Torrential rains unleashed flash floods along the Guadalupe River in Texas, killing at least 24 people as rescue teams scrambled to save dozens of victims trapped by high water or reported missing in the disaster, local officials said.
Among the missing were 23 to 25 people listed as unaccounted for at an all-girls Christian summer camp located on the banks of the rain-engorged Guadalupe, authorities said.]
Texas parents frantically posted photos of their young daughters on social media with pleas for information.
“What I can confirm at this point, we’re at about 24 fatalities,” Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha told an evening news conference on Friday, later confirming 24 people had died.
The US National Weather Service declared a flash flood emergency for parts of Kerr County, located in south-central Texas Hill Country, about 105km (65 miles) northwest of San Antonio, following heavy downpours measuring up to 300mm (12 inches) of rain.
Dalton Rice, city manager for Kerville, the county seat, told reporters the extreme flooding struck before dawn with little or no warning, precluding authorities from issuing any evacuation orders.
“This happened very quickly, over a very short period of time that could not be predicted, even with the radar,” Rice said. “This happened within less than a two-hour span.”
Earlier in the day, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said somewhere between six and 10 bodies had been found so far in the frantic search for victims. During a news conference conducted at the same time as Patrick’s update, Sheriff Leitha reported that there were 13 deaths from the flooding.
