Texas summer camp confirms 27 campers, staff killed in deadly floods

Crews picked through mountains of debris and waded into swollen rivers Monday in the search for victims of catastrophic flooding that killed at least 90 people over the July Fourth weekend in Texas, including more than two dozen campers and counselors from an all-girls Christian camp.
With additional rain on the way, more flooding still threatened in saturated parts of central Texas. Authorities said the death toll was sure to rise as crews looked for many people who were missing.
Operators of Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, said they lost 27 campers and counselors, confirming their worst fears after a wall of water slammed into cabins built along the edge of the Guadalupe River.
“We have been in communication with local and state authorities who are tirelessly deploying extensive resources to search for our missing girls,” the camp said in a statement. Authorities later said that 10 girls and a counselor from the camp remain missing.The raging flash floods — among the nation’s worst in decades — slammed into riverside camps and homes before daybreak Friday, pulling sleeping people out of their cabins, tents and trailers and dragging them for miles past floating tree trunks and automobiles. Some of the survivors were found clinging to trees. The riverbanks are now littered with piles of twisted trees, mattresses, refrigerators, coolers, and canoes. Search-and-rescue teams used heavy equipment near Kerrville to remove large branches while volunteers covered in mud sorted through chunks of debris, piece by piece.
In the Hill Country area, home to Camp Mystic and several other summer camps, searchers have found the bodies of 75 people, including 27 children, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said.
Fourteen other deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties, according to local officials.
Gov. On Sunday, Greg Abbott stated that 41 people across the state were missing and that additional individuals may be missing. Authorities vowed that one of the next steps will be investigating whether enough warnings were issued and why some camps did not evacuate or move to higher ground in areas long erable to flooding.