More than 160 people are still listed as missing in Texas, following catastrophic flooding that killed more than 100 over the weekend, the state's governor said Tuesday, July 8.
"Just in the Kerr county area alone, there are 161 people who are known to be missing," Governor Greg Abbott told reporters. He added the figure was based on people reported as unaccounted for by friends, relatives and neighbors.
Abbott said President Donald Trump has pledged to provide whatever relief Texas needs to recover from the flooding, and he read what he said was a text from US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in which Kennedy pledged to declare a public health emergency.
Abbott said of Trump: "He could not stop talking about how sad he was for all the little girls who have lost their lives." Trump planned to visit the state Friday.
Meanwhile, public officials in charge of finding victims of the devastating flooding pushed away intensifying questions about who was monitoring the weather and warning that floodwaters were barreling toward camps and homes.
Leaders in Kerr County, where searchers have found 87 bodies, said their first priority is recovering victims, not reviewing what happened in the hours before the flash floods inundated the state’s Hill Country.
"Right now, this team up here is focused on bringing people home," Lt. Col. Ben Baker of the Texas Game Wardens said during a sometimes tense news conference where officials were questioned about the timing of their response.
Hope of finding survivors was increasingly bleak. Four days have passed since anyone was found alive in the aftermath of the floods in Kerr County, officials said Tuesday.