(Hunt, Texas) An even heavier assessment was feared on Wednesday after the floods that have already left a hundred dead in Texas where the chances are now slim to find some 170 missing.
Several days after the tragedy, research continues in this state of the southern United States, struck by torrential rains and deadly floods on July 4, the day of the American national holiday.
The rescuers continue their excavations to try to locate the approximately 170 people who are still lacking in the call and whose list “could most likely lie down”, according to the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.
On Tuesday, he indicated that in Kerr’s only county, 161 people were “considered disappeared”, a figure based on the number of people reported as disappeared by friends, relatives and neighbors.
County officials confirmed this figure on Wednesday, while twelve people are not found in the rest of the state.
Photo Ronaldo Schemidt, Agence France-Presse Archives
In Kerr County, “161 people are considered missing,” the governor of this state, Greg Abbott on Tuesday.
“Our number 1 task is to find all the disappeared,” insisted the governor on X.
“Well worse”
A total of 110 deaths linked to the floods were identified in the center of Texas and fifteen others in the rest of the state, according to the authorities.
The county of Kerr, the hardest hit, deplores 95 dead, including 36 children, according to the Sheriff Larry Leitha.
Among these victims are 27 children and monitors of the Christian holiday camp for camp girls, on the banks of the Guadalupe river, which hosted some 750 people.
Five campers and a camp instructor were still missing on Wednesday, according to the Sheriff Leitha, who confirmed that another child, who was not in this holiday center, was not found.
More than 2,000 rescuers, police and specialists converged on the place of disaster, he said. Helicopters, drones and cynophile teams have been mobilized for several days.
While emphasizing the difficult conditions in which the rescuers work in the middle of the mud and the clusters of vegetation, the police manager of Kerrville, Jonathan Lamb, said how hundreds of people had been rescued.
Photo Ashley Landis, Associated Press
Trees and debris cover the ground near the Guadalupe river after the floods in Kerrville, Texas.
The police had “door-to-door, awakening people” Friday and, sometimes, “left the windows” from their homes or their flooded caravans, he told journalists.
The tragedy, “as horrible as it is, could have been much worse,” he added.
“Return of experience”
President Donald Trump confirmed that he would go to Texas on Friday, a week just after the tragedy, accompanied by his wife Melania.
On Monday, the White House castigated the criticisms that the budget cuts in the national weather services infringed the reliability of forecasts and alerts.
During press conferences on Tuesday and Wednesday, local officials dodged questions about the speed of alerts. “There will be a return of experience” after the examination of what happened, said the Sheriff Leitha, while recognizing that “these questions must have an answer”.
The sudden floods that struck the region were caused by torrential rains very early on Friday, which increased the waters of the eight -meter Guadalupe in just 45 minutes.
Photo Ashley Landis, Associated Press Archives
The Guadalupe River seen from the sky in Kerrville, Texas, July 8, 2025.
It suddenly fell nearly 300 millimeters/rain, a third of the average annual precipitation.
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 or droughts.
“It is an area of Texas which undergoes the two extremes of the spectrum of climate change (…) The droughts become more extreme” and “when the rain arrives, it causes this heavier precipitation, with an increased probability of sudden floods,” said Shel Winkley, meteorologist.
In the neighboring state of the New Mexico, torrential rains caused a flood on Tuesday in the mountainous station of Ruidoso, causing the death of at least three people.
