Texas Hill Country floods kill more than 100 across six counties

Key Takeaways

In the early hours of July 4, the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in just 45 minutes. The subsequent flash flooding has killed more than 100 people across six counties in the Texas Hill Country, with at least 87 deaths in Kerr County alone and more people missing. 

At least 30 children were among the dead — the majority of whom were the youngest group of campers at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian camp located on the banks of the river.  

“No one knew this kind of flood was coming,” Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said at a July 4 news conference. “We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States, and we deal with floods on a regular basis. When it rains, we get water. We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what happened here.” 

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The region is prone to flooding, garnering the nickname “Flash Flood Alley,” but it was not expecting, or prepared for, a disaster of this scale. The Guadalupe River flash flooding crest in Kerr County’s town of Hunt reached 37.52 feet, setting an all-time flood record for the area. The flow of the river went from roughly 1,000 cubic feet per second, a “trickle” to over 185,000 cubic feet per second, the equivalent to at least twice the flow of Niagara Falls per second, in just two hours, according to Harris County meteorologist Jeff Lindner. 

The National Weather Service sent 22 warnings to the Kerrville area with escalating urgency, but due to the rural county’s spotty cell service and it being the middle of the night, many people either didn’t receive or slept through the alerts until they were faced head-on with the flooding. 

More than 850 people have been rescued so far, including those clinging to trees and standing on RVs submerged in fast-rising floodwaters. At least 41 known people are missing, and as of Tuesday morning, July 8, hundreds of first responders remain along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, working to reunite families, according to Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was activated in Texas on July 6, following President Trump’s Major Disaster Declaration. Trump has said he will likely visit Texas on Friday, July 11. 

Nineteen different local and state agencies are involved with the search and rescue efforts, and FEMA deployed Missouri Task Force 1, a search and rescue team that includes firefighters, paramedics, physicians and engineers, to Kerr County July 8. 

“I need to tell my community and those families who are waiting, this will be a rough week,” Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr. said at a July 7 press conference. “Primary search continues, and we remain hopeful — every foot, every mile, every bend of the river. Our work continues.”

The search process through each segment, which spans up to 2 kilometers, takes between one to three hours, Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said in a July 7 press conference. Specialized teams are sorting through “very obstructive” large piles of debris, which delays the recovery process, Texas Game Warden Lt. Col. Ben Baker said in a July 8 press conference.

“It’s extremely treacherous and time consuming,” Baker said. “It’s dirty work, the water is still there, so we’re having to go layer by layer, peeling these off, to make those recoveries.”

It’s going to take a long time for the community to clean up the devastation, let alone rebuild, Kelly said at a July 4 press conference.

Kerr County and its neighbor to the south, Bandera County, don’t have warning systems on the river, and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has called for a review of emergency warnings in the wake of the deadly floods. The town of Comfort in nearby Kendall County recently updated its disaster alert system, installing a new siren in the volunteer fire department’s headquarters, which provided an additional alarm to the town’s residents who also may have received cellphone warnings or evacuation announcements. 

Camp Mystic’s director, Dick Eastland, was killed in the floods while trying to save campers. At least 27 campers and counselors died in the flooding, and five young girls and a counselor remain missing. Cruz called the tragedy “every parent’s worst nightmare” in a July 7 press conference, adding that he had picked his daughter up from camp in the county just a week prior, but said it’s been inspiring to hear stories of people’s bravery amid the devastation and see the community’s resiliency.

“The pain and agony of not knowing your child’s whereabouts – it’s the worst thing imaginable,” Cruz said. “But I want to say in the face of all of this, it is simultaneously inspiring. 

“Texas is a big state — we’ve got 31 million people — and we have hurricanes, we have tornadoes, we have wildfires. Tragedies hit this state, natural disasters hit this state, and without fail, 100 out of 100 times when that happens, we see Texans coming together, helping each other, engaging in acts of heroism.”