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At Least 82 People Killed in Catastrophic Texas Floods; Federal Resources in Texas After Trump Signs Disaster Declaration; Today, Trump to Meet With Netanyahu as Ceasefire Hopes Rekindled. Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired July 07, 2025 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking news, catastrophic flooding. At least 82 people are killed as waters raged in Texas, including dozens at a summer camp. Rescuers are still desperately searching for survivors.

Plus, crucial meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with President Trump in just a few hours over at the White House. This comes as we're learning ceasefire talks have now restarted in Doha, Qatar.

Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer. Pamela Brown is in Kerrville, Texas, and you're in The Situation Room.

And we begin with the breaking news. Right now, hundreds of first responders along with hundreds of volunteers are desperately searching for survivors in the Texas Hill Country, in the central and southern part of the state. Four months, get this, four months worth of rain fell in mere hours, unleashing catastrophic flooding. At least 82 people are not confirmed dead, 82 people confirmed dead, including 28 children.

Across the area, residents described the terror of waking up hours before dawn as a wall of water swallowed their homes and their neighborhoods.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My brother here, he had to swim out of his cabin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The flood started getting bigger and it was going up to, we had bunk beds in our cabins and it was going up to the top bunk. And we had one choice and we had to swim out of our cabins.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Opened the front door and it sweeps both my dogs different directions. And I'm panicking, thinking now what the hell am I going to do?

I said a prayer when I was standing on my porch. Both my parents are deceased. And I said, mom, dad, God help.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: And today the area is bracing for rain and possibly more flooding.

My colleague and co-anchor, Pamela Brown, is in Kerrville, Texas, for us. Pamela, the sheer scale of this destruction looks almost mindboggling.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: It really is, Wolf. There is just heartbreak and devastation all around here in Hill Country, not just at Camp Mystic but all around the community. Everyone we've been speaking to, Wolf, has a story to tell. Either they just can't believe they survived the flooding or they know someone, a close family member or a close friend or many who they lost sadly in that flash flooding.

And the community is still just coming to grips. In fact, I'm here at this youth center in Hill Country about to cover the press conference with Texas officials. We're hoping to get some more answers. And one of the big outstanding questions, of course, remains, if this is such a flash flood prone area, one of the most prone in the country, how are so many caught off guard?

But I will tell you, Wolf, many of the people we've been speaking to here on the ground, they just say, look, as one person just told me, this was an act of God. No one could have expected the waters to rise so quickly overnight in the way that they did, despite the warnings we've been talking about.

So, there are still a lot of outstanding questions. Just last night, Wolf, I went to the local store, the Hunt Store, where the community used to gather for food and drink and cheer. It is now a community gathering in a different way. It has been designated by the flooding. And I spoke to the co-owner about what she has gone through and what her store has gone through in the community at large. Here's what she said.

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BROWN: Tell me about who you lost in this.

HALEY LEHRMANN, CO-OWNER, HUNT STORE: Oh, several people that we know personally and just connections through every person that was lost. There is some connection through Hunt. And in the camps and just, you know, it's devastating and we're just with every one of them with our heart and soul, then praying. And we do plan on doing a memorial, of course, that we are just so concerned with the families and, and people.

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BROWN: Yes.

LEHRMANN: And we just want them to know that we're all here for them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So, that was Haley Lehrmann. She was just one of the many people in the community I've talked to who are absolutely heartbroken.

I want to bring in my colleague, Isabel Rosales. I know you've been on the ground for several days, Isabel, also talking to those impacted. What more are you learning about those search efforts underway right now?

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Pam, I wanted to give you a sense here of how big of a task this search and rescue effort is because it's not just the Guadalupe River, but it's also all of the tributaries that spread out like a spider web, where volunteers and first responders are looking through, including this one right behind me in Center Point. You can kind of see what looks to be a road buried underneath there. That is a low water crossing. And this goes to show just how high the water levels are. Normally, that'd be dry. You could walk or drive through there, but instead it's this incredible current.

And if we go to the left, you can see like I don't know if that's plastic or metal, this barrel-like rolling through there. A first responder just told me that the undertow here makes it too difficult to put out a boat right now. So, that's one way that their search and rescue efforts are being hampered.

What I am seeing right now by a local volunteer fire department here in Center Point is massive amounts of volunteers coming out, regular people here in Central Texas that are lending their help, their effort, their time to come out here today, bringing heavy machinery, like what we're seeing right here, removing all of this debris, heavy tree limbs that have just slowed down efforts so much from these volunteers who, prior to this, were using their bare hands, groups of like five men lifting these tree limbs to look underneath and make sure that they haven't missed anyone.

Also, with all of this muddy area, holes that have been dug into the ground where it could be very easy for a current that's this strong to bring a victim there, and they want to make sure that they're combing through every square inch of this, making sure that they're not missing anyone.

The U.S. Coast Guard has also been assisting with this search and rescue effort over, 230 rescues so far. They have aircraft with thermal cameras that are so incredibly -- especially in the dark, the nighttime hours to look for any sort of movement, to look for any heat signatures. They also have a swimmer, the U.S. Coast Guard, named Scott Ruskan, who has helped over 165 people so far rescuing them, and it is his first mission. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETTY OFFICER SCOTT RUSKAN, U.S. COAST GUARD RESCUE SWIMMER: I haven't had any cases before. I've been a rescue swimmer for about a year, fully trained for about six months. So, yes, this was my first experience. When I got on scene, there was, you know, 200 kids looking to someone for some sort of comfort and safety. They don't really know what my experience is or my rank or my age. They just know, hey, this guy's a professional and he is here to help us, and I kind of had to live up to that standard. But, yes, the real heroes I think were the kids on the ground, like those guys are heroic and, you know, they were dealing with some of the worst times of their lives and they were staying strong. And that helped inspire me to kind of get in there and, and help them out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROSALES: And you can see all of this debris just hooked onto the tree branches here. They're being very careful to see of any clothing, because once they do find a clothing, they want to note that and have cadaver dogs smell that to also help them look around this area. Pam?

BROWN: All right. Isabel Rosales, excellent reporting, keep us posted there.

I want to go now to the White House, to our reporter Alayna Treene. And, Alayna, President Trump has just signed a major disaster declaration for Texas. Tell us more about the federal resources being brought to where here in Texas.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. He signed that declaration, Pam, on a Sunday. And what that really did was unlock key federal resources for communities affected on the ground there in Texas that includes resources from FEMA. We were told that they have set up seven shelters to help house some of the displaced people. They've also been providing additional resources to help with the flooding that we're continuing to see with more expected rainfall today.

And then we also know that the U.S. Coast Guard, as Isabel was laying out, has also deployed several resources. That includes two helicopters and three fixed-wing aircraft, which have those thermal care cameras that Isabel was talking about, really able to try and detect some of the movement on the ground that might not be visible to the naked eye.

Now, we have heard as well that the president said he wants to and his hoping to go to Texas to visit some of those affected areas as early as Friday. He had said potentially that he actually wanted to go this weekend, this past weekend when it was all happening. However, he was worried that the security apparatus that really surrounds him could have gotten in the way with some of the rescue and recovery efforts that we're seeing take place on the ground there.

But also amid all of this, Pamela, we're also hearing, you know, some questions about whether the National Weather Service or other federal agencies that are designed to help track some of these storms were equipped enough, staffed enough, had enough of the resources that they needed to do their job in helping warn some of the people on the ground.

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There have been questions of whether recent budget and staffing cuts, we've seen that at the National Weather Service, for example, leaving some positions vacant, whether that had an impact on this.

It's very unclear if it had. We've heard from several experts saying that, you know, this was a very specific case. And we also heard the president address some of those questions yesterday. I want you to take a listen to what he said.

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REPORTER: In light of the floods, do you think that the federal government needs to hire back any of the meteorologists who were fired in the last month?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I wouldn't know that. I really wouldn't. I would think not. This was the thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it. Nobody saw it. Very talented people are there and they didn't see it. It's, I guess, they said once in a hundred years, they've never seen anything like this. So, I wouldn't -- I mean, people are trying to blame the school. They're trying to blame the camp. They're trying to blame -- it's just a horrible thing. But, no, I wouldn't say that, no.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: We've heard similar, Pamela, remarks from the Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, saying as well that she doesn't believe budget or staffing cuts had affected this, all to say the situation is obviously evolving and some of these questions are going to continue to be scrutinized moving forward.

BROWN: All right, Alayna Treene from the White House for us.

And, Wolf, those are certainly the questions that we continue to ask. I do think it's important too, though, in these early days to have the patience and humility that we may not have certainty for quite some time. Clearly, there was a confluence of factors at play here with the devastating floods. And, of course, you have to wonder whether the lack of cell coverage in the area, warning fatigue, whether there were gaps in the warning system, the role that that played. And also we have reporting that over the last nine years, Wolf, there had been discussions in the county about installing some sort of warning signal that would go off if there was flooding in that Guadalupe River.

Ultimately, the county never implemented it. Of course, that is looming over all of this as well. This press conference starts here in just about 50 minutes from now, and we'll be asking some of those questions. Wolf?

BLITZER: And we'll have live coverage indeed, and get an update from those authorities, local, state and federal officials who are on the ground watching all of this, we'll have live coverage of that coming up.

All right, Pamela, standby.

I want to go to the CNN Weather Center right now. Our Meteorologist Derek Van Dam is getting the latest update on the flood threats for Texas right now. I take it there's potentially, Derek, more bad news on the way.

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. Unfortunately, Wolf, you're correct. So, we just got this information in from the Weather Prediction Center. They have increased or are noticing signals that show an increase in this flashflood threat across parts of the Texas Hill Country, some of the hardest hit areas.

So, that's prompted them to issue a special order here with an increased risk for this region. You can see that dark shade of red, that is a level three of four, including much of the Texas Hill Country. Notice Kerrville, the Southern Guadalupe River is in this slight risk.

But, nonetheless, they're honing in on this region that the potential here for flash flooding exists, just reading some of the, the discussion on their website and it says. These are slow-moving storms that include intense rainfall rates of three inches an hour or more on top of an extremely vulnerable and very saturated environment. So, those are just really a recipe for disaster.

So, let's get to the details, show you what's happening. Here's the look at the latest flashflood warnings. This is for Llano County. So, we're talking about an area outside of the Guadalupe River, which is to the south. And this flashflood warning issued just a few minutes ago, really extending through 1045, some locations a little bit longer, and it's all because of these training storms moving over the same location. So, what that does is produces intense rainfall over the same areas, and that, of course, is falling on top of very dry soil, which some of the worst drought through this weekend. Of course, that's changed now. But that is allowing for this water to just pile up on top of the surface and could cause additional flashflood concerns.

Not everyone's going to get this four inches, five inches of additional rainfall today, but pinpointing those exact locations, the best we can do at this moment is just highlight much of the Hill Country region for the potential of flash flooding today. Wolf?

BLITZER: And, Derek, on top of all of this, I understand there's also flooded concerns for parts of North Carolina and Virginia right now, and this is related to the first named storm of this hurricane season to make landfall. What can you tell us?

VAN DAM: Yes, this is what it looks like this morning in Orange County, North Carolina. And this is from the remnants of what was Tropical Storm Chantal that moved on shore across the Carolinas this weekend, causing its own flood disaster across this region.

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Look at this building, water coming up to the door handle of that particular building. We have millions under flood watches right now, including Philadelphia, Baltimore, just outside of the nation's capital. This is what Chantal now looks like, a depression kind of rotating about. But with this tropical moisture in place, we could see additional flash flooding across the Delmarva Peninsula through the course of the day today. So, several areas to watch across the country. Wolf?

BLITZER: Yes, we're bracing for that here in Washington, D.C.

Derek Van Dam, thank you very much for that important update.

We're staying on top of all the deadly Texas flooding that's ongoing, but also happening today, there's other major news unfolding. I want to update you on that. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to meet with President Trump over at the White House later today. The president says he thinks there's a good chance for a ceasefire hostage deal this week.

Indirect talks between Israel and Hamas were expected to resume in Doha, Qatar, at any time. We're watching that as well.

But the war certainly still rages. Palestinian officials say nearly 60 people were killed in Israel's latest strikes on Gaza.

I want to go live right now to our Senior White House Reporter Kevin Liptak. Kevin, what is President Trump hoping to accomplish in today's important meeting with the Israeli prime minister?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. And this will be Netanyahu's third visit to the White House since President Trump took office. That's the most of any foreign leader. And like his previous two visits, the situation in Gaza very much at the center of their discussions, President Trump very eager to bring about a ceasefire for hostages deal in the enclave.

Certainly, there does appear as if there's new momentum after those U.S. strikes on Iran last month. Those mediators in Qatar having what are called proximity talks, essentially passing messages back and forth between a mediator.

President Trump is very eager to get this deal in place. He said yesterday that he thought one could be struck this week. Although we should note that there are differences between the two sides that they are now trying to resolve.

The truce under discussion would last 60 days. It would involve a phased release of the remaining hostages in Gaza, including the deceased having their bodies removed from the Gaza Strip.

President Trump, I think, very eager to get this deal in place because he thinks it would unlock his broader goals for the Middle East, including this major step of normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Saudi leaders have said that can't happen while the war in Gaza is raging. So, President Trump, very eager to get this ceasefire in place.

BLITZER: All right. Kevin Liptak at the White House, we'll stay in close touch with you as well.

And still ahead, off the rails. That's what President Trump is now saying about Elon Musk's new political party. What we're learning about Musk's plans for a third party here in the United States.

And we're also following the latest out of Texas as search and rescue crews are out all along the Guadalupe River in Central Texas. They're looking for survivors.

Stay with us. You're in The Situation Room.

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BROWN: Well, time is of the essence right now as rescuers are out in full force looking for those that are still missing at this hour.

And we want to bring in someone who is very familiar with these types of search and rescue efforts. He's a 37-year-old Army veteran, Lieutenant General Russel Honore. Lieutenant General, thank you for coming on.

We're waiting this press conference with officials right now to bring us up to speed on those search and rescue efforts. First off, what questions do you have for them?

LT. GEN. RUSSEL HONORE (RET.), AUTHOR, LEADERSHIP IN THE NEW NORMAL: Yes. I think the big question should focus around the alert system and the evacuation plan. This is a known flood area. This storm put water in the Guadalupe River and the tributaries that went over a hundred miles north of Kerrville where the majority of the damage happened at that camp where there was a large concentration, but there were other people along that river points north, which makes it a multi-county operation.

I was looking at the FEMA update a few minutes ago, and flooding has been a major issue throughout the region this year, and FEMA Region 6 out of Denton, Texas is handling this. But we need to go back and take a strong look at the alert system. And the plan to tell people to evacuate, don't use bureaucratic terms. Evacuate, you know, like when you have hurricane, we have mandatory evacuations. We need to change the language, I think, to simplify and we need to improve the communications in those isolated areas, particularly those recreational areas, because the same thing happened in 1987 in the same area that where this flood happened along Guadalupe where ten people died from a flashflood.

BROWN: Yes, that was a horrible event, for certain. And everyone I've been speaking to here, they talked about how unpredictable the river is. That event obviously left an indelible mark, and yet so many I've spoken to said this was an act of God, that you could never be prepared for the river rising so quickly overnight. I do hear a lot of that.

But I'm wondering from your perspective, as someone who oversaw Hurricane Katrina efforts, what do you think could be applied here in Texas from what you learned through your experience?

HONORE: Well, they're called river gauges. Put river gauges in. They're called sirens, put sirens in. They're called increased cell towers so people will have communications. It's called Harris Radios, put radios in along the river where people have access to it, particularly in those organized camping areas and inside the -- let alone the park.

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A technology can fix this. And this is not new technology, but old technology that need to be invested in. We don't want to have this trip again down this river.

But, no, I don't buy into the scenario that politicians are talking about it's acts of God. That's B.S. This could be prevented and they're going to have to deal with that.

BROWN: Well, we'll be talking to those officials here shortly at this press conference. I'm here at this youth center in Hill Country to ask those questions that are outstanding right now that people want to have the answers to.

President Trump, for his part, he says that he doesn't believe the cuts had anything to do with the loss of life, and it is still too early to definitively have an answer. And he's also talked about weaning the states off of FEMA, and yet at the same time he signed this disaster -- federal disaster declaration, providing FEMA resources here to the state. What does that tell you about the importance of FEMA at a time like this?

HONORE: Well, it scares me because that's the system we have. We need to improve FEMA, not destroy it. Right now, the president has 14 disaster declarations from governors throughout the country on his desk for approval, most of them having to do with floods and fires. And they have active fire going on in the country now.

FEMA is the organization that was established to assist states as needed. I don't see states being able to deal with all elements of the government after a disaster because that's what it would come to. They would have to call the Coast Guard independently. They would've to call the Army independently without FEMA. That that would make this a totally not operative to be able to have counties and states dealing with all elements of government. When you call FEMA, you call one number, you tell them what you need, and it shows up. It may not be there when you want it, but it's on the way because of time and distance.

I do not agree with this, the concept of get rid of FEMA. We will have a hell of a disaster period going into the future, particularly with the impacts of the amount of floods we are having and the amount of wildfires we are having because of global warming. Well, we need FEMA and we need them to do what they're doing and do it better, but not destroy FEMA. That's a bad idea.

BROWN: All right. Lieutenant General Russel Honore, always nice to have you on and to hear your perspective, thank you so much.

And more on this breaking news here in Hunt, Texas, after this break.

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