Officials say at least 100 people still missing after July Fourth floods; recovery efforts could take months

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More than 10 days after catastrophic July Fourth floods along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, the official death toll across six Hill Country counties has risen to 132 people, while an estimated 101 remain missing, state officials said Monday.

Local and state officials said the exact number of people still missing, though, is difficult to determine. The figure presented Monday was the first time state and local officials had publicly disclosed an updated estimate since Tuesday, when that figure was 161 people.

At a press conference Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott said that 97 people were missing from the area around Kerrville, the Kerr County seat. Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said the larger estimate of 101 people includes people missing from other counties.

Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said during a commissioners court meeting Monday that the search for missing people could take up to six months, but setting a time estimate is also difficult.

“How long is it going to take? I mean, who knows?” Leitha said.

Abbott said Monday most of those still considered missing were people who did not check into hotels or campsites. Abbott said many of those people were added to the list of people who haven’t been located after friends and family reported them missing.

“Those who are missing on this list, most of them, were more difficult to identify because there was no record of them logging in anywhere,” Abbott said.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s top official, said during a county commissioners court meeting earlier Monday that local officials don’t know the exact number of how many visitors who traveled to the Guadalupe for the holiday weekend had been caught in the flood.

“We don’t know how many of them there are,” Kelly said. “Don’t be discouraged when you hear that number, we’re doing the very best we can, but it is an unknown at this point.”

Both Kelly and Abbott said officials had a grasp of how many county residents and people at camps along the river are missing.

Before Monday’s updates, local and state officials had provided little public information about the number of people missing after Abbott first put the figure at 161 people from Kerr County. An update to the Kerr County website page providing updates about the number of confirmed deaths and people believed to be missing removed any mentions of both figures when it was updated Friday.

When The Texas Tribune asked spokespeople for Abbott’s office, Texas’ Department of Public Safety and Texas Division of Emergency Management questions last week about how the number of missing people was estimated, they directed reporters to Kerr County officials. The Joint Information Center, a team of county and state employees and volunteers which has been running public communications for the county since the disaster, did not respond to multiple requests last week to clarify how the number was found, but provided the previous, higher number Abbott provided Tuesday.

Recovery teams are thoroughly scouring large debris piles for any people who were swept into the Guadalupe after it swelled in the pre-dawn hours July 4 following heavy rain. Those efforts have been hindered further by continued rain and flooding in areas already impacted by the initial floods, pausing searches across the Hill Country.

The devastating flood is already one of the deadliest natural disasters in recent Texas history. The 1900 hurricane in Galveston claimed over 8,000 lives and the 1921 San Antonio floods killed 215 people. If official estimates that 97 people are still missing is not an overcount, then the final death toll of the Hill Country floods would surpass those of the 1921 floods, potentially making it the second most catastrophic natural disaster in Texas.

An increase in the number of people confirmed dead could partially — but not completely — account for the drop in the number of people missing. A lower estimate in the number of people missing is not uncommon after mass casualty events. In the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster, officials try to nail down who was near scenes of disaster, identify found remains and communicate across agencies. In the wake of intense wildfires in Hawaii in 2023, the estimated number of missing people at one point peaked at 3,000 people, however ultimately the number of those killed was 102.

Initial post-disaster lags in communication have already affected flood search efforts: Travis County officials whittled down their missing persons count from 10 people to four after they realized some people were on both the lists of those missing and those who had been confirmed dead, according to a county spokesperson.

As time goes on a clearer idea of who is unaccounted for should begin to appear, said Lucy Easthope, an international adviser on disaster recovery efforts.

“Certainly, by the end of the first month, you've got a good idea of what you're looking for,” Easthope said. “And sometimes in flooding, we've seen the Earth only yield its final death toll some months, and maybe even years, later.”

The high number of visitors to the river for the July 4 holiday may also prove another obstacle in nailing down an accurate number, as people along the river in RVs or who didn’t check in to hotels may be unaccounted for. President Donald Trump cast doubt on the true number of those still missing during his visit in Kerrville on Friday.

“They're getting that count, but the count that they don't have is how many are still missing, with a lot of lives, a lot of young angels,” Trump said.