Eleven children attending a Christian camp are still missing as the death toll and floodwaters continue to rise in Texas.
Nearly 70 people have been killed since raging floodwaters slammed into central Texas on Friday.
The victims include children who vanished along the Guadalupe River banks at Camp Mystic – a Christian summer camp where most of the dead were recovered.
Among those confirmed dead was Sarah Marsh, 8,from Mountain Brook, Alabama, who was at Camp Mystic.
‘This is an unimaginable loss for her family, her school, and our entire community,’ Mountain Brook Mayor Stewart Welch said in a Facebook post.
‘Sarah’s passing is a sorrow shared by all of us, and our hearts are with those who knew and loved her.’
Miraculously, one cabin full of girls managed to hold onto a rope thrown to them by rescuers as they walked across a bridge to safety with water gushing around their legs.
Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha says that 11 campers and a camp counsellor are still missing in the powerful floods.
There were about 750 children at Camp Mystic when the floods hit, the sheriff said earlier.
But with each passing hour, the outlook became more bleak. Volunteers and some families of the missing who drove to the disaster zone began searching the riverbanks despite being asked not to do so.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott visited the summer camp for the first time on Sunday describing the scene as ‘horrendously ravaged’.
‘Today I visited Camp Mystic. It, and the river running beside it, were horrendously ravaged in ways unlike I’ve seen in any natural disaster,’ Abbott wrote.
‘The height the rushing water reached to the top of the cabins was shocking. We won’t stop until we find every girl who was in those cabins.’
Authorities faced growing questions about whether enough warnings were issued in area long vulnerable to flooding and whether enough preparations were made.,
It came after a father of three sacrificed himself to save his family from the Texas flash floods telling them, “I’m sorry, I’m not going to make it. I love y’all.’
Julian Ryan, 27, died after the Guadalupe River in central Texas rose 30 feet and flooded into his family’s home.