By Rich McKay and Tim Reid
HUNT, Texas (Reuters) -The death toll from catastrophic floods in Texas reached at least 67 on Sunday, including 21 children, as the search for girls missing from a summer camp entered a third day.
Larry Leitha, the Kerr County Sheriff in Texas Hill Country, the epicenter of the flooding, said the death toll in Kerr County had reached 59, including the 21 children.
Leitha said 11 girls and a counselor remained missing from a summer camp near the Guadalupe River, which broke its banks after torrential rain fell in the central Texas area on Friday, the U.S. Independence Day holiday.
A Travis County official said four people had died from the flooding there, with 13 unaccounted for, and officials reported another death in Kendall County. The Burnet County Sheriff’s office reported two fatalities. A woman was found dead in her submerged car in the city of San Angelo in Tom Green County, the police chief said.
Leitha said there were 18 adults and four children still pending identification in Kerr County. He did not say if those 22 individuals were included in the death count of 59.
Officials said on Saturday that more than 850 people had been rescued, including some clinging to trees, after a sudden storm dumped up to 15 inches (38 cm) of rain across the region, about 85 miles (140 km) northwest of San Antonio. It was unclear exactly how many people in the area were still missing.
“Everyone in the community is hurting,” Leitha told reporters.
Some experts questioned whether cuts to the federal workforce by the Trump administration, including to the agency that oversees the National Weather Service, led to a failure by officials to accurately predict the severity of the floods and issue appropriate warnings ahead of the storm.
President Donald Trump and his administration have overseen thousands of job cuts from the National Weather Service’s parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, leaving many weather offices understaffed, said former NOAA director Rick Spinrad.
He said he did not know if those staff cuts factored into the lack of advance warning for the extreme Texas flooding, but that they would inevitably degrade the agency’s ability to deliver accurate and timely forecasts.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees NOAA, said a “moderate” flood watch issued on Thursday by the National Weather Service had not accurately predicted the extreme rainfall and said the Trump administration was working to upgrade the system.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Joaquin Castro, a Democratic congressman from Texas, told CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ that fewer personnel at the weather service could be dangerous.
“When you have flash flooding, there’s a risk that if you don’t have the personnel… to do that analysis, do the predictions in the best way, it could lead to tragedy,” Castro said.
MORE RAIN
More rain was expected in the area on Sunday. The National Weather Service issued a flood watch for Kerr County until 1 p.m. local time.
The disaster unfolded rapidly on Friday morning as heavier-than-forecast rain drove river waters rapidly to as high as 29 feet (9 meters).
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, told a press conference on Saturday he had asked Trump to sign a disaster declaration, which would unlock federal aid for those affected. Noem said Trump would honor that request.
Trump has previously outlined plans to scale back the federal government’s role in responding to natural disasters, leaving states to shoulder more of the burden themselves.
The 11 missing girls and the counselor were from the Camp Mystic summer camp, a nearly century-old Christian girls camp, which had 700 girls in residence at the time of the flood.
A day after the disaster struck, the camp was a scene of devastation. Inside one cabin, mud lines indicating how high the water had risen were at least six feet (1.83 m) from the floor. Bed frames, mattresses and personal belongings caked with mud were scattered inside. Some buildings had broken windows, one had a missing wall.
(Reporting by Sergio Flores in Hunt, Texas and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Additional reporting by Marco Bello and Sandra Stojanovic in Comfort, Texas; Deborah Gembara in Washington; Ryan Jones and Bhargav Acharya in Toronto; and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago. Writing by Tim Reid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
