At least 95 people have died after devastating floods hit central Texas.
Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp located along the Guadalupe River, has confirmed that 27 campers and counselors died in the weekend floods. Ten campers and one counselor are still missing.
According to officials, rescue teams are still searching for dozens of people missing after the terrible floods.
The mayor of Kerrville said he received no warning of the torrential rain.
A level 3 out of 4 flash flood risk is in effect for parts of central Texas, including Kerr County and parts of the Guadalupe and Llano River basins. A warming world, fueled by pollution from fossil fuels, is making these extreme rainfall events more frequent.
"There's always hope," Jake Stovall, founder and director of Gulf Search and Rescue, told CNN as he prepared to return to the water search in Kerrville, Texas.
Stovall and his all-volunteer crew of nine are prepared to stay in Texas for 10 to 15 days, determined to stay on the Guadalupe River "until we find the last children and adults."
“I've done this long enough (in the past), I've found people four days later and 6 meters up in a tree, clinging to the tree, dehydrated… We're here trying to find them all alive, and if we find them dead, then, with respect and dignity, we recover them.”
Stovall said the hardest part of the search is feeling the weight of so many families anxious to learn about their loved ones. Some parents, he said, have reached out to him with photos of their children and directly asked for help.
"We will never assume they are dead," he said. "We work as if every one of them is alive out there waiting for us to rescue them."
Stovall added that the river and its banks look like "a bomb went off," describing the scenes as "complete devastation" in some areas.
Gulf SAR, which relies on donations, uses volunteer K9 responders and certified flood and flash flood technicians, among other specialists, for search and recovery efforts across the country./TCH