At least 2 dead in Texas floods as hundreds rescued in same region as Camp Mystic disaster
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By Hanna Park, Dalia Faheid, CNN
(CNN) — Disastrous flash flooding has hit southern Texas after days of torrential rain, leaving at least two people dead and prompting hundreds of rescues across the same region struck by last July’s catastrophic floods.
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More than 230 rescues have been made so far, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday afternoon, adding more than 85 boats, 20 aircraft and 200 high-profile vehicles have been deployed to assist the response.
One of those who died was a man swept away in a recreational vehicle, Abbott said Thursday. John Mark Steward, 65, died after being carried off in his mobile home in Kerrville, his wife told The San Antonio Express-News. CNN has not been able to confirm Steward’s death with authorities.
A 74-year-old man, whose identity has not been released, also died while driving near Uvalde, police said. A Department of Public Safety crew spotted his vehicle bobbing in floodwater about four miles north of the city around 10:30 a.m. local time and later confirmed his death, the Uvalde Police Department said Thursday.
About a year’s worth of rain has fallen in parts of southern Texas this week, but the forecast is now improving in the hardest-hit areas. Isolated showers remain possible, but the threat of additional significant rainfall has, for the most part, ended.
Friday’s flash flood threat is in areas farther west, from San Angelo and Junction to El Paso. Slow-moving storms prompted flash flood emergencies — the highest level of flood warning — for parts of north-central Sutton County and east-central Crockett County, Texas, on Friday morning.
They include Sonora and Ozona, which are about 100 miles northwest of this week’s hardest-hit flood zones. While these areas have not seen nearly as much rain, intense rainfall rates Friday morning were enough to set off dangerous flooding that has already covered some local roadways.
Rescues were ongoing in Ozona, the Crockett County Fire & EMS said in a post on Facebook, and local and state resources have been activated. “Do not travel. Do not attempt to leave flooded areas. Rescue teams are coming,” the post said. CNN has reached out for more information.
‘The priority was to get out’
A flash flood emergency was in place early Thursday for Kerrville, Ingram and Hunt, among the communities hit hardest a year ago by devastating floods that killed at least 130 people, including 25 girls and two counselors.
Authorities warned that “a large and deadly flood wave” was moving down the Guadalupe River, before it crested at 37.94 feet in Center Point Thursday morning – a height slightly below last year’s flood. A river gauge downstream from there in Comfort rose 25 feet in a single hour and crested over a foot higher than last July.
More than 80 people were evacuated from riverside campgrounds before floodwater reached dangerous levels, the governor said.
In Comfort, a group of 42 relatives who had gathered for their family’s 40th annual reunion fled a riverside hotel on Thursday morning, CNN affiliate KENS reported.
“We grabbed just what we needed and what we could get right away,” Amy Thogmartin, who had traveled from Brooklyn, told KENS. “But the priority was to get out. And we’re glad we did, because the people that got back immediately after that, maybe 20 minutes later, the water had risen maybe another 10 feet.”
In the Hill Country, videos showed water inundating streets and swallowing bridges as first responders plucked stranded residents from the current and families surveyed the wreckage. Floodwater caused a bridge in Uvalde County to collapse, the Texas Department of Public Safety said Friday. One family told CNN it sheltered for hours in the attic of its Kerrville home as the water rose beneath them, until a rescue boat arrived. In Boerne, footage captured a group of deer being carried off by the flood.
All children’s summer camps in Kerr County confirmed their campers were safe, according to the county sheriff’s office. First responders cleared about 50 homes in flood-prone areas, said Jerel Haley, the Kerrville police chief.
‘We are still reeling’
Officials said the warning systems built since last year’s catastrophic floods were activated in Kerr County in the early hours before water levels began to rise, allowing for people to react quickly to flooding threats.
“The same circumstances that occurred last year occurred again this morning but this time, our towers intervened and woke people and got them out of the way,” said Ian Cunningham, founder and CEO of River Sentry, a Texas-based company that installed 105 flood-warning towers along the Guadalupe River since last year. “You could make the argument that these were critical in intervening and saving lives.”
The flooding brings back painful memories for the community, as many residents are still grieving the losses caused by last July’s floods, Kerrville Police Chief Jerel Haley said Thursday.
“We are still reeling from what happened a year ago,” Haley said. “To have this happen again so suddenly is literally quite devastating for a lot of us.”
Some residents said the alerts bought them time. Jake Lamb, 22, of Kerr County, told CNN the area “hasn’t fully recovered” from last year, but that this time the warnings were relentless.
“A lot of phone alerts, a lot of flash flood alerts. Just constant. We got calls, we got texts, we got a good amount of them,” he said. “The learning experience from last year was major.”
At a Kerrville RV park, which saw a number of deaths last July when people were trapped inside their vehicles, the owner, Lorena Guillen, said everyone was safe in the recent flooding. Sirens went off around 2 a.m. local time along the river, she said. Last year, the warnings did not come until it was too late, she said.
Abbott said last year’s disaster reshaped how the state responds to floods. “What happened last year was a warning to people on or near rivers … that no one can be complacent when rainfall and waters rise,” he said. “Now we’re being very aggressive when the waters start coming down the skies and start rising out of rivers.”
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CNN’s Meteorologists Dakota Smith and Chris Dolce and CNN’s Kate S. Petersen Cindy Von Quednow, Sara Smart, David Williams, Alisha Ebrahimji, Maria Aguilar Prieto, Shimon Prokupecz contributed to this report.
