The search for more than 170 people still missingafter flash floods devastated Central Texasstretched into an eighth day on Friday. At least129 people have been confirmed dead, according to local law enforcement and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Ongoing search operations were underway to find anyone lost in the debris after the catastrophic July 4 storm, which caused the Guadalupe River to swell rapidly to near-unprecedented levels. There are 161 people known to be missing in Kerr County alone, officials said. The county, located in the flood-prone Texas Hill Country west of Austin, the state capital, bore the brunt of the disaster. At least 10 more people were missing in other parts of the state. President Trump signed a federal disaster declaration at Abbott's request, allowing theFederal Emergency Management Agencyto deploy its own teams to support local rescue and recovery efforts as those operations press on. More storms after the initial flooding made efforts especially challenging, officials said. On Friday, July 11, one week after the disaster struck, Mr. Trumparrived in the regionto meet with officials, rescue workers and the families of victims. "I've never seen anything like it, a little narrow river that becomes a monster, and that's what happened," Mr. Trump said. "But the first lady and I are here in Texas to express the love and support and the anguish of our entire nation in the aftermath of this really horrific and deadly flood." Camp Mystic tragedy A largemajority of the flooding deathsoccurred in Kerr County, where officials have confirmed at least 96 people died. At Camp Mystic, a girls' summer camp with cabins along the river in a rural part of Kerr County near Hunt,at least 27 campers and counselorsdied in what the camp described as "catastrophic flooding." Some survivors said they woke up to water rushing through the windows. Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said Wednesday that crews continued to search for five missing campers and one counselor from Camp Mystic. One child not associated with the camp is also missing, Abbott said Tuesday. Hundreds of rescuers, including teams from local, state and federal agencies, as well as volunteers, are involved in the search, Texas Game Warden Ben Baker said Tuesday during a news conference. "It's very tragic whenever you see human life. But to see a child in that loss of life, is extremely tragic," Baker told a reporter who had asked about the impacts on rescuers' mental health. Abbott said Tuesday he received a text message from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that said the Department of Health and Human Services is set to declare a public health emergency for the Texas Hill Country flash floods. "This will make it easier for health care and mental health providers from out of state to help both by traveling to the area and by telemedicine," Abbott said the message read. 26 feet of water rose from Guadalupe River Friday, July 4, was the last time a missing person was found alive in Kerr County, according to authorities. But search crews continued to surveymiles of the Guadalupe Riverin the hope of locating others who may have been lost in the floods that inundated Kerr County, Baker told reporters. The river runs for approximately 230 miles through a region that sits between Austin and San Antonio, starting in Kerr County and ending along the Gulf Coast. It'snicknamed "Flash Flood Alley"because the terrain makes it vulnerable to inundation. Officials in five other Texas counties have also confirmed deaths in the flooding: Travis County, which includes Austin, as well as Burnet, Kendall, Williamson and Tom Green County. During the early hours of July 4, the Guadalupe River in Hunt, in Kerr County,rose to about 26 feet— roughly the height of a two-story building — over the course of just 45 minutes, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said during a news conference. Camp Mystic was "horrendously ravaged," Abbott later wrote in a social media post after visiting the site. About 650 people were staying there, including around 550 children, according to inspection records released by the Texas Department of State Health Services, which were dated July 2 — just two days before the flood. According to the records, Camp Mystic had "a written plan of procedures to be implemented in case of a disaster," which was "posted in the camp's administrative on-site office." But exactly what the plan contained isn't clear. Unlike at least one other camp along the Guadalupe River whose employees spoke to The Associated Press, Camp Mystic did not evacuate to higher ground ahead of the floods. Kerr County officials said Wednesday that evacuating from Hill Country is not always the best course of action during a storm, echoing an earlier statement released by a joint information center established in the wake of the floods, which said that disaster responses in the Hill Country terrain are complex. Rural areas, like Hunt, are full of single-lane bridges known as "low water crossings" that easily flood and create scattered "islands" of land that are impassable, said Johnathan Lam of the police department in Kerrville, a city in Kerr County. Those same locations have inconsistent cell service and are hard to reach for first responders. "In Hunt, Highway 39 crisscrosses the Guadalupe again and again and again," Lam said. "And all of those low water crossings, when they flood, they create islands where you can't get in and you can't get out, trapping people in their homes, trapping people in their vehicles. And that's what happened on the morning of July 4." A makeshift crew consisting of two Kerville officers, an emergency room doctor and some volunteer firefighters did what they could to fulfill the duties of a robust response team for 13 hours that first day, until emergency workers in high-profile vehicles were able to reach them at around 5 p.m., Lam said. Scrutiny over weather forecasts Whether communities in the path of the floodingreceived adequate warningshas been heavily scrutinized and is the subject of ongoing debate. Kerr County officials have largely declined to respond to reporters' inquiries on the matter during their daily news conferences. Some have questioned ifthe Trump administration's cuts earlier this year to the National Weather Serviceand its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, potentially prevented local forecast offices from sufficiently preparing the public for the extent of the flooding. Mr. Trump and his team have repeatedly rejected any suggestions that federal firings impacted forecasting or emergency preparedness ahead of the floods. ACBS News analysisfound that22 warningsfrom the National Weather Service were issued for Kerr County around the storms and flash flooding, which used escalating language as time went on. But some local residents said they did not receive emergency alerts on their phones nor did they understand how serious the situation had truly become until it actually happened. The San Antonio and San Angelo weather service offices issued warnings for the areas affected by flooding. Officials with the union representing National Weather Service workers told CBS News there are 23 meteorologists staffed between those offices, which together have 10 vacant positions. In San Antonio, the office is missing a warning coordination meteorologist, a vital role that essentially liaises between forecasters and emergency management agencies in the region to plan how information about an extreme weather event will be disseminated to the public, and which steps to take to protect them. Nim Kidd, the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said his office received a forecast Wednesday that predicted several inches of rain, but "the amount of rain that fell at this specific location was never in any of those forecasts." Dalton Rice, the city manager for Kerrville, in Kerr County, said during the same briefing that the storm "dumped more rain than what was forecasted." Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said at a news conference July 4 that the county does "not have a warning system" in place to alert the public about weather emergencies. County officials had previouslydiscussed a public alarm systembut did not proceed with it because of the cost. Former Kerr County commissioner Tom Moser told CBS News the county had applied for a grant in the past to build the system but the application was not approved. "If they can't afford to do it, then let us do it," Lt. Gov. Patrick said Monday, noting that the state could offer resources for Kerr County to implement a system. "We have a special session starting two weeks from today, and I think we can take that up and do some other things of funding these sirens. ... If there had been a siren, maybe that would have sparked people to say 'Oh, we have a massive disaster like five minutes away.'" When asked about the emergency warnings on Tuesday, Abbott said everything would be discussed at the state Legislature session. "We're going to address every aspect of this storm to make sure we're going to have in place the systems that are needed to prevent deadly flooding events like this in the future," he told reporters. The board of the Upper Guadalupe River Authority had secured funding and a contract to begin developing a flood monitoring system for the area, with preliminary meetings about the project scheduled for mid-July, according to the joint information center set up since the floods. That project aims to create a "centralized dashboard to support local flood monitoring and emergency response," a spokesperson for the center said in a statement to CBS News. "While real-time streamflow and rainfall data are already available through various sources, this new tool will bring those datasets for Kerr County into one platform to enhance usability for emergency managers," the statement said, adding, "This is not a public alert system, but a decision-support resource intended to complement existing infrastructure." How a father's persistence unlocked his son's brilliance Global backlash grows to Trump's tariff threats Takeaways from Trump's tour of Texas flooding damage
