Summary
Rescue crews continued on Tuesday to comb through parts of the Texas Hill Country devastated by catastrophic flash flooding over the Fourth of July weekend, but with more than 100 dead and hope fading for survivors, efforts have increasingly turned to search and recovery.
Here’s where we stand as of 2pm ET today:
Authorities have said at least 107 people have been killed in the flash flooding. In Kerr county, 87 bodies have been recovered as of Tuesday morning. At Camp Mystic, five campers and one counselor remain unaccounted for, officials said.
The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, spoke about leading the federal response to the flooding disaster at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. She said her visit to Texas was “very emotional”. Noem said “Texas is strong” but also noted: “We, as a federal government, don’t manage these disasters. The state does.” She added: “We’re cutting through the paperwork of the old Fema streamlining it, much like your vision of how Fema should operate.”
Questions are mounting over the response to the devastating flooding and a press conference in Texas turned tense. “Right now, this team up here is focused on bringing people home,” said Lt Col Ben Baker, of the Texas game wardens.
Sheriff Larry Leitha told reporters that the county is working on a timeline of how it alerted residents about the flash floods. Responding to a question about the alerts, he said: “As I’ve told you several times, that is not my priority this time. There are three priorities, thats locating the people out there, identifying, notifying the next of kin – that is what I’m taking as my job as sheriff.”
Hope of finding survivors was dwindling. Four days have passed since anyone was found alive in the aftermath of the floods, officials said.
A team of first responders from Mexico joined search efforts on Monday in central Texas. The team traveled from Acuña, in the state of Coahuila, which borders Del Río, Texas, and includes nine members from the civil protection and fire department of Ciudad Acuña and four members from the Fundación 911 organization.
There is a small chance of more storms and rain, but forecasters say the flood-ravaged Texas Hill Country should see a break in storms today. And as of early this morning, all flood watches have been dropped for Texas, but a few flood warnings remain in effect.
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A state legislator in Texas has told the New York Times about efforts to get funding for sirens that would blare warnings during flash flooding.
As questions mount over the official response to the flooding, Wes Virdell – who represents Kerry county – said his office would get a bill under way “to get funding to help implement these sirens”.
Virdell suggested more action was needed. “If you had cell service there, or even a Starlink”, he said, it would help warn people of future weather disasters.
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The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said first responders in Texas are “still looking for a lot of little girls” who remain missing after a devastating flood in Texas.
Noem described the scene in Texas as Trump met with his cabinet at the White House on Tuesday.
Noem visited Camp Mystic in Kerrville on Saturday after the catastrophic flood on Friday.
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A US coast guard rescue swimmer on his first rescue mission as well as teenage counselors who helped shepherd cold and wet young campers to safety have been credited with saving dozens of lives at a flood-ravaged Christian summer camp on the banks of Texas’s Guadalupe River.
Their stories of heroism and fortitude – including the counselors’ writing young campers’ names on their arms and legs with Sharpies so that authorities could identify them if necessary – are among the first to emerge recounting the grim reality of the torrent of water that surged Friday through the all-girls Camp Mystic, where at least 27 campers and counselors are known to have died.
Coast Guard petty officer Scott Ruskan, 26, of Oxford, New Jersey, spoke of plucking mud-covered children to safety after his helicopter crew flew through appalling weather to reach the campsite in rural Hunt early on Friday afternoon.
He and his colleagues, he told the Washington Post, were greeted with scenes of devastation, and dozens of children, teenage camp counselors and staff desperate to escape.
“That’s how quickly this floodwater rose,” he told the newspaper in a phone interview. “They didn’t have time to grab shoes. You’re just carrying kids that don’t have shoes on, they’re covered in mud, and you’re trying to get them out of there.
“Some of it was simply talking to them and consoling them and trying to make them feel comfortable.”
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At least 107 people dead as questions intensify over handling of disaster
Authorities leading the search for victims of the devastating flooding in Texas deflected intensifying questions Tuesday about who was responsible for monitoring the weather that killed more than 100 people and warning that flash floods were barreling toward camps and homes.
Local officials in Kerr county, where 87 bodies have been found so far, said their priority was finding victims, not reviewing what happened in the hours before the floods inundated the state’s Hill Country. In total, at least 107 people have died.
During a sometimes tense news conference, officials faced questions about quickly they responded and who was in charge. “Right now, this team up here is focused on bringing people home,” said Lt Col Ben Baker, of the Texas Game Wardens.
Hope of finding survivors was increasingly bleak. Four days have passed since anyone was found alive in the aftermath of the floods, officials said Tuesday.
The search efforts benefited from improving weather. The storms that battered the Hill Country for the past four days began to lighten up, although isolated pockets of heavy rain were still possible.
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In remarks to reporters alongside his cabinet, Donald Trump repeated that he will be in Texas on Friday. Melania Trump, the first lady, will accompany him.
The president said: “Texas, and the governor, has been obviously very good for years with me.”
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Noem: 'The state' manages disasters, not the federal government
At Donald Trump’s cabinet meeting Tuesday afternoon, Kristi Noem spoke about leading the federal response to the flooding disaster and said she was overcome with emotion during her trip to Texas, the Associated Press reported.
“Very emotional, but also just so tragic,” the homeland security secretary said.
Noem said “Texas is strong” but also noted, “We, as a federal government, don’t manage these disasters. The state does.”
“We’re cutting through the paperwork of the old Fema streamlining it, much like your vision of how Fema should operate,” Noem said of Trump’s promise to scrap the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).
Noem added, that Americans helping one another after such tragic events is proof, “God created us to take care of each other.”
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Here are some images coming over the newswires as search and recovery efforts continue:
Intense rainstorms are becoming more frequent in most of the US – though experts tell the Associated Press where they occur and whether they cause catastrophic flooding is largely a matter of chance.
Although it can be difficult to attribute a single weather event to climate change, experts told the AP that a warming atmosphere and oceans due to the burning of fossil fuels make catastrophic storms more likely.
That’s because the atmosphere can hold 7% more water for every 1C (1.8F), creating a giant sponge of sorts that sucks up moisture from bodies of water and vegetation. The moisture later falls back to earth in increasingly intense, unpredictable and destructive downpours.
“It’s just loading the dice toward heavy rainfall when the situation is right,” said Kenneth Kunkel, a climate scientist at North Carolina State University, told the AP.
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Among the Texas flood victims: campers, staff, grandparents and teachers
As search-and-rescue operations continue across central Texas, the death toll from the devastating and catastrophic flash flooding of the Guadalupe River continues to rise. On Sunday, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, said more than 40 people remain missing.
Many of the victims have been identified by their relatives. Click the link below to read what we know so far about some of those whose lives were taken by the floods:
What’s more, despite the National Weather Service’s first public warning alert at 1.14am on 4 July, Sheriff Larry Leitha told reporters he was not made aware of the flash floods until “between 4 and 5” that morning.
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NBC News has more on the heated press briefing just now, during which officials faced accusations of “ducking” questions from reporters regarding Kerr county’s alert system.
Sheriff Larry Leitha told reporters that the county is working on a timeline of how it alerted residents about the flash floods. Responding to a question about the alerts, he said:
As I’ve told you several times, that is not my priority this time. There are three priorities, thats locating the people out there, identifying, notifying the next of kin – that is what I’m taking as my job as sheriff.
When a reporter pressed him on a response, asking if the emergency manager was awake during flooding and “push[ed] the button to issue an emergency alert”, Leitha said: “It’s not that easy.”
It’s not that easy as you just push a button, OK, there’s a lot more to that, and we’ve told you several times.
Reporters continued to ask about the county’s alert system, but officials evaded the questions to focus on recovery efforts.
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Officials said the next press conference will be held at 5pm CT.
Things got a bit heated at the news conference with the sheriff facing questions over the actions that were taken by local officials when the first flood emergency alert was sent out and whether people were notified quickly enough.
Asked whether the emergency manager was awake at the time to issue an emergency alert, the sheriff said: “I can’t tell you at this time.”
There is then much back-and-forth over the question of who was in charge of the emergency operations center receiving monitoring briefings from the National Weather Service and who would have made the decision to evacuate.
Questions are cut off to focus on recovery and rescue efforts.
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Death toll in Kerr county, Texas, rises to 87, sheriff says
As of 8am CT, 87 people have been recovered in Kerr county, including 56 adults and 30 children.
Identification is pending for 19 adults and seven children with one additional person still unidentified, the sheriff said.
At Camp Mystic, five campers and one counsellor remain unaccounted for.
This brings the overall death toll across the affected areas of Texas to 108.
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Texas officials to give update on rescue and recovery efforts
Texas officials are due to brief reporters shortly on rescue and recovery efforts after a deadly flood took the lives of more than 100 people in Kerrville. We’ll bring you any key lines here.
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First responders from Mexico help with search after devastating Texas floods
A team of first responders from Mexico joined search efforts yesterday in central Texas, where at least 23 people remain missing after deadly flash flooding over the weekend.
The team traveled from Acuña, in the state of Coahuila, which borders Del Río, Texas, and includes nine members from the civil protection and fire department of Ciudad Acuña and four members from the Fundación 911 organization.
The team told CBS News they were committed to staying until the last victim was found. Jesus Gomez, a dual citizen from Acuña who also answered the call for help, said:
There’s a bunch of firefighters that have visas and we were like, ‘Let’s just go and help.’ Sometimes people from the other side cross and help us. It’s time to give a little bit.
The US ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, thanked the rescuers for their help and collaboration in the area. He wrote on X:
The United States and Mexico are united, not only as neighbors but as family, especially in times of need.
Mexican canine teams, trained with US support for security missions, are also in Texas, Johnson said.
We reiterate our commitment to working together with Mexico at times like this.
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Staff cuts at a local National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather forecast office may have been contributed to the inability of local emergency managers to respond to rising flood waters on Friday in a timely manner, former NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad has told CNN.
As we reported yesterday, the position of warning coordination meteorologist at the Austin-San Antonio weather forecast office – a role that serves as a direct link between forecasters and emergency managers – was vacant on 4 July, after that person took early retirement recently offered by the Trump administration.
Spinrad told CNN:
The staffing was just fine – and the White House has concurred with this – to get the forecast out, to get the watches and warnings issued. But when you send a message, there’s no guarantee it’s being received, so someone needs to follow up, and that’s the warning coordination meteorologist, a position that was vacant.
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There is a small chance of more storms and rain, but forecasters say the flood-ravaged Texas Hill Country should see a break in storms today. And as of early this morning, all flood watches have been dropped for Texas, but a few flood warnings remain in effect.
Those flood warnings include the Leon River at Gatesville affecting Coryell county, Cowhouse Creek near Pidcoke, and the San Saba River affecting San Saba county, according to the National Weather Service.
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My colleagues have put together this visual guide to one of Texas’s worst natural disasters, which has killed at least 105 people, many of them children, after torrential rain and extreme flash flooding.
An elite Missouri taskforce has been activated by Fema to deploy to Texas for up to 14 days, focusing on water rescue operations and capabilities for detecting human remains.
The 50-member team, which includes four human-remains-detection canines and their handlers, as well as an additional search team manager, departed from Columbia, Missouri, to Kerr county, Texas, last night. “The team will support search and rescue operations in response to the historic flooding affecting the region,” according to a press release.
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Death toll climbs to at least 105
The death toll from the flash floods that struck central Texas on Friday has climbed to at least 105, according to CNN, after surpassing 100 late on Monday. The majority of those killed were in Kerr county, where 84 people, including 28 children, have died. Many were at Camp Mystic when flooding struck early on the Fourth of July. The death toll is expected to rise further as search efforts continue into a fifth day.
Here’s a breakdown of the deaths recorded so far by county:
84 deaths in Kerr County
7 deaths in Travis County
5 deaths in Burnet County
6 deaths in Kendall County
2 deaths in Williamson County
1 death in Tom Green County
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California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, says he will deploy the state’s urban search-and-rescue team members to Texas to help with the flood-response efforts.
In a statement, he said:
California stands with all those who have lost loved ones, homes, and livelihoods in the devastating aftermath of these summer floods in Texas.
California is sending these specialized resources to support critical emergency response and recovery efforts.
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Ramon Antonio Vargas is the weekend editor of Guardian US
A pediatrician for a chain of clinics affiliated with a prominent Houston hospital system is “no longer employed” there, according to officials, after a social media account associated with her published a post wishing the “Maga” voters of a Donald Trump-supporting county in Texas to “get what they voted for” amid flash flooding that killed more than 100 people, including many children.
“We were made aware of a social media comment from one of our physicians,” read a statement from Blue Fish Pediatrics circulated late Sunday. “The individual is no longer employed by Blue Fish Pediatrics.”
The statement also said: “We strongly condemn the comments that were made in that post. That post does not reflect the values, standards or mission of Blue Fish Pediatrics. We do not support or condone any statement that politicizes tragedy, diminishes human dignity, or fails to clearly uphold compassion for every child and family, regardless of background or beliefs.”
Blue Fish Pediatrics’ statement neither named the physician in question nor specified whether she had resigned or was dismissed. But multiple publicly accessible social media posts identified her as Dr Christina Propst. A Guardian source familiar with the situation confirmed the accuracy of the posts naming Propst.
You can read the full story here:
Timelapse footage provided by a witness shows how quickly the Texas flood waters rose. You can watch the video here:
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Reporters from the Associated Press have spoken to volunteers helping in the rescue efforts as rescue teams in central Texas desperately wade through mud-piled riverbanks to find missing people.
Justin Rubio and dozens of other people went out on Monday to search for people still missing after flash flooding tore through the Texas Hill Country over the weekend.
“It’s sad. It eats at your soul, it eats at your heart,” he said. “I can’t just sit at home thinking about what’s going on out here.”
While applauding their kind-hearted spirit, officials have began closing search sites to volunteers amid concerns they are putting themselves in harms way.
“We need focused and coordinated volunteers, not random people just showing up and doing what they do,” Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr. said. “We remain hopeful every foot, every mile, every bend of the river.”
Some families have been frustrated by the pace of the search, but officials are asking for patience with the breadth of the search area and methodical approach. It’s a sweeping operation with 19 different local and state agencies, drones, dogs, boats and helicopters.
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Ted Cruz ensured Trump spending bill slashed weather forecasting funding
My colleague Oliver Milman has this interesting read on how the Texas senator, Ted Cruz, ensured that Donald Trump’s controversial spending bill slashed funding for weather forecasting, even though the threat from extreme weather is growing because of the climate crisis. Cruz was on holiday in Greece when the deadly Texas floods broke out. His office later said the trip was pre-planned. Here is an extract from Oliver Milman’s piece:
Cruz inserted language into the Republicans’ “big beautiful” reconciliation bill, prior to its signing by Donald Trump on Friday, that eliminates a $150m fund to “accelerate advances and improvements in research, observation systems, modeling, forecasting, assessments, and dissemination of information to the public” around weather forecasting.
A further $50m in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) grants to study climate-related impacts on oceans, weather systems and coastal ecosystems was also removed…
Environmental groups said the slashed funding is just the latest blow to federal agencies tasked with predicting and responding to disasters such as the Texas flood. More than 600 employees have exited the National Weather Service amid a Trump administration push to shrink the government workforce, leaving many offices short-staffed of meteorologists and other support workers.
Around a fifth of all full-time workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), meanwhile, are also set to depart.
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Texas’s worst flooding in decades – in pictures
Here are some of the latest images coming out from Texas after devastating floods forced authorities to launch one of the largest search-and-rescue efforts in the state’s recent history:
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Deadly floods could be new normal as Trump guts federal agencies, experts warn
The deadly Texas floods could signal a new norm in the US, as Donald Trump and his allies dismantle crucial federal agencies that help states prepare and respond to extreme weather and other hazards, experts warn.
More than 100 are dead and dozens more remain missing after flash floods in the parched area known as Texas Hill Country swept away entire holiday camps and homes on Friday night – in what appears to have been another unremarkable storm that stalled before dumping huge quantities of rain over a short period of time, a phenomena that has becoming increasingly common as the planet warms.
It remains unclear why the early warning system failed to result in the timely evacuation of Camp Mystic, where 700 girls were camped on a known flood plain on the Guadalupe River, but there is mounting concern that the chaos and cuts instigated by Trump and his billionaire donor Elon Musk at the National Weather Service (NWS) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) may have contributed to the death toll.
Samantha Montano, professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, said:
This is the exact kind of storm that meteorologists, climate scientists, emergency management experts have been talking about and warning about for decades at this point, and there’s absolutely no reason that this won’t happen in other parts of the country.
This is what happens when you let climate change run unabated and break apart the emergency management system – without investing in that system at the local and state level.
You can read the full story by my colleagues, Nina Lakhani and Oliver Milman, here:
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Texas governor says every missing person will be found as he warns of threat of heavy rain
Texas Governor Greg Abbott released a statement yesterday, reassuring residents that the state was continuing to “work around the clock” in its response to the flooding tragedy and promised that work won’t stop until every missing person – which is reportedly 24 – is found.
He added:
There is still a threat of heavy rain with the potential to cause flooding in the Central Texas, Hill Country, Big Country, and Concho Valley regions. Texans are urged to remain weather aware, heed the guidance of local officials, and regularly monitor weather forecasts.
Texas will remain engaged until every missing person is found and every Texan recovers from this disaster.
Abbott has advised Texans to regularly check weather updates. Citing the National Weather Service, the government agency which provides weather forecasts in the US, the governor said “rain with potential to cause flooding is anticipated for large portions of the state including Central Texas, the Hill Country, Big Country, and the Concho Valley over the next couple of days”.
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More than 100 killed in Texas floods as search and rescue enters fifth day
We are restarting our live coverage of the devastating Texas floods.
The death toll from the flash floods that struck central Texas on Friday has passed 100 and is expected to rise further as search efforts continue into a fifth day.
At least 84 of the victims - 56 adults and 28 children - died in Kerr county, the worst affected area, where the Guadalupe River rose to critical levels in multiple locations.
And many were in attendance at Camp Mystic, a Christian all-girls’ summer camp that has confirmed that 27 campers and counsellors were among those who were killed. At least ten girls and a camp counsellor are reported to remain unaccounted for.
Other counties in Texas have reported casualties, including seven deaths in Travis County, six in Kendall, four in Burnet, two in Williamson, and one in Tom Green.
The New York Times and CNN are among the media outlets to be reporting that at least 104 people have been killed across the entire flood zone.
Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, said that rescuers are continuing to search for dozens of missing people across the state, with over 20 state agencies and 1,750 personnel responding to the floods.
The Guadalupe River rose 26ft (8 meters) in 45 minutes in Friday’s pre-dawn hours, after a downpour north of San Antonio. Much of the water has returned to normal levels.
Stay with us as we bring you the latest updates on the floods throughout the day.
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