At least 13 dead in Texas following flash floods

Months worth of heavy rain fell in a matter of hours on south-central Texas, killing at least 13 people and leaving more than 20 girls attending a summer camp unaccounted for Friday as search teams conducted boat and helicopter rescues in the fast-moving flood water.

Desperate pleas peppered social media as loved ones sought any information available about people caught in the flooding.

Texas Lt.-Gov. Dan Patrick said somewhere between six and 10 bodies had been found so far in the frantic search for victims. Meanwhile, during a news conference conducted at the same time, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha reported 13 deaths from the flooding.

As much as 25 centimetres of heavy rain poured down in just a few hours overnight in central Kerr County, causing flash flooding of the Guadalupe River and leading to desperate pleas for information about the missing.

“Some are adults, some are children,” Patrick said. “Again, we don’t know where those bodies came from.”

Teams conducted dozens of rescues, and the emergency response continued to search for the missing, including the summer camp attendees. 

“I’m asking the people of Texas, do some serious praying this afternoon. On-your-knees kind of praying, that we find these young girls,” Patrick said.

Judge Rob Kelly, the chief elected official in Kerr County, confirmed fatalities from the flooding and dozens of water rescues so far. He said he was advised not to cite specific numbers and said authorities are still working to identify the dead.

“Most of them, we don’t know who they are,” he said during a news conference.

Water coming in through walls

Erin Burgess’s home sits directly across from the river in the Bumble Bee Hills neighbourhood, west of Ingram, in Kerr County.

When she woke up to thunder at 3:30 a.m. local time Friday, “it was raining pretty heavy, but no big deal,” she said.

Just 20 minutes later, Burgess said water was coming in through the walls and rushing through the front and back doors. She described an agonizing hour clinging to a tree and waiting for the water to recede enough that they were able to walk up the hill to a neighbour’s.

“My son and I floated to a tree where we hung onto it, and my boyfriend and my dog floated away. He was lost for a while, but we found them,” she said, becoming emotional.

Of her 19-year-old son, Burgess said, “Thankfully he’s over six feet tall. That’s the only thing that saved me, was hanging on to him.”

A flood watch issued Thursday afternoon estimated isolated amounts up to 17 centimetres of rising water. That shifted to a flood warning for at least 30,000 people overnight.

When asked about the suddenness of the flash flooding, Kelly said “we do not have a warning system” and that “we didn’t know this flood was coming,” even as local reporters pointed to the warnings and pushed him for answers about why more precautions weren’t taken.

‘No one knew this … was coming’

“Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming,” he said. “We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the state was providing resources to communities dealing with the flooding.

The affected region, a scenic and rocky area known as Texas Hill Country, begins west of the state capital and is a popular outdoor summer getaway. Parts of the region are prone to flash flooding.