Closing summary
It’s just before 9pm in central Texas and we’re about to close this live blog. Here’s a recap of the latest key news lines, and you can find our full report here. Thanks for following along.
The death toll from flash floods that have wreaked devastation in central Texas passed 100 by Monday late afternoon and was expected to rise further as more victims were found and additional rain threatened the region.
Camp Mystic confirmed that 27 children and counsellors died. Ten girls and a counsellor from the Christian girls’ summer camp beside the Guadalupe River were still unaccounted for, officials said on Monday.
Search-and-rescue personnel clawing through tons of muck-laden debris as aircraft flew overhead and hopes of finding more survivors dimmed. Weather forecasts on Monday predicted up to four more inches of rain in Texas Hill Country, with isolated areas possibly receiving up to 10in (25cm).
The bulk of the death toll from Friday’s flooding was concentrated around the riverfront Hill Country town of Kerrville, including the Camp Mystic grounds. By Monday afternoon, the bodies of 84 flood victims – 56 adults and 28 children – were recovered in Kerr county, most of them in Kerrville, the local sheriff said.
Twelve other flood-related fatalities were confirmed across five neighbouring south-central Texas counties as of midday Sunday, state and local officials said, and 41 other people were still listed as missing outside Kerr county.
The flooding disaster caused an estimated $18-22bn in total damage and economic loss, according to a preliminary estimate from AccuWeather.
Contextualising the disaster, AccuWeather climate expert and senior meteorologist Brett Anderson said: “A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, which can unleash extreme rainfall rates that rivers, streams and drainage systems are struggling to handle. We face a future with warmer air and higher ocean temperatures, increasing the odds of more extreme rainfall events and more people in harm’s way living and visiting in flood-prone and high-risk areas.”
The White House conflated concerns over whether adequate warnings were sent out to people soon enough with accusing the administration of responsibility for the flooding. “That was an act of God, it’s not the administration’s fault the floods hit when it did,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, insisting “there were early and consistent warnings”. Questions have been raised over whether the flood alerts were sent quickly and widely enough and if Donald Trump’s job cuts hampered the National Weather Service’s work.
Leavitt also attacked “some members of the media” as well as Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader who has reportedly called for an investigation from the commerce department inspector general into whether the weather service had enough staff in offices that would have forecast the storms.
Authorities overseeing the search for Texas flood victims have said they will wait to address questions about weather warnings and why some summer camps did not evacuate ahead of the catastrophic flooding.
Authorities lost one of their aviation assets on Monday when a privately operated drone collided in restricted airspace over Kerr county with a search helicopter, forcing the chopper to make an emergency landing. No injuries were reported but the aircraft was put out of commission, the sheriff’s office said.
– With news agencies
Updated
In another survival story, a Texas man says he is blessed to be alive after floods left him stranded with nothing but a small meter box to cling on to, CNN is reporting.
Christian Fell told the network he woke up to thunder in the early morning hours of 4 July to find half of his home ripped away by flash flooding.
“I get up to investigate, and when I swing my feet over the side of the bed I realised I was standing in water,” said Fell, who lives in Hunt, the location of the all-girl Camp Mystic that has confirmed it lost 27 campers and counsellors to the floods.
Fell said he clung to the electric box on the side of his home for three hours.
He told CNN:
It definitely is, I think, a blessing that the meter box was there, because I don’t even think I remembered was on that side of the building.
As I started to climb it, I just realised I needed to get out of the water as quickly as I could and just find something to hold on to so the water couldn’t take me away.
As he clung to the meter box, Fell says the rapid flood waters carried away cars with their hazard lights flashing on and off, the report continues.
The prospect of death certainly crossed his mind, he added.
Standing there with nothing else to hold on to but a metal pipe screwed into a wall – it’s not like an ideal situation.
Updated
