At least 13 people have been reported dead and many more are missing, including girls from a Christian summer camp, after catastrophic river flooding hit central Texas late Thursday.
Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said 13 people have been killed in the flooding, The Associated Press reported. A search is underway for more than 20 girls missing from a nearby camp, according to the AP.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly told reporters one of those killed had been found “completely naked” and without identification. The Kerr County Sheriff’s Office confirmed fatalities but declined to release further information until next of kin had been notified.
Those reported missing included girls from Camp Mystic, according to The Statesman’s Tony Plohetski. He wrote on social media the camp said it had notified parents whose children were not yet accounted for. An image, sent to local station KSAT, showed girls in the Kerr County camp wading through water overnight.
Law enforcement has responded to dozens of emergency calls and one man told KABB his brother, sister-in-law, and their two children were lost, along with their house. Nearby, in Ingram, an RV park had been swept away.
Search and rescue efforts and evacuations were underway on Friday afternoon as Kerrville residents braced for more rain.
Kerr County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Clint Morris told the station it is “an extremely active scene, countywide.”
“This may be a once-in-a-lifetime flood” for the county, he said, noting authorities have responded to multiple calls for high-water rescues. The state has called in the National Guard to assist in the efforts. Kelly later told reporters the county does “not have a warning system.”
The floods came while people were asleep. As many as 10 inches of rain fell in the area, causing the flash flooding of the Guadalupe River. The river rose to nearly 35 feet on Friday, reaching its second-highest height on record. An additional one to three inches of rain are expected to fall before they subside on Friday night.
The flooding comes as residents in the Northeast were spending their Fourth of July holiday cleaning up from strong thunderstorms that swept through the region Thursday night, bringing heavy rain, wind and hail.
The storms are being blamed for at least three deaths in central New Jersey, including two men in Plainfield who died after a tree fell onto a vehicle they were traveling in during the height of the storm, according to a city Facebook post.
The men were ages 79 and 25, officials said. They were not immediately publicly identified.
“Our hearts are heavy today,” Mayor Adrian O. Mapp said in a statement. “This tragedy is a sobering reminder of the power of nature and the fragility of life.”
The city canceled its planned July Fourth parade, concert and fireworks show. Mapp said the “devastating” storms had left “deep scars and widespread damage” in the community of more than 54,000 people and it was a time to “regroup and focus all of our energy on recovery.”
Continuing power outages and downed trees were reported Friday throughout southern New England, where some communities received large amounts of hail. There were reports of cars skidding off the road in northeastern Connecticut.
With reporting from The Associated Press
