Hopes fade for missing Texas flood victims as death toll mounts to 100

Search teams plodded through muddy riverbanks and flew aircraft over flood-ravaged central Texas on Monday as hopes dimmed of finding survivors among dozens still missing from a disaster that has claimed at least 96 lives, many of them children.

- Reuters

Three days after a torrential predawn downpour transformed the Guadalupe River into a raging, killer torrent, a Christian girls’ summer camp devastated by the flash flood confirmed that 27 campers and counsellors were among those who had perished.

Ten girls and a camp counsellor were still unaccounted for, officials said, on Monday, as search-and-rescue personnel faced the potential of more heavy rains and thunderstorms while clawing through tons of muck-laden debris.

The bulk of the death toll from Friday's calamity was concentrated in and around the riverfront town of Kerrville and the grounds of Camp Mystic, situated in a swath of Texas Hill Country known as “flash flood alley.” By Monday afternoon, the bodies of 84 flood victims - 56 adults and 28 children - were recovered in Kerr County, most of them in the county seat of Kerrville, according to the local sheriff.