Death toll from Texas floods rises to 80

Houston: Up to 80 people have died while more than 40 people remain missing, three days after hours of heavy rain led to major flash flooding in the south-central US state of Texas, authorities said.

US President Donald Trump said Sunday he is planning to visit Texas on Friday, hours after signing a major disaster declaration, unlocking key federal resources as search and rescue efforts continue, Xinhua news agency reported.

Kerr County, the hardest hit among 20 affected counties in the region, alone accounts for at least 68 of the fatalities, including 21 children, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said Sunday.

Four other counties have reported a combined total of 12 deaths.

Leitha said 10 girls and one counselor from Camp Mystic were still unaccounted for as of Sunday afternoon, noting search and rescue efforts are still underway.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at a press conference Sunday afternoon that at least 41 people were still unaccounted for across the state’s flood-impacted area.

He warned that additional heavy rainfall is expected in the coming days, keeping parts of the state at risk for further flooding.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has opened seven shelters, which are also providing food and water for central Texas communities, said a CNN report.

Also on Sunday, Trump pushed back on criticism that his administration’s budget cuts to the nation’s weather services had played a role in the deadly floods in Texas.

“I would just say this is a 100-year catastrophe and it’s just so horrible to watch,” Trump spoke to reporters as he left his New Jersey golf club after the weekend, “This was the thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it. Nobody saw it.”

Asked if the federal government needs to rehire the meteorologists who left during earlier budget and staffing cut after he returned to the White House, the president suggested it was not necessary.

Criticism has been mounting over how the National Weather Service (NWS) handled the emergency. Some local officials and residents said the flood warnings were late or insufficient.

Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, asserted Friday that the NWS “did not predict the amount of rain that we saw.”

Staffing data provided by the NWS’s labor union showed the San Angelo forecasting office currently has four vacancies out of 23 positions and San Antonio has six vacancies out of 26, according to a report from Texas Tribune. Both offices are in central Texas.

However, the NWS forecasting offices were operating normally at the time of the disaster, said the report, citing Greg Waller, service coordination hydrologist with the NWS West Gulf River Forecast Center in Fort Worth in northern Texas.

–IANS