Desperate Search for Girls Missing From Camp Continues

Texas is reeling in the wake of what's being called a "mass casualty event": devastating flash floods caused by a rapidly rising Guadalupe River, which was said to have risen 26 feet in less than an hour just prior to dawn on Friday. Twenty-four deaths have been confirmed, and CBS News reports as many as 25 people are still missing from Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp. The latest:

• The Guardian quotes Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the top local elected official in the area, who said in a news briefing, "Everybody is doing everything in their power to get these kids out." He said they weren't expecting a disaster of this severity. "We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States," Kelly said. "We had no reason to believe this was going to be anything like what's happened here. None whatsoever."

• Reuters quotes Kerrville city manager Dalton Rice as describing the swiftness of the flooding: "This happened very quickly, over a very short period of time that could not be predicted, even with radar," Rice said. "This happened within less than a two-hour span."
• Officials said that the hundreds of rescues conducted thus far included at least 167 by helicopter; at least 237 people had been rescued.
• Elinor Lester, 13, was attending Camp Mystic and describes her experience to the AP. She says her cabin was roused by the storm around 1:30am Friday, and that when rescuers arrived, they tied a rope for the girls to hold as they traversed a bridge with floodwaters striking their calves and knees.
• Officials say they had no warning so much rain would fall. One National Weather Service forecast had predicted between three and six inches of rain, said Nim Kidd, the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. "It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw," he said.
• Asked about how people were notified in Kerr County so that they could get to safety, Kelly said: "We do not have a warning system."
• The area is known as "flash flood alley" because of the hills' thin layer of soil, said Austin Dickson, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, which was collecting donations to help nonprofits responding to the disaster. "When it rains, water doesn't soak into the soil," Dickson said. "It rushes down the hill."