Texas floods raise doubts over US weather warnings, response levels

Father's sacrifice

Several of those who died in the floods have already been praised by loved ones for their heroism.

Julian Ryan, 27, died trying to save his mother, his fiancee Christina Wilson, and the couple's two young children, according to local media reports.

Wilson told a Houston television station the water came to the front step of their trailer home near the river in Ingram before dawn on Friday and rose fast. Their mattress began to float. The door was stuck shut and Ryan broke a window with his arm for the family to escape. However, he suffered serious cuts from the broken glasses and soon bled to death.

"He had lost so much blood and knew he wasn't going to make it," Wilson said. "He said, 'I love you. I'm so sorry.' In minutes, he was gone. He died trying to save us."

Camp Mystic director Dick Eastland, 70, died while trying to rescue campers during the catastrophic flooding, according to a tribute shared by his grandson on Instagram on Saturday.

"If he wasn't going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way — saving the girls that he so loved and cared for," George Eastland wrote. "That's the kind of man my grandfather was. He was a husband, father, grandfather, and a mentor to thousands of young women."

A Camp Mystic employee, Glenn Juenke, told CNN Eastland died "remaining a true hero until the very end".

Almost a century old and founded in 1926, Camp Mystic had been run by Dick and Tweety Eastland since 1974 and can host up to 700 children.

In Kerrville, Tivy High School boys soccer coach Reece Zunker and his wife Paula died in the flood, according to a Facebook post. Their two young children were missing.

The Guadalupe River Heart O' the Hills Camp announced on its website that its director and co-owner Jane Ragsdale was killed in the flood. Luckily no children were at the camp at the time.

Two sisters from Dallas, Blair and Brooke Harber, 11 and 13 respectively, were staying with their grandparents in a cabin along the Guadalupe River, which was washed away by the flood. The sisters were confirmed dead and their grandparents were missing, according to The New York Times.