The death toll from catastrophic flooding in central Texas climbed past 100 on 2025-07-07, as search crews continued combing riverbanks, camps and debris fields for people still missing after the holiday weekend deluge.
AP reported that at least 104 people had died, including 28 children. Kerr County alone accounted for 84 of the deaths, and officials said 10 campers and one counselor remained missing from Camp Mystic, the century-old all-girls Christian summer camp that was hit especially hard when the Guadalupe River overflowed before daybreak on July 4. Camp operators said they had lost 27 campers and counselors to the floodwaters.
The destruction was swift. AP described cabins ripped apart, trees and vehicles swept miles downstream and families picking through waterlogged wreckage. Search teams used heavy equipment to pull apart tangled trees and continued to wade into swollen rivers. Some survivors were found clinging to trees. The flooding also affected multiple counties, with deaths reported in Travis, Burnet, Kendall, Tom Green and Williamson counties.
The disaster has already raised questions about warning systems, camp evacuation decisions and whether residents received alerts in time. AP reported that officials said they would wait to address those questions until search and rescue operations were complete. That caution reflects the scale of the emergency, but it also signals that a later public accounting is likely. Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said camps and cabins in the area often have poor cellphone service, making warning delivery and receipt more complicated. Some camps were aware of the danger and moved campers to higher ground, while others were not able to get out in time.
The AP story also described the political backdrop. President Donald Trump planned to visit Texas, while White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back on suggestions that federal service cuts had affected the response. Senator Ted Cruz said the time for political fights would come later, not while search teams were still working. Local and federal officials, meanwhile, said the intensity of the rainfall had surprised them, with some describing it as the equivalent of months of rain falling in a short period.
The event has become one of the worst flood disasters in the United States in decades. The AP report said the Guadalupe River rose with such force that it pulled sleeping people from cabins, tents and trailers, sending them downstream past trees, cars and debris. The visual evidence was just as stark as the casualty count: mattresses, coolers, canoes and a family portrait lined the riverbanks after the water receded.
The search continues, and so does the risk. AP reported that more rain was forecast and that saturated ground still threatened parts of central Texas with additional flooding. That means the death toll may rise further before the immediate emergency is over.
For the families waiting for news, the crisis is now measured in names, not numbers. But the numbers are already severe enough to define this flood as a national tragedy: over 100 dead, dozens of children among them, and many more still unaccounted for as crews keep searching the ruins along the Guadalupe.
