what they do best,” he said on social media.
Dalton Rice, city manager for Kerrville, the county seat, told reporters on Friday that the extreme flooding struck before dawn with little or no warning, precluding authorities from issuing advance evacuation orders as the Guadalupe River swiftly rose above major flood stage.
“This happened very quickly, over a very short period of time that could not be predicted, even with radar,” Rice said.
“This happened within less than a two-hour span.”
State emergency management officials had warned as early as Thursday that west and central Texas faced heavy rains and flash flood threats “over the next couple days,” citing National Weather Service forecasts ahead of the holiday weekend.
The weather forecasts, however, “did not predict the amount of rain that we saw,” W Nim Kidd, director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, told a news conference on Friday night.
The weekend disaster echoes a catastrophic flood almost 40 years ago along the Guadalupe River where a bus and a van leaving a church camp encountered flood waters and 10 teenagers drowned trying to escape, according to a National Weather Service event summary of the 1987 storm.
Hundreds of people were rescued, it said.
https://thewest.com.au/news/disaster-and-emergency/texas-flood-waters-recede-as-27-people-confirmed-dead-c-19261352
