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Camp Mystic Passed State Emergency Plan Check 2 Days Before Floods; At Least 111 Dead, 179 Plus Missing in Catastrophic Texas Flooding; Push to Install Sirens in Kerr County, Texas After Deadly Floods; Wall Street Calling Trump's Bluff on Tariff Threats. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 09, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

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CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS WRITER: --ourses on everything from how AI systems work, how they can be used to create lessons, lesson plans, as well as ethics and safety instruction. And the tech companies really say they want to help teachers and partner with teachers to figure out the best way to do this. Open AI chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane spoke at this event yesterday, announcing it in New York City.

He said, How can we make sure that in the K through 12 context, that we're equipping those kids, those students with the skills that they're going to need to be able to succeed in what we think of as the intelligence age? You can't do that unless it's actually given to the teachers to work.

But of course, these tech companies are also going to benefit because this potentially means that their technology is going to be in the hands of teachers and students across the country.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, there is that aspect of you can't ignore it. I mean, you just can't say, oh, don't use it. It's never here. Like, look away, look away because that helps nobody. All right, Clare Duffy, thank you so much.

Brand new hour scene in NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking this morning, the stunning information from officials about the number of people they say are now missing in the Texas floods, that number skyrocketing to more than 170 people. The death toll is also climbing. We'll have new details coming up.

Also breaking overnight, deadly and record breaking flash floods in New Mexico. The water's so powerful that it swept an entire house away. You can see those pictures there.

And Gronk, Elon Musk's A.I. chatbot suddenly sharing anti-Semitic comments weeks after Musk said he would rebuild the chatbot because he thought it was too politically correct.

Kate is out today. I'm Sara Sidner with John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL. All right, breaking for you this morning, the search and rescue

efforts in Central Texas. Now, a much bigger mission than we knew just 24 hours ago.

Officials there have announced the number of missing from the catastrophic floods has skyrocketed to more than 170 people now. The number of dead has also climbed to at least 111.

Also, we have new details now about Camp Mystic, the all girls Christian camp, where at least 27 campers and counselors are among the dead.

CNN obtaining records showing a state inspector certified that the camp did have an emergency plan in place just a couple of days before the floods. And this morning, the scrutiny is growing. Were officials prepared enough? And why were evacuations not ordered ahead of this massive flood?

CNN has learned that Texas officials twice rejected funding applications from Kerr County, the hardest hit for a flood warning system dating back nearly a decade. And so Kerr County never got the sirens that could have alerted residents when the floods came overnight.

Our team is in the flood zone. CNN's Pamela Brown is in Kerrville for us, and Isabel Rosales is in Center Point, two of the devastated Texas communities. Let's start with you, Pam.

You have some new reporting about the preparedness at Camp Mystic. What can you tell us this morning, you know, as all of these families are mourning what happened there?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely. The mourning continues, the emotion still very raw here on the ground. I can tell you, Sara, that according to records seen and obtained, a state inspector visited Camp Mystic two days before the deadly flooding and found that it was in compliance for Texas regulations on youth camps, that there was an emergency place -- emergency plan in place at Camp Mystic in the event of a disaster or a serious accident or a fatality.

Now, we should note that Texas regulations for youth camps don't say anything about flood zones. And we don't know if this emergency plan took that into account or whether it also took communication breakdowns into account, because we are learning more about some of the communication gaps there at Camp Mystic. I spoke to a counselor who said, for the most part, counselors didn't have a walkie talkies, only leadership at the camp. And the owners did have that.

And we know that the counselors didn't have cell phones with them and that the loudspeaker at the camp wasn't functioning because of a power outage. I also told by the counselor I spoke to that she personally did not receive sort of emergency evacuation training.

And we're hearing more and more stories about the heroism of these counselors who really jumped into action during that deadly flooding. There were two counselors who are speaking out about what they did for their campers, saying that they wrote the campers names on their skin when they learned what was happening and quickly moved them to higher ground. So many stories like that where these counselors saved so many lives. It's really inspiring.

But at the same time, Sara, we know that not everyone made it out alive there at Camp Mystic. We're learning more about one of the campers who didn't.

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Greta Toranzo was a camper who had been at Camp Mystic for three years. Her mother released a statement saying Greta was kind, creative and full of love and also brave, athletic and determined. We miss her bright spirit, her sweet smile and her endlessly loving heart -- Sara

SIDNER: What a sweet, sweet picture of her. And I know you have been going through it as a former camper there at Camp Mystic. You've been bringing us such gripping, gripping stories about how people are handling this. Thank you so much, Pamela.

All right. Now over to you, Isabel. You know, we've seen this number now skyrocket. The number of people officials say is missing. And I'm curious what that means to those who have been on the ground there for days trying to find either bodies or those who may possibly still be alive.

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sara, good morning. That was a big moment yesterday. I was with volunteers when we saw -- when I was listening in on the press conference from the governor, Greg Abbott.

And I heard that figure and I related it back to them because they weren't listening in and they were all quiet. Stunned. It was clearly a very shocking moment.

But then they told me, yes, OK, this is a focus. We've got a number now. We know now how many people we need to find.

So clearly this is something that has given them even more drive than they've had this entire time because it is a goal now, a goal.

I want to introduce you to Michael Tober, who is the founder of Mission Mules. This is a Christian nonprofit. And if that name is familiar, it is because the same organization was there on the ground in Nashville, North Carolina, helping out with medical supplies, with food, everything that was needed in the search happening in the mountains there.

Can you talk me through, Michael, what it is that you guys are doing this morning?

MICHAEL TOBER, FOUNDER, MISSION MULES: OK, this morning, we're basically -- we're waiting. We got a briefing coming up, so we want to get saddled up and be ready. And then these guys will get their assignments and then they will have us start packing their saws or their fuel, everything they need to do recovery work. So that's what we're doing right now. My guys are starting to saddle. I'll go and saddle up.

ROSALES: And I'm wondering, as you're saddling up your meal right here, you have six of them. Can you walk me through -- you guys got into town yesterday. Can you walk me through what struck you about the situation here in central Texas in comparison to what happened in Nashville?

TOBER: I'll have to say here, if you look across this river, you see how high the high water mark is. Some of that says 30 and 35 foot off the ground. And that was the first thing that I noticed was how much volume had come through here.

ROSALES: And this is different than the situation in in North Carolina, because you were trying to access communities that were essentially cut off.

TOBER: Correct.

ROSALES: The mountain, the roads there were blocked to the mountains. What are the challenges that you're experiencing out here? How is this different? And how are these mules helping out?

TOBER: So, yes, like you said, in North Carolina, we were getting people that were actually cut off. Here you could drive most of where you got to go, but once you get to that point where the water was running the hardest, you hit like down up the street here. There's some three, four foot slides. You got to come off the rocks.

And not really any harder. It's just a different type of work. It's just all rock this time. But that's pretty much what they use us for. The least amount we can make these guys travel with loads because we continually do this, the better.

So if we can drive down there and we can take them in empty and then load up where the truck stop and then go in, that's what we do here.

ROSALES: Thank you so much. I know that you're packing supplies and going behind teams of cadaver dogs. So as they go in and make sure that there's no one left behind, they're going in there with all of those supplies.

We thank you for your time -- guys.

SIDNER: Mules, horses, cadaver dogs and dozens and dozens of rescuers going out every single day. It is heartening to see. Isabel Rosales, thank you to you and to our Pam Brown as well, who was in the flood zone -- John.

BERMAN: All right, Texas officials, senior Texas officials have now acknowledged that if Kerr County had flood warning sirens, that lives might have been saved.

With us is Nicole Wilson from San Antonio. She started an online petition calling for Kerr County to install these sirens. Nice to see you this morning, Nicole. Talk to me about but why? What what what was the instigation to get you started on this?

NICOLE WILSON, STARTED ONLINE PETITION TO INSTALL FLOOD WARNING SIRENS IN KERR COUNTY: Ultimately, I grew up in Kentucky where tornadoes are extremely prevalent there. We lived and died by the tornado sirens, and this was in the 80s and 90s when there were no text alerts, but those sirens were across the county and you would hear them at 3 a.m. in the morning and they would wake you up.

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And we had two different sounds for watches and warnings. And so you knew where to go based on which siren was going off. And we trained from the time we were children until we were adults. And on on the protocols for tornadoes, where if you're driving a car, where to go.

So when I found out that there were not sirens in this area and in a lot of areas in the state of Texas, we actually I don't think we have them in San Antonio and we had a tornado a few years ago. And that blew my mind because tornadoes are -- well, sirens are simply an easy warning system that everybody will hear it within range.

And you do have to put them within range. There are multiple sirens that you have to kind of plan that out from a proximity perspective, but you cannot rely on texts.

So for example, my daughters were just at a faith-based camp. These children are not allowed to bring any technology whatsoever, it'll get confiscated because they're there to be present. They're there to grow in their faith. And the counselors are also not allowed to have cell phones in the cabins. And so you cannot rely on the text alerts.

Additionally, in this area, in San Antonio at least, we have been -- we started getting text alerts for amber alerts, silver alerts, blue alerts at three in the morning. And so many people have kind of grown numb to these alerts that are going off and they'll hear the alert, they'll roll over, they'll go back to bed.

Cell phone service is incredibly spotty. It's so bad that where we live in the San Antonio area next to a major resort, there are places in my house I can't go and have cell phone service. I have two internet providers to compensate for that. And still don't always have service.

And so I assume it's very similar in that rural area that there is not always the right cell service. But the bottom line is this happened in the middle of the night, people were asleep. People absolutely did not hear the phone go off. Some people sleep with their phones off.

And so you cannot rely on one -- and I think I just heard this in another speaker but layered security for TSA enabled them, Secretary Noem, to work with TSA for people not to have to take their shoes off going through the x-ray systems, right?

And it was a layered security effect, right? And so the same thing goes for risk mitigation. You have to have layers and you cannot rely on one single mitigation. BERMAN: No, and you can't silence a siren the way you can silence a cell phone before you go to sleep.

Nicole Wilson, I do think that people are hearing what you are saying. I do think officials are taking notice and I would be shocked if there are changes made around Kerr County in the coming year. Thank you for being with us this morning -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right, this behind me, that isn't Texas, that's New Mexico. Breaking news this morning, at least three people are dead, including two children after flash floods tore through Southern New Mexico. Monsoon rains fell in regions prone to flooding due to last year's wildfires.

You remember, Ruidoso, that's the same place that had drastic fires. Dramatic video showing an entire home being swept up in these floodwaters, overwhelming the area.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh no. Oh no. Oh my gosh. Oh my God. Oh my God.

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SIDNER: You can hear just the fear there, people saying, oh my God, as they're watching an entire home being swept by them. The river reached 20 feet, its highest ever, and emergency crews conducted over 80 water rescues.

CNN's Derek Van Dam is here with the very latest. What are things looking like right now? I mean, these floodwaters, I was surprised, I almost took my breath away when I said, oh, Ruidoso, I remember that during the fires, we talked a lot about that. And of course that has an impact as well when it comes to these floods and the severity of them.

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Oh, burn scars are a major factor, along with the terrain in this mountain town of New Mexico. Just tragic to watch this video unfold considering everything that we've seen over the past week. And what shocked me about this video is how quickly this torrent of mud, debris, rocks, boulders, trees, and ultimately this house moved swiftly down the river.

That, folks, is flash flooding, but it's different than the threats that are posed along the East Coast today, and even different to what happened in Texas. Let me explain. It's all about this burn scar, right?

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So we had the recent wildfires across Lincoln County last year, and that burned the terrain, and then we get the heavy rainfall on top of it.

What it does is it creates a surface right on the top of the ground that is not able to absorb the heavy rain that falls in a short period of time. It basically just becomes impermeable, and then that runoff occurs very quickly because of the topography, the mountainous aspects of the terrain funneling that water into the valleys below. And you can see that spike, which they're calling record-breaking.

It still needs to be confirmed by the National Weather Service, but nearly 20 feet in a matter of minutes. Just incredible. In terms of the rainfall, only about three and a half inches of rain fell in this particular region, the Rio Ruidoso River, but that's enough to overwhelm these dry grounds and the burn scars that I just showed you a moment ago.

So the difference here along the eastern seaboard with our flood threat that is ongoing for millions, including the nation's capital later today, is that the potential here exists for flash flooding because this type of rain that will move in could overwhelm the drainage systems in this densely populated kind of concrete jungle we call the Mid-Atlantic, right? Millions of people live here, right? So we've got all kinds of pavement.

This impermeable surface, different to what we experience out west in the mountainous terrain, could potentially produce additional flash flooding for this region.

Then when we go back to Texas, we don't have any flood watches in store for today. However, there are showers and thunderstorms in this forecast bubbling up across the Hill Country.

Where they set up, we could pick up another additional one to two inches. So we're going to keep our responders and all the personnel on the ground in our hearts today -- Sara.

SIDNER: Yes, there's been a lot of fear of more rain when they're dealing with these hot, humid, difficult conditions already. But a little bit more rain, I mean, every little bit does have an effect. Thank you so much, Derek Van Dam, for explaining what happened due to the fires as well and how that affects everyone when it comes to these floodwaters.

All right, ahead. President Trump is threatening to revive his global trade war but Wall Street barely flinching. How U.S. markets are leaning into what some are calling "TACO Trade".

And a new lawsuit targets Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s vaccine policy. Several major medical organizations now suing the HHS secretary over what they call, quote, a public health emergency.

Plus, Elon Musk's AI chatbot facing new scrutiny for anti-Semitic posts, how the company is now responding.

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BERMAN: All right, new this morning, President Trump threatening to revive the global trade war, maybe. He extended his self-imposed tariff deadline to August 1st to allow for negotiations. That was an extension on an extension.

He also says that new tariffs on copper endpoints are coming but did not say exactly when. Investors on Wall Street seem relatively unfazed about this this morning. You can see stock futures up a little bit. They're up a little bit, more than flat up -- a smidge there in the green there.

Let's get right to CNN's Matt Egan to figure out what's going on here. What do you see?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, John, it is remarkable how chill investors have been about all of the latest tariff turmoil, right? Whirlwind of activity in the last 48 hours or so. The president's sending letters to 14 different nations threatening tariffs starting August 1.

You mentioned the 50 percent tariff on copper, a threat that sent copper futures skyrocketing. Floating this 200 percent tariff on imported pharmaceuticals, 10 percent tariff on BRICS, the economic club that includes Brazil, Russia, India, and China. And yet, as you noted, markets basically unfazed, right?

The S&P is down less than 1 percent so far this week. This shows where markets have been so far this year. And you can see there's been this epic comeback from April and you basically need a microscope to see the tiny pullback so far this week.

And so this does look like another example of what's known on Wall Street as the "TACO Trade," right? Short for Trump always chickens out. Investors that I'm talking to, they're saying markets are not selling off because almost no one believes that he's going to actually follow through on these tariff threats, right?

Investors are betting that he's going to end up walking these threats back, delaying them, watering them down to prevent damage. And that is exactly what happened back in early April.

Remember, he had those sky-high Liberation Day tariffs. Investors panicked, right? Bonds and stocks really sold off and then Trump blinked. But of course, there's a little bit of a problem with this logic, right?

Because if everyone just assumes that Trump is going to blink, then there's no selling. And if there's no selling, then that really removes the pressure on the White House to walk back their policies. A veteran investor, Bob Elliott, he said, the trouble is that without the pain of falling markets, he won't chicken out.

And John, this is all further complicated by the fact that the president himself knows about the "TACO Trade", right? He was asked about it late in May. He did not like the question.

BERMAN: No, no, no.

EGAN: And he is doing his best to try to say, look, I do mean business on tariffs. Yesterday, he put out a True Social post insisting that August 1 really is the new deadline and that he's not going to back down, that there's no exceptions or delays.

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But I got to tell you, investors I talked to, they are very, very skeptical. And so we just got to stay tuned to see how this is going to play out and who's ultimately going to be right.

BERMAN: Yes, this time I mean it, he seems to be saying now. We'll see. Matt Egan, thank you very much.

All right, happening now at least 170 people still missing from the floods in Texas. We've got new reporting on where crews are looking this morning and what they're finding.

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SIDNER: All right, this morning, the enormous search and recovery effort has renewed its fervor after authorities revealed the number of missing increased sevenfold to more than 170 people. It comes as we're also learning new details about the days leading up to the disaster.

Two days before the flooding, a state inspector visited Camp Mystic, the hard-hit girls camp, and it certified that an emergency plan was in place.

Joining us now, CNN's Leigh Waldman in Kerrville, Texas. Leigh, you've been there for several days, just seeing the enormity of this disaster. What are you learning and hearing from folks on the ground there this morning?

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