killing 119 people statewide. Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said more than 150 people were still missing in the county as of Wednesday morning, including five campers and a counsellor from Camp Mystic, a Christian all-girls summer camp located on the banks of the Guadalupe River.

At least 36 children and 59 adults have died in the floods in Kerr County alone, Mr Leitha said at a news conference. Officials are continuing their extensive search and rescue missions, using heavy equipment to remove debris, police said. In the first hour of the floods on Friday, emergency responders evacuated over 100 homes and rescued over 200 people, waking people up and pulling them out of their residences, said Jonathan Lamb, community services officer for the Kerrville Police Department (KPD). "Folks, I don't know how many lives our KPD team saved in an hour in Kerrville, but I know that this tragedy, as horrific as it is, could have been so much worse," Mr Lamb said. Christian Fell of Hunt, Texas, was one of many who had to leave his home when he found it was being flooded with water early Friday morning. He told the BBC he tried to get to his truck in the pitch black, but when he opened his kitchen door a "huge wall of water" came toward him. "I tried closing the door, and I couldn't get that done because just how powerful the water was, and so I had to go back further into the house," he said. (BBC)