The number of missing in this month's flooding in the Texas Hill Country dropped over the weekend. Monday morning, Kerr County said just three people were still unaccounted for.
"We shared and collaborated with state police and Texas Rangers," Kerr County Engineer Charlie Hastings told the commissioners' court Monday morning. "They revised their search efforts. That's why there's only three left, and we're going to find them all."
Hastings said the number dropped so substantially over the weekend because many who were listed as missing were visitors who may have returned home to other parts of the state and country, so they may not have known they were being sought out.
"I've not been hearing a lot of this in the media: pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bone," he said. "Our community and the people helping us all need to heal. Let us heal. We'll never heal if you keep picking the scab open."
Hastings said Kerr County is working with the state and other counties to map flooding. He said verification is still pending, but water levels appear to have been greater than what would be considered a 500-year event. He said the the Guadalupe went from 50 gallons per second at midnight July 4 to 264 gallons at 3 a.m. to 125,000 gallons per second 30 minutes later.
"It was a tsunami," he said. "It was an inland tsunami, and it ripped everything up. I talked to the Texas A&M Forest Service. They did surveys after Hurricane Harvey. They said they'd never seen anything like this."
Judge Rob Kelly said Kerr County's focus would shift toward recovery. He urged people to pick up debris on their property and start lining it up along roads for removal.
"That's an economic burden off of us the state has voluntarily picked up," he said. "We're grateful for it."
Kelly said crews also need to inspect roads, bridges and other infrastructure for damage. He said Kerr County will need to compile a damage total while also writing a budget for next year.