In the swirl of anguish and uncertainty that followed the devastating floods in Central Texas, one of the most confounding elements of the aftermath was why there were so many people still missing weeks after the disaster. Where were they? Who were they? What happened to them?
Last week, state and local officials said there were 97 people missing in Kerr County, which sustained the worst of the July 4 floods in the Hill Country. But then, on Saturday, they released a revised figure: three. The death toll there remained unchanged; the county had 107 of the 135 deaths recorded statewide.
The drop was substantial, yet it was not entirely unexpected, according to officials and those familiar with the rhythms of deadly natural disasters.
The fluctuation was a reflection of the chaos unleashed by a disaster of this magnitude and of the methodical work — sometimes painstaking to the point of frustration — required to bring clarity to the confusion. Whether in flash floods, wildfires or tornadoes, making sense of the list of the missing is a crucial part of the official response.
“This process takes time,” Officer Jonathan Lamb of the police department in Kerrville, the county seat of Kerr County, said in a statement on Sunday, shedding some light on such an abrupt and drastic change. “It is essential to ensure that every lead is thoroughly followed and each person is properly accounted for.”
Last week, when 97 were thought to be missing in Kerr County, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas cautioned residents not to assume that being counted as missing necessarily meant that the person had died in the flood.
“There’s no certainty that all 97 of those people were swept away by the storm,” the governor said on Monday.
A wall of water descended on communities along the Guadalupe River before sunrise on July 4, and, in the resulting panic and turmoil, local officials urged people to report those believed to be missing to a telephone hotline and an email address. That figure quickly soared into the hundreds.
Many had indeed been carried away by the surge of water, and the death toll climbed considerably in the following days. The missing also included people whose status was wrongly characterized in the turbulent aftermath. The situation was further complicated by the number of people who were visiting the area, which is popular with tourists, for the holiday weekend; their relatives and friends were reaching out to officials from afar.
Correcting the record took a deliberate effort. In the statement on Sunday, state and local officials described an “exhaustive” undertaking to verify the status of each individual who had been reported missing.
“We understand how critical it is to report this information accurately,” Officer Lamb said, “not only for the families affected but for the integrity of our emergency response as a whole.”
Such a precipitous drop in the number of missing people is not all that unusual after a major disaster.
In the 2018 wildfire that ravaged Paradise, Calif., the number of people who were unaccounted for had climbed to around 1,300, though the final death toll was 85. After the 2023 fire in Maui, Hawaii, some 1,100 people were reported missing, but roughly six months later there were just two, with 102 confirmed deaths.
The number of missing in the Maui fire at one point fell to 388, and the authorities released a list of names. Some people were surprised to find themselves on it. They had lost nearly everything in the fire, some said — but not their lives.
“People always want to draw a correlation between the number of people that haven’t been accounted for and the number of deaths,” Kory L. Honea, the sheriff of Butte County, Calif., said in 2023, reflecting on his experience responding to the Paradise fire. But he said that it was not fair to reach that conclusion too early.
On Sunday, officials in Kerr County acknowledged the relief from the steep decline, a rare sensation these days after an unrelenting torrent of heartache and loss.
But Officer Lamb said the work was not complete: The loved ones of three people were still waiting.
Rick Rojas is the Atlanta bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the South.
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