(Hunt, Texas) The assessment of the floods in Texas, in the south of the United States, now exceeds 80 dead and will further increase, the local authorities announced on Sunday, as the hope of finding a dozen children who are still missing.
Donald Trump announced that he would go “probably” on the spot on Friday. “It is a disaster as we have not seen in 100 years and it is simply excruciating to see what is going on,” he told journalists from New Jersey, before embarking on his plane to return to Washington.
The American president also refuted any link between budget cuts in national weather services and the heavy record. “I do not believe,” he replied to a question about the usefulness of rehiring a part of the licensed staff in these services.
Photo Julio Cortez, Associated Press
Rescuers are carrying out research on the field of the Mystic camp, along the banks of the Guadalupe river
Residents complained over the weekend of not having been warned early in the risk of floods that left more than 80 people.
The only county of Kerr, the most affected, now deplores 68 dead, “40 adults and 28 children,” said County sheriff, Larry Lethia, at a press conference.
Among the some 750 children participating in a Christian summer camp for girls on the banks of the Guadalupe river, ten girls were not found, just like an instructor, said sheriff.
To the dead identified in this county are added more than ten deaths counted in neighboring counties, announced the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, in a press conference.
“Throughout the state, in the areas affected by the floods, we have identified 41 people who have disappeared,” he said, adding that the actual number was undoubtedly greater because many holidaymakers camped in the region on this prolonged weekend.
“We will see the assessment go up today and tomorrow”, as bodies are found, warned the director of public security in Texas, Colonel Freeman Martin.
Alert maintained
These sudden floods were caused by torrential rains in the center of the state very early 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.
In Hunt, the locality where the summer camp is located, 50 volunteers came from several cities in Texas to participate in research, in small groups of two or three.
Photo Ronaldo Schemidt, agency France-Presse
A volunteer is looking for missing people.
Adam Durda, 45, was three hours away with his wife, Amber, to try to find four young people in her twenties who lived in a house “carried away by the waves”, at the request of the family of one of them, he explains to AFP.
Another volunteer, Justin Morales, 36, confides having discovered with his companions the bodies of three girls, including one of the residents of the summer camp missing.
“We are happy to be able to help families mourn,” he says.
Donald Trump, who dispatched his Minister of Internal Security on the spot Kristi Noem on the spot, signed a disaster declaration in order to provide Texas with the means of the federal government.
“There are currently more than 400 rescuers of more than 20 agencies deployed in the county,” said Sheriff Lethia.
Helicopters and drones are engaged in research and the Texas National Guard as well as the United States Coast Guard has sent reinforcements.
The American pope Léon XIV expressed his “sincere condolences on Sunday to all the families who lost dear beings, in particular their daughters who were in a summer camp during the tragedy”, in a declaration in English at the end of the prayer of the Angelus.
The weather services maintained their flood alert on Sunday until 7 p.m. local Monday (Monday midnight GMT).
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.
