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Officials said the search for remains would continue until all the victims have been accounted for. In the hardest-hit county, no survivors have been found since Friday.
July 9, 2025, 8:21 a.m. ET
Search crews spread through the Texas Hill County on Wednesday morning with a grim mission, seeking signs of the scores of people missing from devastating floods that struck the region nearly a week ago, killing at least 111.
Gov. Greg Abbott revealed late Tuesday that at least 173 people remained missing — the first time state officials have identified just how widespread the human toll might eventually be. Those unaccounted for include 161 people in Kerr County, where the worst of the flooding occurred and where searchers have not found any survivors since Friday.
It’s unclear how the list of the missing was assembled, and state officials did not answer inquiries about it on Tuesday night. Even so, the figure cited by the governor, which far outstripped the number of missing people that local officials had previously acknowledged, suggested that the death toll could more than double.
“The primary job right now continues to be locating everybody who was affected by this flood,” Mr. Abbott said at a news conference, later adding: “We will not stop until we identify, recover every single body.”
The death toll included at least 30 children, making the floods among the deadliest U.S. disasters for children in several decades. The young victims include many from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp for girls, where 27 campers and staff members were killed. The bodies of five campers and a 19-year-old counselor had not yet been recovered as of Tuesday evening.
As the extent of the floods’ devastation became clearer, Republican officials have continued to deflect responsibility for the disaster, while questions have grown about the role of federal forecaster vacancies and a lack of state and local spending on flood control and warning systems.
Asked about investigations into who bore responsibility, Mr. Abbott called that the “word choice of losers” and compared disaster response to football: “The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame,” he said, while champions respond, “We got this.”
At least 87 of the people who died in the floods were in Kerr County. Seven died in Travis County, eight in Kendall County, five in Burnet County, three in Williamson County and one in Tom Green County. Those lost include a beloved teacher, child and adult campers, camp directors and a counselor.
Jack Healy is a Phoenix-based national correspondent for The Times who focuses on the politics and climate of the Southwest. He has worked in Iraq and Afghanistan and is a graduate of the University of Missouri’s journalism school.
Campbell Robertson reports for The Times on Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
