Texas region devastated by flooding shifts focus to recovery as death toll tops 109

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• Amna Nawaz:

  Welcome to the "News Hour."

  Search teams continued to comb through large parts of Central Texas today, looking for survivors five days after deadly floods. But hope is starting to fade. No new survivors have been found in days, and the death toll is still rising. At least 109 people were killed, 94 of them in the Kerr County area.

  Special correspondent Christopher Booker has our report from Texas.

• Christopher Booker:

  Just along the Guadalupe River, a community has come together. This disparate group of people from all over the state, area law enforcement, firefighters and volunteers, have now shifted their focus to recovery.

• Man:

  May we be able to give strength to this community, and may we be able to stay strong throughout this day.

• Crystal Smith, Volunteer:

  All right, Dasha, are you ready to work? She is a trained cadaver…

• Christopher Booker:

  Crystal Smith entered the call with her cadaver dog, Dasha.

  Why is she here today?

• Crystal Smith:

  To help see if we can help at all with any sort of recovery or all of the search efforts, really, anything, and try to help bring some closure and reunite some of these families.

• Christopher Booker:

  Micah Watkins has been helping since Sunday night.

• Micah Watkins, Volunteer:

  I actually have camp next week I'm heading to. And with the camps that it flooded, with especially Camp Mystic, just kind of hearing about that pushed me even further to come out here and do what I can.

• Christopher Booker:

  Lieutenant Tim Stack is here with 16 other members of his police department.

• Lt. Tim Stack, Lakeway, Texas, Police Department:

  There's always an opportunity, and there's always hope that somebody's still going to be there alive. I mean, they found a guy in a tree a couple days after the incident, because he just got washed up there and no one saw him.

  And I was telling the guys now, I said, you never want to pull that branch away, and see that person that's made me deceased underneath there. But you also still want to pull that branch away to find that person.

• Christopher Booker:

  Less rain in the forecast today offered some relief for search efforts. More than 160 people are still missing.

  Today, Kerr County personnel dodged questions from reporters about how the county alerted residents about the floods.

  Larry Leitha, Sheriff of Kerr County, Texas: we're in the process of trying to put a timeline. That's going to take a little bit of time. As I have told you several times, that is not my priority at this time. There's three priorities. That's locating, locating the people out there, identifying, notifying the next of kin. That is what I'm taking as my job as sheriff here to do. OK.

• Question:

  With all due respect, sir, I think that the community here is asking these questions. What happened? When did it happen? Was the emergency manager awake at the time? Did they push the button to issue an emergency alert?

• Larry Leitha:

  Sir, it's not that easy you just push a button, OK. There's a lot more to that. And we have told you several times.

  (Crosstalk)

• Question:

  Did it happen, sir?

• Larry Leitha:

  I can't tell you at this time.

• Christopher Booker:

  Earlier today in a Cabinet meeting, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said she was overcome with emotion during her trip to the state.

• Kristi Noem, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary:

  I had walked through the cabin where all the little girls died. And I had kind of fallen apart in there, but I walked out of the cabin and a gentleman was standing there and he said, that man over there needs a hug.

  And so I walked over to him and I hugged him and I said: "Do you work here?"

  And he said: "No, my little girl was in that cabin."

  And he said: "And I just found her best friend about an hour-and-a-half ago." She had passed away.

• Christopher Booker:

  She defended President Trump's proposal to start phasing out FEMA and shift disaster response to the states.

• Kristi Noem:

  We as a federal government don't manage these disasters. The state does. We come in and support them. And that's exactly what we did here in this situation.

• Man:

  Right now, I pray that you would comfort everybody here.

• Christopher Booker:

  Back in Texas last night, people gathered in San Antonio to mourn and pray for the victims, like Sherry Richardson, who worked at a home for children with disabilities, or Odessa Police Department Officer Bailey Martin, who was on a trip to the Guadalupe River with his family, and 8-year-old twin sisters Hanna and Rebecca Lawrence, who were killed by the flooding at Camp Mystic.

  In Kerr County yesterday, volunteers loaded trucks with food and water for flood victims. For mother Shavawn Justice, the pain is all too personal.

• Shavawn Justice, Center Point, Texas, Resident:

  I have had a couple of friends who don't have a house anymore or they have lost their husband. There's the — I have a friend who's missing. So, I mean, it's a little difficult, especially in a town where there's not too many people.

• Christopher Booker:

  In this rural corner of Texas, everybody seems to know somebody that's been affected by this tragedy — Amna.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Christopher, it's unimaginable what folks on the ground are going through.

  Can you just give us a sense when you talk to them of what they're feeling, what the atmosphere is like in Kerr County?

• Christopher Booker:

  The atmosphere is strangely calm. It's certainly so somber and sad, but all the volunteers we spoke to are very focused on the task that's before them.

  They are thinking about where they need to walk through, what they need to search through and really, I think, have not let any emotion come into what they're doing. Nearly universally, everyone said they're there to provide closure for the victims and for the families. But it's clear that the emotion hasn't really come in yet. They're just focused on what they need to do today to help the victims and help the victims' families.

• Amna Nawaz:

  And that recovery effort you were following today, I mean, there have to be enormous logistical hurdles to getting that done. Tell us more about that.

• Christopher Booker:

  Yes, it is logistically very challenging.

  A great chunk of this morning was just figuring out who should go with who. They were looking for locals that had knowledge of the terrain to be paired with professional search-and-rescue operations. We spent a great deal of time with a group that was trying to launch a boat on the river.

  Now, this seems like it should be something simple, but many of the access points have been cut off by debris. In addition, the ground is soggy, so when they found an access point, they couldn't pull in their heavy boat and trailer. They also had to negotiate with landowners, basically going, knocking door to door to see if they could pull their trailer through and launch the boat.

  Ultimately, they were unsuccessful. Now, this is just one small example of what they're trying to do. We spoke with a group that was heading out on foot, and they said a successful day for them would be that if they covered just two miles of the river — Amna.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Such a long road ahead for them.

  Our special correspondent Christopher Booker and team on the ground in Center Point, Texas, thank you so much.

• Christopher Booker:

  Thank you.