Desperate search for missing girls as Texas flood death toll rises

Overturned vehicles and broken trees after flooding caused by a flash flood at the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas on July 5, 2025. Photo / Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP

Rescuers in Texas raced against time on Sunday to find dozens of missing people, including children, swept away by flash floods that killed at least 68, as forecasters warned of new deluges.

Local Texans joined forces with disaster officials on the ground and in helicopters to search for the missing, including 11 girls and a counsellor from a riverside Christian summer camp where about 750 people had been staying when disaster struck.

In a terrifying display of nature’s power, the rain-swollen waters of the Guadalupe River reached treetops and the roofs of cabins in Camp Mystic as girls slept overnight on Friday, washing away some of them and leaving a scene of devastation.

Blankets, teddy bears and other belongings ended up caked in mud. Windows in the cabins were shattered, apparently by the force of the water.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said heavy rain likely to cause more flooding was falling on Sunday, as the death toll at the camp and elsewhere in Kerr County rose to at least 59.

“We expect that to go higher, sadly,” Patrick told Fox News.

He told stories of heroics, such as a camp counsellor smashing a window so girls in their pyjamas could swim out and walk through neck-high water.

“These little girls, they swam for about 10 or 15 minutes. Can you imagine, in the darkness and the rushing waters and trees coming by you and rocks come on you? And then they get to a spot on the land,” Patrick said.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Camp Mystic had been “horrendously ravaged in ways unlike I’ve seen in any natural disaster”.

“We won’t stop until we find every girl who was in those cabins,” he said in a post on social media platform X after a visit to the site.

Officials and US media say nine people died in other Texas counties, for a total of 68.

Officials had earlier said 27 girls were missing from the camp. Kerrville city manager Dalton Rice told a news conference on Sunday morning that the figure is now 11. He did not explain the sharp drop in the number.

The National Weather Service (NWS) warned on Sunday that slow-moving thunderstorms threatened more flash floods over the saturated ground of central Texas.

The flooding began at the start of the Fourth of July holiday weekend as months’ worth of rain fell in a matter of hours, much of it coming overnight as people slept.

The Guadalupe surged some 8m – more than a two-storey building – in just 45 minutes.

‘Washed away’

US President Donald Trump, at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, signed a major disaster declaration that freed up resources for the state.

Flash floods, which occur when the ground is unable to absorb torrential rainfall, are not unusual.

The region of south and central Texas where the weekend’s deluge occurred is known colloquially as “Flash Flood Alley”.

But scientists say that in recent years, human-driven climate change has made extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heatwaves more frequent and more intense.

People from elsewhere in Texas converged on Kerr County to help look for the missing.

Texans also started flying personal drones to help look but Rice urged them to stop this, saying it is a danger for rescue aircraft.

One of the searches focused on four young women who were staying in a house that was washed away by the river. Adam Durda and his wife Amber, both 45, drove three hours to chip in.

“There was a group of 20-year-olds that were in a house that had gotten washed away,” Durda told AFP. “That’s who the family requested help for, but of course, we’re looking for anybody.”

- Agence France-Presse