Texas floods | More than 100 dead, including 28 at the devastated summer camp

(Hunt, Texas) Research continues on Monday in Texas, in the south of the United States, after the devastating floods which left more than 100 dead this weekend, including 28 children and supervisors who participated in a summer camp.

The toll is now at least 101 dead, according to a new assessment of local authorities.

The sheriff of the county of Kerr, the most affected, reported a new assessment of 84 dead, including 28 children. To this assessment are added at least 17 dead identified in neighboring counties.

“Texas is in mourning. The pain, the shock of what has happened in recent days have broken the heart of our state, “said Texan Senator Ted Cruz at a press conference.

Among the victims include 28 children and monitors of the Christian holiday camp for camp girls, on the banks of the Guadalupe river, which hosted some 750 people, announced its officials.

US President Donald Trump plans to go there on Friday, confirmed the White House, criticizing the criticisms that budget cuts in national weather services had informed the reliability of forecasts and alerts.

“Keeping President Trump responsible for these floods is an odious lie, which makes no sense in this national mourning period,” spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Monday.

She said that the American weather services (NWS) – of which several posts in Texas were vacant during the floods, according to the New York Times – had issued “forecasts and alerts both precise and in due time”.

Patrols on horseback

Believing that the floods were “a disaster as we have not seen in 100 years”, Donald Trump signed this weekend a disaster declaration in order to provide Texas with the means of the federal government.

More than 400 rescuers as well as helicopters and drones participate in research, the authorities said.

In the locality of Hunt, near the Mystic camp, the rescue teams are still trying on Monday to find the missing bodies. Boat rescuers and divers rummage the waters of the river, while volunteers patronize the banks, noted an AFP journalist.

After two days of research in the middle of the uprooted trees and the rubble of the holiday center, hoping until the end “a miracle”, Michael McCown confirmed to AFP on Monday that his eight -year -old daughter, Llnie, was dead.

“This is the nightmare of all parents,” said senator Ted Cruz, whose children have been attending this camp for ten years.

Torrential rains

The sudden floods were caused by torrential rains in the center of the state very early on Friday, the day of the American national holiday, which raised the waters of the Guadalupe of eight meters in just 45 minutes.

It suddenly fell nearly 300 millimeters/rain, a third of the average annual precipitation.

Flood alerts were still in effect in certain sectors of the center of Texas until 7 p.m. local time on Monday (GMT midnight).

The Guadalupe river had however started to find its bed and its calm on Sunday, but the banks still offered a desolation show. On one of them, a dead cow was suspended from a tree, his head stuck in branches. Not far away, a car was overturned, while on the ground, dozens of dead fish, carried away by the current, entered decomposition.

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.

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