At least 161 people are still missing in a single Texas county four days after deadly and devastating flash floods hit parts of the state, Governor Greg Abbott said, as hope fades for survivors to be found.
The missing in the hard-hit Kerr County include five campers and a counsellor from Camp Mystic, a Christian all-girls summer camp located on the banks of the Guadalupe River.
At least 111 people have died in the disaster, according to the latest county-by-county tolls published by US media. More than 90 were in the Kerrville area.
Texas is not alone. Neighbouring New Mexico saw a flash flood emergency on Tuesday as well, causing the deaths of at least three people.
Up to 8.8cm (3.5in) of rain fell there, causing river waters to inundate the village of Rudioso, officials said. That flood has now receded.
In Texas, frantic search and rescue efforts continue, with Abbott vowing emergency crews “will not stop until every missing person is accounted for”.
Abbott added that it was very likely more missing would be added to the list in the coming days, and urged people to report anyone they think was unaccounted for.
General Thomas Suelzer from the Texas National Guard said search efforts were using Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters with rescue hoists.
He said there were 13 Black Hawk helicopters helping in the search effort, including four that arrived from Arkansas. Authorities have also been using reaper drones.
Responders from various agencies are working together on rescue efforts. They include agents from border patrol, the FBI and the National Guard.
More than 250 responders from various agencies have been assigned to the Kerrville area alone to help with search and rescue.
One of those rescue volunteers, named Tim, told the BBC he had never seen any destruction at this scale before.
“I’ve done the floods down in East Texas and Southeast Texas, and hurricanes, and this is a nightmare,” he said.
Another rescue volunteer, named Justin, compared the effort to “trying to find a single hay in a haystack”.
“There’s a wide trail of destruction for miles, and there’s not enough cadaver dogs to go through all of it,” he told the BBC.
“It’s hard to access a lot of it with heavy machinery. Guys are trying to pick at it with tools and hands, and they’re not even putting a dent in it – not for lack of effort.”
Questions have been raised about whether authorities provided adequate flood warnings before the disaster, and why people were not evacuated earlier.
Experts say there were a number of factors that contributed to the tragedy in Texas, including the extreme weather, the location of the holiday homes and timing.
Abbott, who had spent part of the day surveying the flood zone, said authorities had issued a storm warning and knew about a possible flash flood, but “didn’t know the magnitude of the storm”.
No-one knew it would lead to a “30-foot high tsunami wall of water”, he said.
The governor responded to a question about who was to “blame” for the enormous death toll, saying: “That’s the word choice of losers.”
He made a sports analogy, saying American football teams make mistakes; champion teams are the ones who don’t “point fingers”.
Most of the victims died in Kerr County, where the Guadalupe River was swollen by torrential downpours before daybreak on Friday, the July Fourth public holiday.
Camp Mystic had earlier confirmed at least 27 girls and staff were among the dead.
Those who survived are now focused on trying to rebuild.
Justin Brown has lived along the Guadalupe River for more than 25 years.
A week ago, he lived in his mobile home at the Blue Oak RV Park with his two young daughters and dog. Now, there is a huge puddle where his home once stood – his RV swept away in the floods.
“We were one of the few parks that got almost everybody out,” Mr Brown told the BBC, as he described the efforts of his landlord and emergency workers, who evacuated almost all of the park’s residents.
Looking out over the empty land where his home once stood – now just debris – he said he hopes to move back in as soon as he can.
President Donald Trump will travel to the flood-ravaged areas with First Lady Melania Trump on Friday.
In neighbouring New Mexico, officials from the National Weather Service (NWS) declared a flash flood emergency on Tuesday and told residents of Ruidoso to be on high alert for flooding.
A flood wave on the Rio Ruidoso went on to reach a height of 15ft, the NWS said. Houses were swept down the river, and a man and two children were killed.
Officials there have been working with boats to rescue people who got trapped. A number of locals were unaccounted for as of Tuesday evening.
A satellite map shows the Ruidoso River in New Mexico, where flooding on July 8 resulted in three fatalities. The village of Ruidoso is labeled, and an inset map provides geographic context by showing the locations of New Mexico and Texas.
With Agency Reports
