Search for flood victims slowed by mountains of debris as thousands descend on Kerr County to assist

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The devastation left by last week’s floods in Kerr County looks more like a tornado swept down the riverbanks.

Massive trees snapped like toothpicks, pieces of broken homes, mangled cars and the contents of homes and camps pushed miles downriver now lay in huge debris piles. Clearing it all requires the might of heavy construction machinery as well as delicacy and respect for the bodies that may be trapped within the wreckage.

“It's really much the same picking, slowly picking your way through the debris, looking for whatever … can be salvaged and whatever bodies could be recovered,” said Gerald Dworkin, a water rescue consultant and former safety director for the American Red Cross in Houston.

Roughly 2,100 emergency responders from 10 states have descended on Kerr County to assist with the recovery and cleanup efforts, officials said during a Thursday morning news conference.

Search and rescue teams are looking for 161 missing people in Kerr County, where the death toll stands at 96, including 36 children. Another 24 people died in five other Central Texas counties.

Every day that passes significantly reduces the chances of finding victims alive, said Dworkin, who compared the rescue teams’ work in the Hill Country to ground zero in New York City after 9/11 in both its intensity and the meticulousness of the effort.

Officials said Tuesday that nobody has been found alive since Friday.

"We will not stop until every missing person is accounted for," Gov. Greg Abbott said during a news conference in Hunt Tuesday.

Dworkin and others say that responding teams can and should hold out hope that they can find survivors, but time is running short.

“We know from structural collapses and war zones and so forth that there have been people that have been found alive under the debris of a collapsed structure four or five, six days out,” Dworkin said. “This isn't a total recovery effort. It would still be considered a rescue and recovery effort.”

Teams are working quickly but the search for the missing is made even more difficult by the flood’s devastation and the natural topography of Hill Country. Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said.

“Kerr County is 1,100 square miles of beautiful but complex Hill Country,” Leitha said, adding that rural areas are marked by spotty cell service, single-lane bridges and low water crossings that can quickly become impassable during rains.

Local construction workers, volunteer firefighters, Texas Department of Public safety troopers and even a fire crew from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, are all searching debris along the river, Kerr County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Jason Waldorf said.

Kerr County isn’t the only focus; major flooding struck multiple communities around Central Texas over the July 4 weekend. Throughout the region, more than 20 state agencies are involved in flood response in multiple communities, the Texas Division of Emergency Management said Wednesday. That response includes thousands of first responders, plus equipment including boats, helicopters, K9 teams and damage assessment teams.

Once crews reach areas that need to be searched, they face mountains of debris where crews are using excavators and skid loaders to clear the piles while spotters on the ground monitor the work.

“We’re looking for any sign of a person that may be within this material,” Waldorf said.

As of Wednesday, the crews were still locating new debris piles along the river, Waldorf added. Crews are also using a system to ensure no area is checked twice.

Officials would not disclose how much of the area has been searched so far.

The recovery efforts are slowing the cleanup, but it is necessary work, Kerrville Police Department Community Services Officer Jonathan Lamb said.

Officials warned area residents to not disturb any unsearched debris piles on their properties until recovery crews come through the area.

“We ask them not to use heavy equipment to take down those debris piles until they’ve been checked by a search party because it’s possible there are victims in that debris pile,” Lamb said. “We don’t want to disturb that.”

It is expected to take months to finish removing the debris from the river channels.

At a Kerrville City Council meeting on Tuesday, city officials said they planned to use 28 acres at a nearby soccer complex to haul vegetative debris and burn it.

Ingram City Council member Raymond Howard warned it could take even longer to clear the flood’s destruction.

“This has got to be cleared all the way to Canyon Lake,” Howard said. “That’s 100-plus miles away (as) the river flows, and people have been rushed all the way down the river.”