By Aimee Ortiz, Edgar Sandoval, Ruth Graham and Ernesto Londoño
At least 13 people were killed and frantic searches were underway for the missing — many of them children from a summer camp — after heavy rain in Central Texas set off deadly flooding along the Guadalupe River on Friday, the authorities said.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told reporters at an afternoon news conference that at least 20 girls from the camp along the river in Hunt, Texas, were missing after catastrophic flooding overnight.
Hundreds of emergency personnel were searching for stranded people, using 14 helicopters and ground crews who were struggling to navigate flooded roads, officials said. They warned that the death toll was likely to rise.
“This is a tragic event. It’s going to be a mass casualty event,” Freeman F. Martin, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety told reporters Friday afternoon.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Camp Mystic was contacting the parents of campers who remain unaccounted for. He said parents with children who had not heard from camp officials should assume their children are safe. The camp has some 750 campers, and as of Friday afternoon, about 20 were missing, Patrick said, adding that officials would seek to transport campers to a reunion area on buses as soon as the roads were safe.
In Hunt, Texas, where the Guadalupe River forks, more than seven inches of rain has fallen since Thursday afternoon — the highest total that area since the early 1990s.
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