(NewsNation) — Joe Herring Jr., mayor of hard-hit Kerrville, Texas, spoke to NewsNation about his community’s path forward while visiting a memorial for flooding victims.
“It breaks my heart. It breaks the heart of everybody here. We’re doing everything we can to find them,” Herring said.
“Please pray for those who wait, wait for news about their loved one,” he added. “And please pray for those who helped.”
The floods, which swept through Texas Hill Country in the early morning of July 4 when most were still asleep, have resulted in at least 120 deaths, according to NewsNation affiliate KXAN.
As of Thursday’s update from local officials, 172 people remain unaccounted for, including five campers and one counselor from Camp Mystic.
The number of people confirmed dead and missing has not changed since Wednesday, officials confirmed. As of Thursday, 96 in Kerr County alone were dead. Of those, 60 were adults and 36 were children. More than two dozen have yet to be identified.
“We are now in the full recovery phase,” Larry Littrell, Center Point Volunteer Fire Department assistant fire chief, told NewsNation.
“And what we are doing is we are into the large debris piles, we’re picking them apart layer by layer, we’re using dogs, we’re using drones with ground-penetrating radar, hand crews and heavy machinery,” Littrell added.
More than 2,100 responders from local, state and federal agencies are working to rescue and reunify members of the community, said Kerrville Police Department spokesperson Jonathan Lamb.
Questions mount on Texas flooding response
Public officials in charge of recovery efforts have faced intensifying questions about who was in charge of monitoring the weather and warning that floodwaters were barreling toward camps and homes.
The National Weather Service, which has 122 offices across the country, has said it issued timely alerts in advance of the deadly floods on July 3 and accelerated them around 1 a.m. on July 4. It’s up to the local law enforcement to interpret the forecasts, alert their communities and prepare for disaster, the NWS said.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s chief elected official, said in the hours after the devastation that the county does not have a warning system.
Local leaders have reportedly talked for years about the need for a warning system. Kerr County sought a nearly $1 million grant eight years ago for such a system, but the request was turned down by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to the Associated Press.
Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said Wednesday that a timeline of the flooding, warnings issued and disaster response “will be reviewed, you have my word.”
He said everyone involved “promptly responded” as flooding unfolded.
“When or if necessary, if improvements need to be made, improvements will be made,” Leitha said, later adding that “we’re not going to hide from anything.”
But that review could be a long time coming. Kerr County leaders have said their main priority is recovering bodies, not reviewing the lead-up to the floods.
When asked on Monday about flood siren installation, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz told NBC News it was “certainly a discussion that will flow in the weeks and months ahead.”
“I think we need to look at what happened, what transpired and how we could have moved more quickly to get people who are vulnerable out of harm’s way, in particular those kids in the cabins by the river,” Cruz said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.