At least 24 people are dead after heavy rain lashed Texas, leading to “catastrophic” flooding.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said emergency responders remained in a search and rescue posture, hours after the flooding along the Guadalupe River inundated nearby areas.
“So many people have been swept up into an extraordinary catastrophe,” Abbott said, asking for prayers for residents.
Children are among the dead, and about 23 campers from a summer camp in the area, Camp Mystic, were unaccounted for, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick at a earlier news conference.
President Donald Trump described the flooding in Texas and subsequent deaths as “terrible,” adding that he’s working with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to coordinate possible federal aid and to mitigate the damage.
“They don’t know the answer yet as to how many people, but it looks like some young people have died,” Trump said Friday on Air Force One, referring to the deaths as “shocking.”
A Texas official said the forecast provided by the National Weather Service underestimated the amount of rain that lashed central Texas before devastating flooding.
Nim Kidd, the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said the original forecast received on Wednesday from the weather service predicted 3 to 6 inches of rain in the Concho Valley and 4 to 8 inches of rain in the Hill Country.
The state emergency operations center began daily briefings Thursday on the potential for flooding.
“But listen, everybody got the forecast from the National Weather Service, right?” Kidd said during a news conference Friday, adding, “It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw.”
