Rescue and relief efforts are ongoing in Kerr County, Texas, after months-worth of rainfall (about 12 inches) fell just before sunrise on Friday morning, raising the Guadalupe River’s banks by a staggering 26 feet (8 meters, or the height of a two-storey house) in less than an hour. As of this writing, authorities have confirmed that at least 70 people are dead, including 21 children, after being swept away by the powerful currents of the flash flood.
Twenty-seven young girls are also missing from a Christian summer camp, Camp Mystic, located along the banks of the river. The banks of the Guadalupe River are a popular summer destination for family vacations and many summer camps like Mystic, with the July 4th holiday being an especially popular time to visit. These factors make it that much harder to figure out how many are still missing, with Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice telling reporters, “We don’t even want to begin to estimate at this time.”
Texas Governor Gregg Abbott has declared a state of emergency on Saturday, appearing at a press conference with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who addressed criticism about a lack of preparation for the floods by pointing to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) “neglected” and “ancient” systems. President Trump’s broad cuts to federal agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency—which until May was run by Silicon Valley financier Elon Musk—have decimated the NOAA, cutting its staff by more than 600 people since January.
Local authorities have blamed federal agencies for a lack a clear communication as to the severity of the flood. “The amount of rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts,” Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said of the alerts from the National Weather Service, which is a part of the NOAA. Kidd says that the alerts never predicted anything higher than 8 inches for Hill Country, where Kerr County is located. Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s top elected official, told CBS News: “We had no reason to believe that this was gonna be anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever.”
A meteorologist with the National Weather Service told the Associated Press that increasingly urgent alerts were being sent to mobile phones in the early hours of Friday telling people to seek higher ground, culminating with a warning at 4:03 a.m. that warned of catastrophic damage and threat to human life.
Kelly also told the AP that an early warning system was considered by the county around six or seven years ago, before he was elected, but that the measure went nowhere because “the public reeled at the cost.”
