At least 95 dead in Kerr County, Texas, after flash floods
In the first hour of the floods on Friday, emergency responders evacuated over 100 homes and rescued over 200 people, waking people up and pulling them out of their residences, said Jonathan Lamb, community services officer for the Kerrville Police Department (KPD). "Folks, I don't know how many lives our KPD team saved in an hour in Kerrville, but I know that this tragedy, as horrific as it is, could have been so much worse," Mr Lamb said. Christian Fell of Hunt, Texas, was one of many who had to leave his home when he found it was being flooded with water early Friday morning. He told the BBC he tried to get to his truck in the pitch black, but when he opened his kitchen door a "huge wall of water" came toward him. "I tried closing the door, and I couldn't get that done because just how powerful the water was, and so I had to go back further into the house," he said. His furniture was floating and he had to climb over it to make it to his bedroom. He said he spotted a window and swam through it before climbing on top of a meter box outside, where he stood for three hours. He climbed down when he saw a police officer walking in the street. "I was clinging on to the side of the house, just praying the water would stop," he said. Mr Fell said he did not receive any weather alerts until water was already in his house. Maria Paula Zarate and Silvana Garza Valdez were working as counselors at Camp Mystic, the Christian girls' camp in Kerr County, when the Guadalupe River began to rise in the early hours Friday. Ms Zarate said she and the campers could not sleep when it started raining because it was so loud. "It was a storm like I had never experienced before in my life," Ms Garza Valdez said. The camp waterfront was crumbling with dirt and mud, Ms Garza Valdez said. She said some of the counselors started to cry after they were told it was time to evacuate, with Army trucks coming to rescue them. "I felt like I was in a dream," she said. Ms Zarate noted that the river was "full of furniture that had come from other camps."Questions have been raised about whether authorities provided adequate flood warnings before the disaster, and why people were not evacuated earlier.Experts say there were a number of factors that contributed to the tragedy in Texas, including the extreme weather, the location of the holiday homes and timing.Governor Greg Abbott said authorities had issued a storm warning and knew about a possible flash flood, but "didn't know the magnitude of the storm".
