Just over two weeks after deadly flash floods hit Central Texas, the Kerrville city officials announced the number of missing people has dropped to three in Kerr County, the area most devastated by the disaster.
Officials say many of those originally announced as missing have since been confirmed to be safe and were taken off the list. The death toll in Kerr County is confirmed at 107 as of Saturday, with at least four of those victims being Austin-area residents.
“We are profoundly grateful to the more than 1,000 local, state and federal authorities who have worked tirelessly in the wake of the devastating flood that struck our community,” Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said in a news release.
Rice said the massive collaboration in search-and-rescue efforts over the past few weeks helped bring the missing persons count down from over 160 to just single digits. Included in those efforts were mutual-aid deployments from across the state, though the delayed response by the Austin Fire Department has sparked controversy and a no-confidence vote against Joel Baker, the fire chief.
“This has been an ongoing effort as investigators worked diligently to verify reports of missing persons and confirm their status,” the release states.
All four confirmed victims from Austin were children, with three of them attending Camp Mystic, an all-girls’ Christian camp along the Guadalupe River that was hit by the floods.
The release emphasized recovery operations are ongoing throughout the Guadalupe River “by local, state, national and international search teams who continue to work to reunite the missing with their families.”
The death toll from the early July flooding statewide is over 135 with at least 18 deaths occurring in Travis, Williamson and Burnet counties.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas floods: Kerr County missing falls to 3 after Camp Mystic floods