Rescuers in the US state of Texas are scrambling to locate more than two dozen children still missing from a Christian summer camp after a powerful storm caused flash floods that authorities say have killed at least 32 people.
Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha told reporters on Saturday that the death toll included 14 children.
Officials said around 850 people had been evacuated from the region, about 137km (85 miles) northwest of San Antonio, as flood waters receded on Saturday.
Torrential downpour on Friday caused the fast-flowing Guadalupe River to rise nearly nine metres (29 feet) near the Camp Mystic summer camp, where around 700 children were staying, according to Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick.
Twenty-seven attendees were still unaccounted for, said Dalton Rice, city manager of the nearby town of Kerrville in Kerr County.
The Heart O’ The Hills summer camp, located about 1.6km (1 mile) from Camp Mystic, confirmed on Saturday that its director, Jane Ragsdale, was among the dead.
Authorities have not given an overall tally for the campers, vacationers and residents still missing after the disaster.
“We don’t know how many people were in tents on the side [of the river], in small trailers by the side, in rented homes by the side,” Patrick told Fox News.
While the National Weather Service (NWS) said the flash-flood emergency had largely ended for Kerr County – the epicentre of the flooding – it warned of more heavy rain to come, maintaining its flood watch until 7pm local time (00:00 GMT on Sunday).
Rice said more than 1,000 rescuers were on the ground to help with search-and-rescue efforts. Helicopters and drones were being used, with some people being plucked from trees. US Coast Guard helicopters had flown in to assist.
“They are looking in every possible location,” said Rice, adding that crews were facing harsh conditions while scouring waterlogged rivers, culverts and rocks.
Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro said that rescue workers had promised to “not give up until the very last person is found – either alive or their body is recovered”.
“That might be a tall order given just how catastrophic these floods were. We’re talking about a region that is dotted with hills and with canyons,” she said.
She added that children in the camps had been particularly vulnerable to the floodwaters, “which rose by eight metres [26 feet] in less than an hour, overnight as they slept”.
Authorities under scutiny
The flooding in the middle of the night on the Fourth of July holiday weekend caught many residents, campers and officials by surprise.
Authorities have come under increasing scrutiny over whether they issued proper warnings and whether enough preparations were made.
State emergency management officials had warned as late as Thursday that west and central Texas faced heavy rains and flash flood threats “over the next couple days”, citing NWS 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, said during a news conference on Friday night.
“A lot of questions are being asked about why there weren’t earlier evacuations,” said Al Jazeera’s Zhou-Castro. “They knew there might be rain, they just didn’t know where it would hit, and when it did, it indeed was catastrophic.”
On Saturday morning, US President Donald Trump said the federal government was working with state and local officials to respond to the flooding.
“Our Brave First Responders are on site doing what they do best,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, adding that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem would soon be on the ground.
At a news conference alongside Noem on Saturday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he was expanding a state “disaster declaration” to get federal assistance for counties affected by the floods.
“We will ensure that every asset and resource the state has is going to be made available to every county that’s a subject of this disaster declaration,” he said, adding that Trump “loves Texas” and was “deeply concerned about all the families who’ve been affected”.
The weekend disaster echoes a catastrophic flood almost 40 years ago along the Guadalupe River.
In 1987, a bus and a van leaving a church camp encountered floodwaters and 10 teenagers drowned trying to escape, according to a NWS summary of that incident.
