CNN
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At least 24 people died in Kerr County, Texas, after serious floods whipped the state on Friday, Sheriff Larry Leitha reported at a press conference on Friday night.
In addition, there are between 23 and 25 missing girls in Camp Mystic after serious floods in the region, authorities reported Friday.
Camp Mystic is a private Christian camp for girls that houses some 750 minors in total, said Texas Vice Governor, Dan Patrick, during a press conference on Friday.
“That does not mean that they have lost, they could be in a tree, they could be incommunicado,” he said.
At least 14 helicopters, 12 drones and more than 500 people from various units are working to rescue adults and children near Camp Mystic, said Patrick.
The helicopter rescue teams were ongoing earlier in the day, but they had to wait to improve the climatic conditions before operating the aircraft safely, the source added.
“There are still several missing people at this time, but we are working very hard. And we will continue. This process will probably take a couple of days,” said Kerr County Sheriff, Larry L. Leitha, at a press conference on Friday afternoon.
Leitha said that more fatal victims will be reported in the county.
The search for those who were dragged by floods in the center of Texas will continue during the night, since state and local authorities “remain in search and rescue mode,” said Texas governor Greg Abbott, Friday.
“They will continue in the dark of the night. They will continue when the sun rises in the morning. They will not stop, seeking to find everyone who is still missing,” he said.
First aid helicopters with infrared technology will be flying during the night in a continuous effort to locate possible victims to rescue, according to a source familiar with the search.
“Until a few hours ago, we had rescued or evacuated 237 people, 167 of them by helicopter,” said Major General Thomas M. Solazer at a press conference on Friday night. “Therefore, we are having a very good helicopter response when the weather allows it.”
On Saturday, staff will be sent to help manage evacuated shelters and tracking work will be carried out to confirm the location of people to date, he added.
On the other hand, Abbott said Friday that he issued a disaster statement after severe floods in the state.
The statement was issued for several of the most affected counties in the center of Texas. It will guarantee that the counties “will have access to all the tools, strategies and personnel that the state of Texas can provide them, which will be unlimited,” he said.
“We will put everything we have throughout the state,” said Abbott.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, described the floods in Texas as “terrible” and promised federal support after the catastrophe.
“It’s terrible. Floods? It’s shocking. They still don’t know how many people, but it seems that some young people have died,” Trump told journalists aboard Air Force One while traveling to his club in New Jersey.
When asked about whether there will be federal help, he replied: “Oh yes, we will take care of them. We are working with the governor. We are working with the governor. It is something terrible.”
From Thursday night, generalized rainfall has been recorded between 10 and 15 cm, with some reports of more than 25 cm, from San Angelo to Kerville, which has caused multiple emergencies for sudden floods at the beginning of the festive weekend of July 4.
The emergency due to sudden floods is the most severe form of flood alert, and the National Meteorological Service (NWS) has issued at least five from 4 am, local time, in parts of Tom Green, Kerr and Kendall counties. San Angelo, with almost 100,000 inhabitants, is located in Tom Green County.
This is another example of how torrential rains are increasingly frequent in a world that is heated, because the increase in global temperatures pushes climatic conditions to extremes. Texas has already suffered multiple dangerous floods this year and, last year, the United States in general registered a record number of emergencies for sudden floods last year.
The San Angelo Police Department issued an alert to warn the population that “remain in their residence and avoid traveling” and “take refuge in the place of the center.”
Kerville police and firefighters, in Kerr County, are working on rescues for floods, according to a municipal official to CNN.
Two parks in Kerville are closed due to floods, the city confirmed on social networks. The evacuations were underway after the water reached the cabins that visitors rent in the Kerville-Schreiner park around the dawn on Friday.
A larger amount of the rain of a whole summer fell into some places in just a few hours, quickly flooding dry soils and causing significant sudden floods. The Texas center currently suffers one of the worst droughts in the United States and completely dry soils are flooded very quickly.
Water level measurements along parts of the Guadalupe River, near the community of Hunt, in Kerr County, “indicate that a large and deadly flood wave is moving downstream,” warned the NWS. The river grew 6.7 meters in just three hours and reached its second highest level recorded on Friday morning. A few hours later, the river meter that registered that flood was damaged and was out of service as a result of floods, according to the Austin National Meteorological Service.
San Angelo usually records around 2.5 cm of rain during July, but reports in the city on night rains vary between 5 cm and more than 25 cm.
Hunt, near Kerville, received about 16.5 cm of rain in just three hours in the early hours of Friday, which is considered a rain phenomenon once every 100 years in the area, which means that it has a probability of occurrence of approximately 1 % in any year.
A recent study revealed that rainfall has intensified in almost 90 % of the large cities in the United States since 1970. This is only one of the innumerable dangerous weather phenomena that occur more frequently in a context of global warming due to fossil fuel pollution.
CNN meteorologists, Briana Waxman, Brandon Miller, Gene Norman and David Williams, contributed to this report. With information from Laura Sharman, Dalia Faheid, Josh Campbell y Taylor Romine de CNN.
