KERR COUNTY, Texas—The smell of decay wafted through the air in the searing heat, guiding volunteers in search of flash-flood victims.
There are 161 known missing people in Kerr County alone, Gov. Greg Abbott said Tuesday. “We will not stop until every missing person is accounted for,” Abbott said.
Texas has confirmed 109 deaths as a result of the storms that dangerously raised the Guadalupe River 26 feet in under an hour.
On Tuesday, first responders and volunteers fanned out on foot, horseback and boats. Helicopters scanned the river while cadaver dogs scoured the banks.
Patrick Fleming searched for signs of his missing cousin. He and volunteers waded across the river to cut back trees and debris with chain saws and pole saws, homing in on the area with a decomposing smell.
Fleming’s cousin, college student Aidan Heartfield, had been staying with his girlfriend and two other friends in town for the July Fourth weekend, Fleming said. One of the friends , Joyce Catherine Badon, was found dead on Monday.
“We’re not going to stop until we get him. We’re getting closer I think, we’ve just got to keep on trucking,” said Fleming, who works for a land-surveying company in the Dallas suburb of Rockwall.
What had started out as a desperate rescue operation had by now morphed into a plodding, methodical one of recovery. The last person to be rescued alive was found Friday, Kerrville Police Department Community Services Officer Jonathan Lamb said Tuesday.
Paul Middendorf, a volunteer search-and-rescue worker from Houston, slowly scoured a section of the riverbank he had picked over the other day, hoping to see or smell something he had missed.
“This is one of the worst I’ve been on,” said Middendorf, who had been driven to the area to help a few days ago. “The devastation is just pretty vast.”
Five children and one counselor are missing from a girl’s summer camp on the banks of the river, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said. “This is a tragic time for us,” Leitha said.
The Texas Game Wardens of the state’s Parks and Wildlife Department have searched 26 miles of river since the start of the crisis and have conducted 444 rescues, said Lt. Col. Ben Baker. The agency has deployed helicopters, drone teams, K-9 units, boats and four-wheel drive vehicles to carry out search-and-rescue missions, he said.
“Those specialized teams have to go in there layer by layer,” Baker said. “It’s extremely treacherous, time-consuming. It’s dirty work. The water is still there.”
On Tuesday, Burnie Miller, a 59-year-old retired firefighter, gestured to a mass of mangled trees and branches where an odor was coming from. “We’re trying to cut the piles down to where they can get to them with the equipment.”
Below the high-water line, articles lay scattered about by the flood, including mattresses, campers’ trunks, a vehicle fender and a child’s car seat. An inflatable boat hung from a tree branch.
With the likelihood of finding any survivors fading, recovery teams were given some relief from the heavy rains that have battered the region in recent days.
Tricia Boswell, a volunteer with nonprofit Texas EquuSearch, was out searching for the fourth day on Tuesday. She said the efforts had been difficult: “We’re tired, we’re sunburned, we’re bug-eaten.” But she said the hardship was nothing in comparison to that experienced by the victims’ families, “and that’s what motivates us,” she said.
Scott Carlson, a former urban search-and-rescue worker who lives near Kerrville, led a team manning chain saws to get at heaps of debris so they could see what was underneath.
Carlson had positioned the team in an area of the river where the current could have pushed bodies below the surface, leaving them trapped by debris or tree roots.
“We’re looking down, and under, so if someone’s there, we can get them out,” he said. “I don’t want a family to not be able to put that period at their end of the sentence.”
Write to Harriet Torry at harriet.torry@wsj.com , Dan Frosch at dan.frosch@wsj.com and Joseph De Avila at joseph.deavila@wsj.com
