Our live coverage of the deadly flooding in central Texas has ended. Follow the latest updates or read through the posts below.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to request additional counties be added to President Donald Trump’s major disaster declaration following the flooding in central Texas.
“Five counties – Burnet, San Saba, Tom Green, Travis, and Williamson – are requested to be eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Individual Assistance programs, and four counties – Kendall, Kimble, Menard, and San Saba – are requested to be eligible for FEMA’s Public Assistance Program,” the governor’s office said in a statement today.
On Sunday, Trump approved the governor’s request for a major disaster declaration for Kerr County. The approval allows qualifying Texans who sustained damage to apply for grant funding to assist with repair and recovery expenses.
New dispatch recordings reveal how emergency responders were trying to save lives in the critical hours as flood waters surged in Kerr County early on July 4.
A local volunteer firefighter requested a CodeRED alert, a notification by a non-governmental mass communication system that sends emergency alerts to residents’ phones, to warn the public at 4:22 a.m., according to the audio.
“Is there any way we can send a CodeRED out to our Hunt residents asking them to find higher ground or stay home?” the firefighter said, to which the dispatch responded: “Stand by, we have to get that approved with our supervisor,” the recording revealed.
It was nearly six hours until some residents got the alert, according to audio from a dispatcher obtained by a KSAT source familiar with the emergency notification for residents near Hunt.
John David Trolinger, the former IT director for Kerr County who helped install the CodeRED system, woke up in the middle of the flooding that night and recorded hours of scanner audio during the storm. Trolinger shared the audio clips with CNN.
An earlier audio recording from around 3:27 a.m. came from a responder who reported the Guadalupe River was “starting to come up.”
At around 3:50 a.m., another call reported multiple people who said their houses were flooding as emergency responders advised them to “get to a higher area,” the audio recording revealed.
Trolinger told CNN’s Erin Burnett a “quick action could have helped people down the river,” but as the clock approached 4:30 a.m., “it was just too late.” He added: “The code red would have been ineffective in my opinion.”
Nancy Clement, a photographer at Camp Mystic, woke up to heavy rain around 2 a.m. on July 4 – but the severity of the deluge only hit her about an hour later when the water started rising up the porch of her cabin.
As campers evacuated to the recreation center, a counselor ran to the camp office and notified a police officer there that the flooding was becoming dangerous. The officer then told the program director that a dire situation was imminent, Clement recounted.
Clement and other staff members started piling up their belongings on their beds, figuring the water wouldn’t reach there and if it did the mattresses would float.
That’s when the cabin door snapped in half and the water suddenly rushed in.
“Then we were like, OK, we need to get out of here,” Clement told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
Clements forcefully pried open the other cabin door to exit. The group dispersed along the porch holding columns to keep steady. When the water reached their shoulders, they realized they had to get out of the porch to avoid getting trapped under it.
Using the window sill as a foothold, Clement hoisted herself onto the roof, clutching her phone, wallet and a soaked stuffed animal she’s had since she was 2-years-old.
Then Clement helped other camp employees up. When one staffer who was trying to get on the roof got swept away and caught on a volleyball net, the women tied their shirts together to help, only to find that the staffer swam against the current and made it back. They helped pull her onto the roof.
The staffers took turns praying as a group and felt a sense of relief when they heard the campers singing songs at a nearby building.
“It was like a sense of hope, even though at that point, the water was still up really high,” Clement said.
Drones are one of several tools search and rescue teams are using in their relentless pursuit to find survivors affected by the devastating flooding in Texas.
Jordy Marks, owner of LA Drone Services, was using a drone Wednesday to search above the Guadalupe River.
He told CNN’s Isabel Rosales that though his drones are equipped with high resolution cameras and thermal imaging, the latter might not be so useful in their search so many days since a massive storm brought severe flooding to Center Point, Texas.
Marks, who is also a volunteer with the United Cajun Navy and a veteran with search and rescue experience, said he is searching for “anything that stands out.”
“The current was so strong,” Marks said of the swollen river amid the flooding. “I think it took people and put them underneath the debris.”
As the urgent search of at least 160 missing people continues in the aftermath of the devastating flooding in central Texas, concerns are growing over the systems meant to notify residents in emergency situations.
Authorities report that at least 121 people have died across Texas due to flooding last Friday.
Here are the latest headlines from today:
• Special session: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a proclamation setting the agenda for a special session of the Texas Legislature later this month, with flood response and preparation items high on the list. Flood warning systems, emergency communications and relief funding for flood victims are among the topics that will be discussed during the session, which begins July 21.
• Call for warning sirens: An online petition calling for warning sirens to be installed in Kerr County, Texas, where flash flooding killed at least 96 people, has reached nearly 40,000 signatures.
Paul Bettencourt, a Republican Texas state senator who represents the Houston area, said he plans to introduce legislation that would allow the state to install emergency sirens in local counties.
A kickoff meeting to set up a centralized flood-monitoring system for the Upper Guadalupe River Authority was set to happen in mid-July, according to officials, as reports emerge that some local leaders had warned for years of the need for more flood warning mechanisms.
• Previous efforts: In recent years, multiple efforts in Kerr County to build a more substantial flood warning system have failed or been abandoned due to budget concerns or noise complaints. County officials and the river authority applied for $980,000 in FEMA funds to build a new warning system in 2017 but were denied, public records show.
• Community response and rescue: Sgt. Jonathan Lamb, Kerrville’s community services officer, said in a brief news conference that the community is grateful for volunteer offers to help but noted their basic needs are already being met.
“In the short term, I believe that all of our basic needs are being met, both through the federal and state response and the support that we’ve been getting, as well as this community rising up in a really unprecedented way to show their support for all of us here.”
• Remembering victims: Artist Roberto Marquez is in Kerrville with the intention of creating as many crosses as lives lost in the flooding. He said he hoped the families of those lost in the flood will come to the memorial he creates to pay their respects. In his experience, the site of his work starts informally, “but then becomes like a temple,” he said. “Eventually, all of this makes a big difference.”
CNN’s Ollie Ieltsov, Danya Gainor, Casey Tolan, Curt Devine, Andrew Freedman, Melanie Hicken, Pamela Brown, Shoshana Dubnow, Karina Tsui, Tristen Rouse, Christine Server, Kathleen Magramo, Leigh Waldman and Joel Williams contributed reporting.
The death toll from the Texas floods has risen to at least 121.
The latest death is located in Travis County, which is now reporting eight fatalities, according to an update from Hector Nieto, county spokesperson.
Artist Roberto Marquez arrived in Kerrville with a resolve to make as many crosses as the lives lost in the flooding in central Texas.
The artwork will be a memorial that will tell visitors “what happened here,” he said.
Marquez also created crosses and a large mural in San Antonio following the Quintana road tragedy where 53 migrants lost their lives in a tractor trailer.
He said he hoped the families of those lost in the flood will come to the memorial he creates to pay their respects.
In his experience, the site of his work starts informally, “but then becomes like a temple,” he said. “Eventually, all of this makes a big difference.”
Marquez says he is trying to pick materials from the debris, instead of going to get things from a hardware store.
“I want to see if I can find a piece of lumber that might [come] from a house building where someone” was lost to the tragedy, he told CNN.
“When those families come, they know that we were here and we care about them,” he said.
Among the many first responders searching through flood debris along the Guadalupe River were six human remains detection (HRD) dogs and their K-9 handlers from Mexico.
The teams had recently returned to Texas from their posts across the border after completing their first round of HRD training last August. The training is part of an international program that allows Mexican authorities to travel to the United States for security mission training.
As part of phase two, the handlers and their K-9 partners were learning to locate human remains in water. When the deadly flooding struck, they volunteered to join the ongoing, delicate and solemn search for victims’ bodies.
“We have 24 Mexican state and federal HRD handlers in class now and when I asked for volunteers, I was not surprised at all when the entire class volunteered to go search,” Michael Clemenson told CNN.
Clemenson, owner of the Hill Country Dog Center about 45 miles south of flood-ravaged Kerr County, Texas, said his teams decided to return to training after assisting in the search for several days due to increased resources on the ground, but remain ready to redeploy if needed.
“The handlers doing this type of work are a special group; nobody is forced to be an HRD handler, they volunteer for their own reasons and then devote so much time and energy into perfecting the craft. It’s an honor to work with them,” Clemenson said.
US Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson has previously highlighted the work of Mexican canine teams in the disaster zone. Separately, a search and rescue squad from the Mexican state of Coahuila joined Texas first-responders earlier this week.
Camp Mystic counselor Laney Owens said in a social media post that she feels “blessed” she was able to alert office staff to the flooding after being awoken by water puddling in her cabin.
“In the early morning on July 4th, 2025, the lord reached down to wake my co-counselors, campers, and myself up as water started to puddle on our cabin floor. We are so blessed to have woken when we did and were able to alert the office staff to start evacuating cabins. The hours to continue are a blur of prayer, singing, and confusion. Once the sun rose, we began to attempt to navigate what had happened, find our mystic sisters, and pray to find the ones not currently with us,” Owens said.
Owens was a counselor staying in Camp Mystic’s Bug House cabin, which is near the Guadalupe River, according to a source close to the camp.
In her post, which has since been made private, Owens says she has been going to Camp Mystic for the last 11 years.
“Camp Mystic will forever be a bright, sunny, and cheerful place full of the nation’s finest group of girls. Our dance parties, war canoe races, cc and field days, and lifelong bonds are the things that will sit at the top of my heart and mind forever. Please continue to pray for our sweet camp, staff, sisters, and everyone affected by this horrifying natural disaster,” Owens adds.
CNN has reached out to Owens and Camp Mystic for additional information.
Here are the tools Kerr County, where the most deaths from the Texas flooding occurred, had and didn’t have in place to warn people as torrential rain sent water surging over the banks of the Guadalupe River:
River gauges: These systems measure river levels and signal officials in real time to rising waters, allowing emergency managers to prepare and alert people.
The Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which manages the river, does have at least five gauges on the river in Kerr County, but experts say that number should double or even triple.
“How can you have a timely warning when you have no data?” said Mark Rose, former general manager of the Lower Colorado River Authority.
One gauge along the river shows the water levels hit 23.4 feet at 4:45 a.m. local time Friday morning, then didn’t record data again for 3 hours.
IPAWS: The Integrated Public Alert & Warning System (IPAWS) is FEMA’s system for local and federal authorities to send emergency information to the public. IPAWS uses Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) sent to mobile phones, the Emergency Alert System, which delivers warnings via radio and television, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weather Radio.
It’s unclear how widely WEA messages reached those in remote areas where cell phone service was limited — including at Camp Mystic, where at least 27 campers and counselors were killed.
Emergency sirens: In recent years, multiple efforts in Kerr County to build a more substantial flood warning system have failed or been abandoned due to budget concerns or noise complaints, but Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the state would “step up” and get sirens in place by next year.
County officials and the river authority applied for $980,000 in FEMA funds to build a new warning system in 2017 but were denied, public records show.
“I think everyone in Kerrville, everyone in Kerr County, wishes to God we’ve had some way to warn them,” Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr. said.
Several campers at Camp La Junta in Kerr County, Texas, sat on their cabin’s wooden beam rafters to escape the floodwaters during last week’s storm.
Keli Rabon, the mother of camper Brock Davis, told CNN her son’s counselor helped the kids climb onto the rafters after they were no longer able to avoid the water by sitting on top of bunk beds.
Brock’s brother, Braeden, was also at the camp but was staying in a separate cabin.
“My experience was waking up at 4 in the morning, hearing kids screaming from outside, and then really loud thunder and lightning everywhere,” Braeden told CNN.
“People came into our cabin, they were like, ‘Yeah, Cabins 6, 5 and 34 were really messed up,’ and I just got worried about him (Brock) more than worried about myself.” Brock was staying in Cabin 6.
The camp said Friday that everyone was safely evacuated from Camp La Junta.
CNN has reached out to the camp for a comment.
Paul Bettencourt, a Republican Texas state senator who represents the Houston area, said he plans to introduce legislation that would allow the state to install emergency sirens in local counties following deadly flooding last weekend.
“When you got a 28-foot wall of water coming at you in 45 minutes, you’ve got to get a notice,” he told CNN Thursday.
He said people are overloaded with information on their phones and many people turn them off at night. The flooding of the Guadalupe River happened early Friday.
Bettencourt also pointed out that if cell signal is knocked out, people aren’t able to receive an alert on their phone at all.
Pressed on why sirens weren’t in place before, knowing that the area is in a flood zone, Bettencourt said the state government needs to step in and install them — not leave it to individual counties to figure out how to fund projects themselves.
“You’ve got 4,000 governments in Texas. It’s a big place. Not everybody has the resources to get it done,” he said.
The state lawmaker said he saw an engineering report that was concerned that sirens would cause people to panic. He pushed back on that assertion: “It’s the wrong answer. The right answer is sirens save lives.”
CNN Senior National Correspondent Ed Lavandera visited the post-flooding rescue efforts downstream from an RV park and reported on the grisly search for victims amid tangles of destroyed vehicles and uprooted trees.
“Several of the volunteers who were out here looking for victims have said that they’re worried that many of the victims still might be submerged underwater and that in many cases they’re simply finding body parts,” Lavandera reported.
“I know that’s difficult to hear, but that is the reality of what many of these volunteers and search and rescue teams are dealing with right now.”
You can watch the full segment here:
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins interviews Thad Heartfield, a father searching for his 22-year-old son Aiden, who is missing after the flash floods that devastated central Texas.
@cnnCNN’s Kaitlan Collins interviews Thad Heartfield, a father searching for his 22-year-old son Aiden, who is missing after the flash floods that devastated central Texas. #CNN #News
Bus drivers and coaches from the Kerrville Independent School District transported hundreds of children to safety Friday, following the devastating flooding in Kerr County overnight on July 4.
Superintendent Brent Ringo received a call from the all-boys Camp La Junta around 5:25 p.m. Friday, notifying him that 400 campers needed transportation.
“There’s no power, no running water. It’s about to get dark. And so we put an all-call out to our drivers, our coaches, anybody who drives a bus, to show up. And within 10 minutes, we had about 16 drivers commit to showing up,” Ringo told CNN. “We had a driver, she earned her license the week before, she never transported kids — until this call came out.”
“I called Camp La Junta back and said, ‘We’re rolling your way right now,’” Ringo said. They loaded 400 kids onto ten buses and, with six more buses still available, asked how else they could help.
The National Guard told the district that about 300 more Camp Mystic campers also needed transportation, Ringo said. The girls were soon loaded onto the buses, wearing T-shirts and shorts, with no shoes.
“For our bus drivers to be able to give them a smile, tell them everything will be okay, we’re going to get you to see your families — very, very heart-wrenching,” the superintendent said.
The FEMA Task Force set up command at the Guadalupe Keys RV Resort in Center Point, Texas, on Thursday.
Multiple ambulances and boats arrived to continue the search for those missing after the catastrophic flooding.
Helicopters can be seen and heard in the area, while divers and cadaver dogs are also on site to assist with the search.
Watch the scene here:
Jonathan Lamb, Kerrville’s community services officer, said Thursday the community is grateful for volunteer offers to help but noted their basic needs are already being met.
“I don’t want to say it’s been a problem, because we’re so grateful for the amount of people who want to come to this community to help, and we’ve had people from all over the state and all over the country volunteer their services and say, ‘I have a front-end loader,’ ‘I have a boat,’ ‘I have this,’” he said near the end of Thursday morning’s news conference.
“But it’s important that we have certified professional search teams out there right now. We have compiled a database of volunteers who have made themselves available, and if and when that time comes that we are able to call upon them, we will be calling upon them.
“In the short term, I believe that all of our basic needs are being met, both through the federal and state response and the support that we’ve been getting, as well as this community rising up in a really unprecedented way to show their support for all of us here.”
The number of fatalities linked to the historic flash flooding disaster in Kerr County, Texas, continues to be 96. The number includes 60 adults and 36 children, according to Community Services Officer Jonathan Lamb with the Kerrville Police Department.
No new deaths were reported Thursday morning.
The number of missing in the county remains above 150, and five campers and one counselor from Camp Mystic are among the missing, Lamb said.
A news briefing with Kerr County officials is underway, providing updates on search and recovery efforts.
At least 150 people are still missing in the county after catastrophic flooding swept through central Texas on July 4.
