By NADIA LATHAN and JOHN SEEWER, Associated Press
HUNT, Texas (AP) — Crews used backhoes and their bare hands Wednesday 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 state’s Hill Country.
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.
Scenes of devastation at Camp Mystic
Outside the cabins at Camp Mystic where the girls had slept, mud-splattered blankets and pillows were scattered on a grassy hill that slopes toward the river. Also in the debris were pink, purple and blue luggage decorated with stickers.
Among those who died at the camp were a second grader who loved pink sparkles and bows, a 19-year-old counselor who enjoyed mentoring young girls and the camp’s 75-year-old director.
The flash floods erupted before daybreak Friday after massive rains sent water speeding down hills into the Guadalupe River, causing it to rise 26 feet (8 meters) in less than an hour. Some campers had to swim out of cabin windows to safety while others held onto a rope as they made their way to higher ground.
Just two days before the flooding, Texas inspectors signed off on the camp’s emergency planning. But five years of inspection reports released to The Associated Press did not provide any details about how campers would be evacuated or the specific duties assigned to each staff member and counselor.
Although it’s difficult to attribute a single weather event to climate change, experts say a warming atmosphere and oceans make catastrophic storms more likely.
Where were the warnings?
Questions mounted about what, if any, actions local officials took to warn campers and residents who were in the scenic area long known to locals as “flash flood alley.”
Leaders in Kerr county, where searchers have found about 90 bodies, said their first priority is recovering victims, not reviewing what happened in the moments before the flash floods.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s chief elected official, said the county does not have a warning system.
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 residents balked at footing the bill themselves, Kelly said.
Recovery and cleanup efforts go on
The bodies of 30 children were among those that have been recovered in the county, which is home to Camp Mystic and several other summer camps, the sheriff said.
The devastation spread across several hundred miles in central Texas all the way to just outside the capital of Austin.
Aidan Duncan escaped just in time after hearing the muffled blare of a megaphone urging residents to evacuate Riverside RV Park in the Hill Country town of Ingram.
All his belongings — a mattress, sports cards, his pet parakeet’s bird cage — now sit caked in mud in front of his home.
“What’s going on right now, it hurts,” the 17-year-old said. “I literally cried so hard.”
Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press writers Joshua A. Bickel in Kerrville, Texas, Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.