Anguish wrought by the Texas floods intensified Monday after Kerr County’s sheriff reported 75 bodies had been found – raising the state’s overall death toll to 89.
Crews in several counties are still searching for 15 people missing from Friday’s calamitous storm and flash flooding, according to a CNN tally. Those missing include 10 campers and one counselor from Camp Mystic, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said.
Now, questions abound over whether the mass tragedy could have been prevented. Here’s the latest:
Why evacuations weren’t ordered: Officials struggled to decide when or whether to order evacuations, Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said Monday.
“It’s very tough to make those calls because what we also don’t want to do is cry wolf,” Rice said. He also emphasized the challenging terrain and short time frame.
“These areas take a lot of time to get out to,” he said. “So even when first responders were on the ground at 3:30 in the morning … we had first responders that were getting swept away, actually responding to the first areas of rainfall. That’s how quick it happened.”
US Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, whose own daughters have camped in the area, said lessons can be learned from the tragedy – which has been especially painful for families of Camp Mystic, which lost 27 campers and counselors in the tragedy.
“If we could go back and do it again, we would evacuate,” the Texas Republican said. “Particularly those in the most vulnerable areas – the young children in the cabins closest to the water – we would remove them and get them to higher ground, if we could go back and do it again.”
Even the mayor was caught off guard: Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr. said he did not receive an emergency alert in the predawn hours of Friday, when raging floodwaters washed dozens of people and entire houses away.
“I think everyone in Kerrville, everyone in Kerr County wishes to God we had some way to warn them,” Herring told CNN’s Pamela Brown.
“I’ve lost two friends. We loved them and they’re gone,” the mayor said. “Everyone here, if we could’ve warned them, we would have done so. And we didn’t even have a warning. We did not know.”
Another flood threat looms: A level 3 of 4 risk of flooding rainfall is in effect for parts of central Texas, including Kerr County and portions of the Guadalupe and Llano River basins.
Storms dropping more than 3 inches of rain per hour are slowly moving across central Texas, according to the Weather Prediction Center. “Some significant instances of flash flooding are possible, especially given the sensitive flood-prone terrain,” the center warned.
