Texas flash flood claims at least 27 lives

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

At least 27 people have died and more than 20 children are missing after a catastrophic flash flood in Texas. 

The Guadalupe River that runs through Hill Country in central south Texas rose by 26ft (8 metres) in just 45 minutes in the early hours of Friday, according to officials, bursting its banks and damaging roads and property.

On Saturday rescue workers continued to search for more than 20 children who are missing from a summer camp they were attending. The flood struck as people across the US gathered to celebrate Independence Day.

“Rescue teams worked throughout the night and will continue until we find all our citizens,” the City of Kerrville Police Department said on Facebook on Saturday.

The search and rescue operations have involved helicopters, drones, boats and hundreds of personnel, officials said, but have been hampered by limited access to some areas, especially where roads have been washed away. 

President Donald Trump said the flooding and deaths were “terrible” and “shocking” as he pledged federal support.

Officials in Kerr County, north-west of San Antonio, said that the extreme rainfall had not been forecast, adding that there was no warning system in place. “We had no reason to believe this was going to be anything like what’s happened here,” said Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the top local elected official. 

But the National Weather Service said it had issued a flood watch for the area on Thursday, with the first flash flood warning for Kerr County in the early hours of Friday morning. On Saturday it warned that there remained a risk of more flash flooding in the area. 

Hannah Cloke, a professor of hydrology at the University of Reading in the UK, said the downpour “seems to have been well forecasted by multiple forecasters around the world, several hours in advance”. 

“It is not good enough for authorities to say they were not aware that floods were coming. Warnings were available but the message just didn’t get through,” she said.

The Trump administration has axed hundreds of jobs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Weather Service with critics arguing that the moves would impair the country’s ability to produce life-saving forecasts.

Scientists have warned that climate change is increasing the risk of devastating storms and intense rainfall because warmer air holds more moisture. A flash flood — a rapid inundation of low-lying areas — killed more than 200 people in Valencia in Spain last year.

Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical & climate hazards at University College London, said the “tragic events in Texas are exactly what we would expect in our hotter, climate-changed world”.

“There has been an explosion in extreme weather in recent years, including more devastating flash floods caused by slow-moving, wetter, storms, that dump exceptional amounts of rain over small areas across a short time,” he said.