July 10, 2025:
KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Several hundred people have gathered for a worship ceremony at a high school stadium in Texas. The vigil was held Wednesday evening (July 9, 2025) to remember of the at least 120 people who died in the catastrophic flash floods over the July Fourth holiday. More than 160 are still believed to be missing in hard-hit Kerr County. People in the crowd clutched one another and brushed away tears during the vigil. Search crews and volunteers are continuing to scour miles along the Guadalupe River for the people still missing. The floods are now the deadliest from inland flooding in the U.S. since 1976.
July 9, 2025:
HUNT, Texas (AP) — Crews used backhoes and their bare hands Wednesday (July 9, 2025) to dig through piles of debris that stretched for miles in the search for more than 160 people believed to be missing in the flash floods that laid waste to the Hill Country region of Texas.
Over 100 bodies have been recovered, but the large number of missing suggested that the full extent of the catastrophe was still unclear five days after the disaster.
“We will not stop until every missing person is accounted for,” Gov. Greg Abbott told a news conference Tuesday. “Know this also: There very likely could be more added to that list.”
Officials have been seeking more information about those who were in the popular tourist destination during the Fourth of July holiday weekend but did not register at a camp or a hotel and may have been in the area without many people knowing, the governor said.
The riverbanks and hills of Kerr County along the Guadalupe River, where most of the flood victims have been recovered so far, are filled with vacation cabins, youth camps and campgrounds, including Camp Mystic, the century-old all-girls Christian summer camp where at least 27 campers and counselors died. Officials said five campers and one counselor have still not been found.
Crews in air boats and helicopters and on horseback combed the terrain. They also used excavators and their hands, going through the earth layer by layer, with search dogs sniffing for any sign of buried bodies.
They were joined by hundreds of volunteers in one of the largest search operations in Texas history. The search has been slow, made more difficult by ongoing storms and dense layers of tangled trees and rubble.
The flash flood was the deadliest from inland flooding in the U.S. since Colorado’s Big Thompson Canyon flood on July 31, 1976, killed 144 people, said Bob Henson, a meteorologist with Yale Climate Connections. That flood surged through a narrow canyon packed with people on a holiday weekend marking Colorado’s centennial.
Public officials in charge of locating victims in Texas faced intensifying questions Tuesday about who was in charge of monitoring the weather and warning that floodwaters were barreling toward camps and homes.
Abbott said President Donald Trump has pledged to provide whatever relief Texas needs to recover. Trump plans to visit the state Friday.
Polls taken before the Texas floods show Americans largely believe the federal government should play a major role in preparing for and responding to natural disasters.
Elsewhere, a deluge in New Mexico triggered flash floods that killed three people Tuesday.
July 8, 2025:
KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Hope of finding survivors of the catastrophic flooding in Texas dimmed Tuesday (July 8, 2025), a day after the death toll surpassed 100, and crews kept up the search for people missing in the aftermath.
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 flash floods. Officials said Monday that 10 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 are mounting about what, if any, actions local officials took to warn campers and residents who were spending the July Fourth holiday weekend in the scenic area long known to locals as “flash flood alley.”
At public briefings, officials in hard-hit Kerr County have deflected questions about what preparations and warnings were made as forecasters warned of life-threatening conditions.
“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.”
Some camps were aware of the dangers and monitoring the weather. At least one moved several hundred campers to higher ground before the floods. But many were caught by surprise.
Searchers have found the bodies of 84 people, including 28 children, in Kerr County, home to Camp Mystic and several other summer camps near the river, officials 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 and 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.
July 7, 2025:
KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — The death toll from flash floods that raged through central Texas has risen to 82 after searchers found more bodies. Authorities say many more remain missing, including 10 girls from Camp Mystic, a summer camp wiped out by the flooding early Friday. Searchers now have found 68 bodies in Kerr County where a wall of water came down the Guadalupe River. Sheriff Larry Leitha says the dead include 28 children. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warned Sunday that additional rounds of heavy rains lasting into Tuesday could produce more life-threatening flooding. Some families were allowed to look around the hardest hit camp in the Hill Country on Sunday (July 6, 2025) while nearby crews continued their search.
Story
KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Families sifted through waterlogged debris Sunday (July 6, 2025) and stepped inside empty cabins at Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp ripped apart by flash floods that washed homes off their foundations and killed at least 82 people in central Texas.
Rescuers maneuvering through challenging terrain, high waters and snakes including water moccasins continued their desperate search for the missing, including 10 girls and a counselor from the camp. For the first time since the storms began pounding Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott said there were 41 people confirmed to be unaccounted for across the state and more could be missing.
In Kerr County, home to Camp Mystic and other youth camps in the Texas Hill Country, searchers have found the bodies of 68 people, including 28 children, Sheriff Larry Leitha said in the afternoon.
He pledged to keep searching until “everybody is found” from Friday’s flash floods. Ten other deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties, according to local officials. The death toll is certain to rise over the next few days, said Col. Freeman Martin of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The governor warned that additional rounds of heavy rains lasting into Tuesday could produce more life-threatening flooding, especially in places already saturated. As he spoke at a news conference in Austin, emergency alerts lit up mobile phones in Kerr County that warned of “High confidence of river flooding” and a loudspeaker near Camp Mystic urged people to leave. Minutes later, however, authorities on the scene said there was no risk.
Families were allowed to look around the camp beginning Sunday morning. One girl walked out of a building carrying a large bell. A man, who said his daughter was rescued from a cabin on the highest point in the camp, walked a riverbank, looking in clumps of trees and under big rocks.
A woman and a teenage girl, both wearing rubber waders, briefly went inside one of the cabins, which stood next to a pile of soaked mattresses, a storage trunk and clothes. At one point, the pair doubled over, sobbing before they embraced.
One family left with a blue footlocker. A teenage girl had tears running down her face looking out the open window, gazing at the wreckage as they slowly drove away.
Searching the disaster zone
While the families saw the devastation for the first time, nearby crews operating heavy equipment pulled tree trunks and tangled branches from the water as they searched the river.
With each passing hour, the outlook of finding more survivors became even more bleak. Volunteers and some families of the missing who drove to the disaster zone searched the riverbanks despite being asked not to do so.
Authorities faced growing questions about whether enough warnings were issued in an area long vulnerable to flooding and whether enough preparations were made.
President Donald Trump signed a major disaster declaration Sunday for Kerr County, activating the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Texas.
The president said he would likely visit Friday. “I would have done it today, but we’d just be in their way,” he told reporters before boarding Air Force One back to Washington after spending the weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “It’s a horrible thing that took place, absolutely horrible.”
The destructive, fast-moving waters rose 26 feet (8 meters) on the river in only 45 minutes before daybreak Friday, washing away homes and vehicles. The danger was not over as flash flood watches remained in effect and more rain fell in central Texas on Sunday.
Searchers used helicopters, boats and drones to look for victims and to rescue people stranded in trees and from camps isolated by washed-out roads. Officials said more than 850 people were rescued in the first 36 hours.
Prayers in Texas — and from the Vatican
Gov. Greg Abbott vowed that authorities will work around the clock and said new areas were being searched as the water receded. He declared Sunday a day of prayer for the state.
“I urge every Texan to join me in prayer this Sunday — for the lives lost, for those still missing, for the recovery of our communities, and for the safety of those on the front lines,” he said in a statement.
In Rome, Pope Leo XIV offered special prayers for those touched by the disaster. History’s first American pope spoke in English at the end of his Sunday noon blessing, “I would like to express sincere condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones, in particular their daughters who were in summer camp, in the disaster caused by the flooding of the Guadalupe River in Texas in the United States. We pray for them.”
The hills along the Guadalupe River are dotted with century-old youth camps and campgrounds where generations of families have come to swim and enjoy the outdoors. The area is especially popular around the Independence Day holiday, making it more difficult to know how many are missing.
Harrowing escapes from floodwaters
Survivors shared terrifying stories of being swept away and clinging to trees as rampaging floodwaters carried trees and cars past them. Others fled to attics inside their homes, praying the water wouldn’t reach them.
At Camp Mystic, a cabin full of girls held onto a rope strung by rescuers as they walked across a bridge with water whipping around their legs.
Among those confirmed dead were an 8-year-old girl from Mountain Brook, Alabama, who was at Camp Mystic, and the director of another camp up the road.
Two school-age sisters from Dallas were missing after their cabin was swept away. Their parents were staying in a different cabin and were safe, but the girls’ grandparents were unaccounted for.
Locals know the Hill Country as “ flash flood alley” but the flooding in the middle of the night caught many campers and residents by surprise even though there were warnings.
Warnings came before the disaster
The National Weather Service on Thursday advised of potential flooding and then sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours of Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies — a rare alert notifying of imminent danger.
At the Mo-Ranch Camp in the community of Hunt, officials had been monitoring the weather and opted to move several hundred campers and attendees at a church youth conference to higher ground. At nearby Camps Rio Vista and Sierra Vista, organizers also had mentioned on social media that they were watching the weather the day before ending their second summer session Thursday.
Authorities and elected officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour, the equivalent of months’ worth of rain for the area.
Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said authorities are committed to a full review of the emergency response, including how the public was alerted to the storm threat.
Trump, asked whether he was still planning to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said that was something “we can talk about later, but right now we are busy working.” He has previously said he wants to overhaul if not completely eliminate FEMA and has been sharply critical of its performance.
Trump also was asked whether he planned to rehire any of the federal meteorologists who were fired this year as part of widespread government spending reductions.
“I would think not. This was a thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it. Nobody saw it. Very talented people there, and they didn’t see it,” the president said.
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