JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
And I'm Juana Summers in central Texas, where today saw more efforts to recover victims of last week's flooding. Scores of people are known to have died. Officials say they don't know how many are still missing. Many hundreds of emergency workers and volunteers are combing through mud, downed trees and debris along more than 60 miles of the Guadalupe River. NPR's Greg Allen reports it is a painstaking process that may take weeks.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Loyd Thornton has been involved in many other search and recovery efforts in the past, but few as challenging as this one.
LOYD THORNTON: There is debris fields up to 35 feet in the air trapped on huge cypress trees. And there are places to where campgrounds were totally wiped out, washed downstream and totally destroyed.
ALLEN: Thornton, a volunteer with Texas EquuSearch, has had a crew out searching debris piles along the river using an airboat.
THORNTON: We're climbing over small islands and debris fields, so we're able to go where a regular boat really has a hard time going.
ALLEN: Thornton has three other EquuSearch volunteers along in his boat. He says that gives him four sets of eyes scan the river and the piles of debris.
THORNTON: The boat and search - we're doing a lot of visual searching now, low speed, searching high up in the trees. Remember the water we saw in places was at least 35 feet high.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: All right, we ready? Let's do it.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yup.
(SOUNDBITE OF ENGINE STARTING)
ALLEN: Not far away, in the town of Hunt, Brad Phillip (ph) today was beginning the hard work of gutting his house. It's high up on the banks of the river but was still flooded out. He says the first thing he did after the flood was search the riverbanks for survivors or victims. One was recovered on an island just a few hundred yards from his house.
BRAD PHILLIP: Someone got over there and flagged me down. I flagged a sheriff down. And within minutes, there was a Black Hawk and drones and people over there, and they were able to get a body out.
ALLEN: Today more victims were recovered near the town of Ingram. One of the crews involved in the recovery effort there is from Mexico. It's a nonprofit group that works with several Texas fire departments, Fundacion 911. Jorge Fuentes is with the group.
JORGE FUENTES: Today they went to the river to do some groundwork on the river, and they did find a body just, like, 30 minutes ago.
ALLEN: Fuentes says it was one of two victims recovered from the side, an extremely large debris field.
FUENTES: This area seems to be, like, on a bend. So lots of debris, lots of trash and some of the mobile homes that got that swept down the river got stuck in this area.
ALLEN: Fuentes' group is working with local fire departments. His members' expertise, especially in water searches, is proving invaluable to the search effort. Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice says the operation is still in what he calls the primary phase of the search mission. There are more than 60 miles of river to search, he says, and even with large crews, checking a single mile can take several hours.
DALTON RICE: So what that means is they're running into a lot of technical challenges with terrain, with water, even potentially, you know, with weather, you know, in the rising fields.
ALLEN: Local officials in Kerrville have tried to discourage volunteers from self-deploying, as they've called it. That's caused some tension among locals who say it's kept out help that's badly needed. Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring says volunteers are welcome but asks them to register and coordinate with the local Salvation Army.
JOE HERRING: We need focused and coordinated volunteers, not random people just showing up and doing what they do. We need to work together.
ALLEN: Just three days after the storm, it's clear that it's going to take some time to be sure that all the victims have been recovered. Greg Allen, NPR News, Kerrville, Texas. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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