Catastrophic floods claims 80 lives in Texas, while Governor warns of more rain to come.

At least 80 people have died in connection with the flash floods that struck central Texas in the United States early Friday, according to officials. The toll includes at least 28 children in Kerr County, where 10 girls and one counsellor from Camp Mystic are still unaccounted for, authorities said.

While the Flood threat remains, Governor Greg Abbott said flash flooding still poses a danger for parts of Texas, with more rain on the way in several areas. Officials urged people in Hunt, a community in Kerr County, to move to higher ground this afternoon because of potential flooding.

Records show officials in Kerr County previously considered installing flood warning sirens, but the plan never came to fruition. And while the National Weather Service issued a slew of alerts before the storm, questions surround the agency’s staffing and ability to reach residents at the time of the disaster.

As swift floodwaters surrounded Camp Mystic early Friday morning, counsellors at the all-girls camp were forced to guide campers to safety in the middle of the night. A mother of three of those campers says the counsellors saved the lives of her children.

At least 80 people have died in connection with the flooding, according to Texas officials. The death toll includes at least 28 children in Kerr County, where 11 girls and one counsellor are still missing from Camp Mystic, authorities said.

Camp counsellor’s, many of them teenagers, helped the children escape their cabins through the windows and move to dry land in the middle of the night. Once safe, the children cuddled because they were cold and wet as they sang songs and prayed.

President Donald Trump signed a major disaster declaration Sunday, unlocking key federal resources as search and rescue efforts continue for a third day after flash floods in central Texas. The scale of the devastation has underscored how important a coordinated local, state and federal response will be in the days and months ahead.

The US Coast Guard has been assisting with search and rescue efforts and has so far assisted with more than 230 rescues, according to a Department of Homeland Security official. There are three fixed-wing aircraft with thermal cameras, which can critically help identify movement from the air. The Coast Guard has also deployed two MH-65 dolphin helicopters to help with evacuations.

Scott Ruskin, a member of the Coast Guard, has been a swimmer assisting with search and rescue efforts, and has assisted more than 165 people so far, the DHS official said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has opened seven shelters, which are also providing food and water for central Texas communities. The agency is deploying additional assets to the area, the official said.

Trump previously said he would phase out FEMA at the conclusion of this year’s hurricane season. Asked Sunday whether he still planned to do so, Trump told reporters it was “something we can talk about later. Right now, they’re busy working, so we’ll leave it at that”, the president said.

President Donald Trump suggested cuts at the National Weather Service did not play a role in the tragedy surrounding the flash flooding in Texas. “If you look at that, what a situation that all is, and that was really the Biden setup. That was not our setup, but I wouldn’t blame Biden for it either”, Trump said today as he departed New Jersey after a weekend at his golf club there. “I would just say this is a 100-year catastrophe and it’s just so horrible to watch”, Trump went on.

Asked later whether he believed the federal government needed to hire back meteorologists who had recently departed amid personnel cuts under his administration, he suggested it was not necessary.

“I would think not. This was the thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it. Nobody saw it. Very talented people in there and they didn’t see it”. He said there was a lot of blame circulating but the flood’s scale made it unlikely anything could have made a difference.

Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service employees’ union, told Press Reporters, while he believes the Austin-San Antonio and San Angelo offices had “adequate staffing and resources”, the Austin-San Antonio office is missing a warning coordination meteorologist, a role serving as a crucial link between forecasters and emergency managers.

The vacancy in the Austin-San Antonio office, along with other key roles, were the result of early retirement incentives offered by the Trump administration to shrink the size of the federal government, a NOAA official told Reporters.

Records show officials in Kerr County, Texas, previously considered funding an early warning system with emergency sirens to better alert residents about floods but that effort apparently never came to fruition before recent deadly floods struck. In a 2016 meeting, a county commissioner described a plan to examine how to enhance Kerr County’s flood warning system. The following month, the same commissioner said the county was “probably the highest risk area in the state for flooding” and described the county’s warning system at the time as “pretty antiquated” and “marginal at the best.”

In 2018, local officials discussed how their application for a warning-system grant had not been accepted but described efforts to apply for other state funds, meeting minutes show. Again in 2021, meeting minutes show how county commissioners discussed possibly allocating funds for a flood warning system that specifically included sirens. An engineer said a county commissioner had “identified” $50,000 for the system. But the county’s top elected official has said the county does not have such a system.

“We do not have a warning system”, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said at a news conference Friday.

Since Friday’s flooding, local residents have launched a petition for such a system. Local reporting shows emergency sirens were activated elsewhere on Friday, though the extent to which that would have made a difference in Kerr County is unclear.

The Local officials in several Texas counties have now confirmed a total of 80 fatalities in connection with the flooding. Among those deceased in Kerr County are 40 adults and 28 children, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said Sunday. The death toll includes:

• 68 deaths in Kerr County;
• 5 deaths in Travis County;
• 3 deaths in Burnet County;
• 2 death in Kendall County;
• 1 death in Tom Green County;
• 1 death in Williamson County.

Texas Air National Guardsmen are using remotely piloted military drones to help in the search for people who are missing after flash floods hit central Texas early Friday. “The 147th Attack Wing are using MQ-9 drones for critical search and rescue missions today”, the Texas National Guard said in an X post Sunday. “The unarmed MQ-9 Reaper Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), has tremendous technological capabilities to gather high-resolution imagery and assess the impact of flooding in surrounding areas”, the post said.

The unmanned drones are, typically used by the military to conduct surveillance, are being launched from a Texas military base in Houston, a National Guard official said at a news conference Sunday. The Federal Aviation Administration has cleared a specialised flight route across Texas airspace for the drones to make the voyage to conduct surveillance over the flooded Hill Country area, the official said.

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