Authorities deflect questions about weather monitoring during deadly Texas floods

KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) – 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 searchers have found 87 bodies, said their priority is finding victims, not reviewing what happened in the hours before the floods inundated the state’s Hill Country.

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 in Kerr County, 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.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott planned to make another visit Tuesday to Camp Mystic, the century-old all-girls Christian summer camp where at least 27 campers and counselors died during the floods. Officials said Tuesday that five campers and one counselor have still not been found.

A wall of water slammed into camps and homes along the edge of the Guadalupe River before daybreak Friday, pulling people out of their cabins, tents and trailers and dragging them for miles past floating tree trunks and cars. Some survivors were found clinging to trees.

Questions mounted about what, if any, actions local officials took to warn campers and residents who were spending the July Fourth weekend in the scenic area long known to locals as “flash flood alley.”

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s chief elected official, said in the hours after the devastation that the county does not have a warning system.

“We definitely want to dive in and look at all those things,” Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said Monday. “We’re looking forward to doing that once we can get the search and rescue complete.”

Generations of families in the Hill Country have known the dangers. A 1987 flood forced the evacuation of a youth camp in the town of Comfort and swamped buses and vans. Ten teenagers were killed.

Local leaders have talked for years about the need for a warning system. Kerr County sought a nearly $1 million grant eight years ago for such a system, but the request was turned down by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Local resident balked at footing the bill themselves, Kelly said.

Some camps were aware of the dangers Friday and monitored the weather. At least one moved several hundred campers to higher ground before the floods. But many were caught by surprise.

The bodies of 30 children were among those that have been recovered in Kerr County, home to Camp Mystic and several other summer camps near the river, Sheriff Larry Leitha said.

Nineteen deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties, local officials said.

Among those confirmed dead were 8-year-old sisters from Dallas who were at Camp Mystic, a 19-year-old counselor who loved mentoring young girls and the camp’s director. Also killed were a former soccer coach and his wife who were staying at a riverfront home. Their daughters were still missing.

Elizabeth Lester, a mother of children who were at Camp Mystic and nearby Camp La Junta during the flood, said her young son had to swim out a cabin window to escape. Her daughter fled up the hillside as floodwaters whipped against her legs. Both survived.

Search-and-rescue teams used heavy equipment to untangle trees and move large rocks as part of the massive search for missing people. Hundreds of volunteers have shown up to help with one of the largest rescue operations in Texas history.

Piles of twisted trees sprinkled with mattresses, refrigerators and coolers littered the riverbanks.

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Vertuno reported from Austin, and Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama; Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City and Sophia Tareen in Chicago.