Fewer than 100 unaccounted for in Texas flood as officials decry ‘Blame Game’

The number of people missing after the devastating July 4 floods in Texas Hill County has fallen below 100, Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday. That marks a significant reduction from the 173 unaccounted for that he announced nearly a week ago.

The governor said it was possible that the actual number, which currently stands at 97, was even smaller, as officials tried to weed out erroneous reports. “There’s no certainty that all 97 of those people were swept away by the storm,” he said.

Abbott said the process of identifying victims had been particularly slow in rural Kerr County, where the bulk of the deaths occurred and where justices of the peace perform death investigations, because the county does not have a medical examiner.

“It required pressure from the state and others to make sure they began to expedite that process,” the governor said. “When a life is lost, that family wants access to their loved one as quickly as possible.”

As of now, he said, everyone who was at a camp or hotel in the flooded area has been identified or accounted for. “Those who are missing on this list, most of them, were more difficult to identify because there was no record of them logging in anywhere,” he said, adding that friends, family members and co-workers had reported them missing.

Kerr County officials said that the death toll there had risen to 106 as of late Sunday evening, bringing the number of people killed in the floods to 132 statewide, according to New York Times reporting.

The county has faced lingering questions about its preparations for extreme weather and response to the recent flooding. At a public meeting Monday morning, officials said they were receiving death threats.

“It’s sad to see the evil that’s out there,” Rich Paces, a Kerr County commissioner, said, adding: “Can you imagine? People cursing us for decisions that we never had a chance to make. They’re just playing a blame game.”

In a separate meeting Monday morning of the City Council of Kerrville, Brenda Hughes, a council member, lamented “targeted threats” made to individual staff members and asked for increased security measures.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.