{"id":1587,"date":"2025-07-05T19:39:40","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T19:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/07\/05\/texas-floods-death-toll-rises-to-27-as-rescuers-search-for-missing-children\/"},"modified":"2025-07-05T19:39:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T19:39:40","slug":"texas-floods-death-toll-rises-to-27-as-rescuers-search-for-missing-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/07\/05\/texas-floods-death-toll-rises-to-27-as-rescuers-search-for-missing-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas floods death toll rises to 27 as rescuers search for missing children"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Authorities in US state face questions about whether they issued proper warnings in advance of rain-fuelled flooding.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rescuers in the US state of Texas are scrambling to locate more than two dozen children still missing from a Christian summer camp after a powerful storm caused flash floods that authorities say have killed at least 27 people.<\/p>\n

Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha told reporters on Saturday that the death toll included nine children.<\/p>\n

Leitha said around 800 people had been evacuated from the region, about 137km (85 miles) northwest of San Antonio, as flood waters receded on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

Torrential downpour<\/a> on Friday caused the fast-flowing Guadalupe River to rise nearly nine metres (29 feet) near the Camp Mystic summer camp, where around 750 children were staying.<\/p>\n

Twenty-seven attendees were still unaccounted for, according to Dalton Rice, city manager of the nearby town of Kerrville in Kerr County.<\/p>\n

The Heart O\u2019 The Hills summer camp, located about 1.6km (1 mile) from Camp Mystic, confirmed on Saturday that its director, Jane Ragsdale, was among the dead.<\/p>\n

While the National Weather Service (NWS) said the flash-flood emergency had largely ended for Kerr County \u2013 the epicentre of the flooding \u2013 it warned of more heavy rain to come, maintaining its flood watch until 7pm local time (00:00 GMT on Sunday).<\/p>\n

Rice said that more than 1,000 rescuers were on the ground to help with search-and-rescue efforts. Helicopters and drones were being used, with some people being plucked from trees. US Coast Guard helicopters had flown in to assist.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are looking in every possible location,\u201d said Rice, adding that search crews were facing harsh conditions while scouring waterlogged rivers, culverts and rocks.<\/p>\n

\"Reunited
People are reunited at a reunification centre in the town of Ingram after flash flooding hit Texas, on July 4, 2025 [Eric Gay\/AP Photo]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera\u2019s Heidi Zhou-Castro said that rescue workers had promised to \u201cnot give up until the very last person is found \u2013 either alive or their body is recovered\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat might be a tall order given just how catastrophic these floods were. We\u2019re talking about a region that is dotted with hills and with canyons,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She added that children in the camps had been particularly vulnerable to the floodwaters, \u201cwhich rose by eight metres [26 feet] in less than an hour, overnight as they slept\u201d.<\/p>\n

Authorities under scutiny<\/h2>\n

The flooding in the middle of the night on the Fourth of July holiday weekend caught many residents, campers and officials by surprise.<\/p>\n

Authorities have come under increasing scrutiny over whether they issued proper warnings and whether enough preparations were made.<\/p>\n

State emergency management officials had warned as late as Thursday that west and central Texas faced heavy rains and flash flood threats \u201cover the next couple days\u201d, citing NWS forecasts ahead of the holiday weekend.<\/p>\n

The weather forecasts, however, \u201cdid not predict the amount of rain that we saw\u201d, W Nim Kidd, director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said during a news conference on Friday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of questions are being asked about why there weren\u2019t earlier evacuations,\u201d said Al Jazeera\u2019s Zhou-Castro. \u201cThey knew there might be rain, they just didn\u2019t know where it would hit, and when it did, it indeed was catastrophic.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday morning, US President Donald Trump said the federal government was working with state and local officials to respond to the flooding.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Brave First Responders are on site doing what they do best,\u201d Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, adding that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem would soon be on the ground.<\/p>\n

The weekend disaster echoes a catastrophic flood almost 40 years ago along the Guadalupe River, where a bus and a van leaving a church camp encountered floodwaters and 10 teenagers drowned trying to escape, according to a NWS summary of the 1987 storm.<\/p>\n

\"Flash
A drone view shows flooded houses following torrential rains that unleashed flash floods along the Guadalupe River in San Angelo, Texas, June 4, 2025 [Patrick Keely via Reuters]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Source: <\/p>\n

Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authorities in US state face questions about whether they issued proper warnings in advance of rain-fuelled flooding. Rescuers in the US state of Texas are scrambling to locate more than two dozen children still missing from a Christian summer camp after a powerful storm caused flash floods that authorities say have killed at least 27 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}