Texas floods | The record goes to at least 59 dead

(Hunt) The murderous floods in Texas left 59 people dead, according to a new provisional assessment announced Sunday by the deputy governor of the State, Dan Patrick.

“We have lost other people. We are now at 59, “he said on Fox News, saying to expect” what it increases “.

Rescuers work tirelessly to try to find almost thirty girls and missing teenagers.

These sudden floods were caused by torrential rains in the center of the state on Friday, the day of the American national holiday. The flood alert is maintained Sunday in Texas, where the Guadalupe river had eight meters in just 45 minutes on Friday. It suddenly fell nearly 300 millimeters/rain, a third of the average annual precipitation.

Air, terrestrial and aquatic teams search the waters of the Guadalupe in search of survivors and bodies. About 500 rescuers and 14 helicopters were deployed, while the Texas National Guard and the Coast Guards sent reinforcements.

The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott declared the state of natural disaster and went there. He notably visited the Christian summer camp for girls on the shores of the Ravégé river, where 27 girls and adolescent girls are still lacking in the call among the 750 who participated.

“We will not stop until we have found all the girls who were in these dormitories,” said the governor.

On the site of the Mystic Camp, the water has grown widely withdrawn, revealing a devastation landscape, with dozens of stranded cars, certain stuck in trees, and snatched vegetation, found AFP journalists.

Desolation reigns inside the dormitories that welcomed the girls. The ground covered with mud and broken windows testify to the violence of the waves.

Michael, 40, without news from her eight -year -old daughter, who was in this camp, landed to find her. “We are at the Mystic Camp in search of our children (…) We went as far as possible downstream, but we do not have the equipment necessary for this, so we let them do and we are looking for places where they could be alive,” he told AFPTV.

According to local media citing families, the bodies of four girls have been found for the moment.

In total, the local authorities found the bodies of 43 victims in the county of Kerr, including 28 adults and 15 children. Seven other victims have been identified in other Texans counties.

The owner and director of the Mystic camp is also one of the dead, according to the Kerrville website, as well as the manager of another holiday camp located nearby.

Sudden floods, caused by torrential rains that the dry soil cannot absorb, are not uncommon. But according to the scientific community, climate change caused by human activity has made meteorological events more frequent and more intense such as floods, droughts and heat waves.

“Erroneous” forecasts

In Kerrville, the Guadalupe, usually calm, carry for debris. “Water has reached the top of the trees. About 10 meters or more, ”said Gerardo Martinez, a 61 -year -old resident. “Cars, whole houses came down the river”.

Internal security secretary Kristi Noem assured that President Donald Trump wanted to “modernize the technologies” of weather forecast and risk prevention agencies, while the government has been criticized for having reduced their funding and deleted hundreds of positions.

Asked about the complaints of inhabitants believing that it has not been warned early in the risk of floods, Kristi Noem said that it “would transmit (their) concern to the federal government”.

According to a municipal official in Kerrville, Dalton Rice, water has reached “the level of a centennial flood” in certain areas. “The forecasts were clearly wrong,” and the amount of rain was “double what was anticipated”. Some 850 people were evacuated.

In mid-June, 13 people had perished due to floods in San Antonio, not far from the area affected on Friday, following torrential rains.