Trump visits Texas flood zone, defends government's disaster response

The Star

President Donald Trump defended the state and federal response to Texas' deadly flash floods during a visit to the Hill Country region on Friday (July 11), where at least 120 people, including dozens of children, lost their lives.   Read more at https://tinyurl.com/y2ub4sbs   WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

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00:00President Donald Trump visited Kerrville, Texas, on Friday to assess the damage from catastrophic

00:10flash floods that killed over 120 people and left scores missing.

00:15While touring flood-hit areas near the Guadalupe River, Trump defended the state and federal

00:20response, despite growing criticism that authorities failed to warn residents quickly enough about

00:26the deadly wall of water heading their way.

00:29During a roundtable briefing with first responders, the president expressed shock at the scale

00:34of destruction.

00:35I've never seen anything like it.

00:37I've seen a lot of bad ones.

00:38I've gone to a lot of hurricanes, a lot of tornadoes.

00:41I've never seen anything like this.

00:43This is a bad one.

00:45We just visited with incredible families that, I mean, look, they've been devastated.

00:52They lost their child or two children.

00:55It's just hard to believe what, I've never seen anything like it, a little narrow river

01:02becomes a monster, and that's what happened.

01:05The President and First Lady Melania Trump were in the Hill Country to meet first responders,

01:11victims' families and local officials a week after a rain-swollen river swept away house,

01:17camp cabins, cars and people.

01:19So we've deployed over 400 first responders and assisted or enabled more than 1,500 rescues.

01:27Amazing, 1,500.

01:29Customers and Border Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard have deployed numerous search

01:33and rescue crews, and they're all over the territory.

01:38Search efforts continued Friday across central Texas, as crews combed through muddy debris

01:43for dozens still missing.

01:45The flood was triggered by torrential rains that sent a surge of water down the Guadalupe

01:50River early on July 4th, making it the deadliest disaster of Trump's presidency so far.

01:56Among the victims were 67 adults and at least 36 children, many of them campers at Camp Mystic,

02:03a historic all-girls Christian retreat.

02:06The Texas Legislature will hold a special session later this month to investigate the disaster

02:11and allocate emergency relief funds.

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