Rescue crews in Texas were awestruck by the devastation that overwhelmed Kerr County, particularly at a girls’ summer camp that saw at least 27 of its campers and counselors among the dead- and the numbers are expected to grow as more bodies are discovered. The area was hit Friday night by rain that turned into flash floods that arose suddenly and overwhelmingly. ABC News correspondent Jim Ryan is stationed in Dallas; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to describe the horrific scene at the campsite as rescue workers continue their grim work.
Ryan told host Larry Mendte that several geographic and meteorological features all combined at the wrong place and time to cause the flooding: “This is known as Flash Flood Alley; it’s also known as the Texas hill country, and that’s relevant, because you have this topography here, bone-dry. We’ve had a drought here, so the water that falls onto the ground simply washes into the creeks and streams that feed into the Guadalupe River. And so, we had moisture coming up from the Gulf, from the Pacific, from the south plains, all converging right over those tributaries into the Guadalupe- and again, this happened at about 3:30 or 4 o’clock in the morning, so even if people had those warnings, or warnings had been issued, people might not have heard them at all.”
To compound the disaster, Ryan says the nearly 700 girls at the camp had no cell phones: “They’ve been there for a few days (and) were spending a month altogether there, but cellphones aren’t allowed there. So, the counselors were able to get warnings by their cell phones but the kids were not because the cell phones aren’t allowed there… Just one part after another fell into place to create this cataclysmic situation.”
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