As authorities launch one of the largest search-and-rescue efforts in recent Texas history, they have come under intensifying scrutiny over preparations and why residents and youth summer camps that are dotted along the river were not alerted sooner or told to evacuate.

Rescuers were searching for more than two dozen girls missing from a summer camp in Texas after a flash flood killed at least 50 people, 15 of them children. The Guadalupe River that runs through the Hill Country in central south Texas rose by 26ft (8 metres) in 45 minutes in the early hours of Friday,

A frantic search continued on Saturday for about two dozen people still missing from a century-old Christian girls' camp in central Texas after flash floods in the area killed at least 24 at the start of the U.