Texas flooding one of deadliest mass casualty events for US children in past 100 years

The catastrophic flooding that swept through central Texas on the Fourth of July has the grim distinction of being one of the deadliest events for US children in the past 100 years.

Of the 89 people confirmed dead so far, at least 27 are kids, many of them from Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp located just a few hundred feet from the banks of the Guadalupe River in Hunt in Kerr County.

As of Monday afternoon, officials said 10 of the little campers are still unaccounted for as rescue efforts continue around the clock.

The unimaginable tragedy puts the Texas flash floods among other mass-casualty events involving children since 1925.

New London School Explosion (1937)

A natural-gas leak at an elementary school in New London, Texas — then called London — led to an explosion that destroyed the London School on March 18, 1937, killing 295 people, most of them children.

That year, the London school board had opted to tap into Parade Gasoline Company’s residue gas line in an effort to save money. It was a gas-line connection that the United States Bureau of Mines later concluded was faulty.

The botched job resulted in in odorless, colorless natural gas flooding the school unnoticed until a shop teacher turned on an electric sander, with the switch creating a spark that ignited the gas, an investigation concluded.

Hartford Circus Fire (1944)

A Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus big-top tent water-proofed by a combination of paraffin wax and 6,000 gallons of gasoline sparked one of the worst fire disasters in US history, killing 167 people, including an estimated 100 children.

Around 7,000 people packed the big top for a 2:15 p.m. performance July 6, 1944, most of them women and children. The paraffin and gasoline combination was a common way of waterproofing fabrics at the time — but also made the 200-by-450-foot tent highly flammable.

The fire began on the southwest side of the tent’s sidewall as The Flying Wallendas were performing. The bandleader noticed the flames and instructed the band to start playing John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever” — a tune known to circus performers as a signal something was amiss.

Ringmaster Fred Bradna attempted to direct the audience to get up from their seats and leave in an orderly fashion, but the fire had shorted out the power, rendering his warning inaudible.

Bath School massacre (1927)

The Bath School massacre was a bombing attack perpetrated by a deranged school board treasurer against the Bath Consolidated School in Bath Township, Mich., on May 18, 1927, killing 38 children and six adults.

Andrew Kehoe, 55, who was incensed over losing an election for township clerk a year earlier and also facing foreclosure on his property, placed hundreds of pounds of explosives under the school with the intention of detonating them in an act of “murderous revenge.”

Before detonating the explosives, which were connected to an alarm clock timer in the school’s basement, Kehoe murdered his wife and burned his farm to the ground.

As rescuers frantically combed through the rubble, he drove a truck loaded with even more explosives and packed with metal debris to create shrapnel up to the schoolyard and detonated it, killing himself and four others.

Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (2012)

The deadliest elementary-school shooting in US history was carried out Dec. 14, 2012, in Newtown, Conn., by 20-year-old former student Adam Lanza, who murdered 26 people including 20 children ages 6 and 7 before shooting himself in the head.

Just before he left his home to commit the heinous act, Lanza shot and killed his mother. He then drove to the school in her car, dressed in black clothing and armed with a Bushmaster XM-15, an AR-style semi-automatic rifle, and unleashed his carnage.

The horrifying mass shooting led to fierce debate about gun control in the US, including around subjects such as universal background checks and limiting magazine capacities.

Oklahoma City bombing (1995)

The deadliest act of domestic terrorism in US history, committed by a pair of anti-government extremists, killed 168 people on April 19, 1995, 19 of them children.

Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nichols, detonated a rented Ryder truck full of explosives in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., reportedly outraged by how the US government handled recent incidents such as the Ruby Ridge standoff in 1992 and the Waco, Texas, siege in 1993.

The blast destroyed more than a third of the building, which later had to be demolished. The high number of child victims was due to the America’s Kids Day Care Center located in the building.

Uvalde school shooting (2022)

Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was the site of another one of America’s worst school shootings, where 18-year-old former student Salvador Ramos killed 19 pupils and two teachers May 24, 2022.

On the day of the shooting, Ramos drove to the school and entered a classroom after breezing by cops stationed in the hallways. He remained inside classrooms shooting victims for 1 hour and 14 minutes before the US Border Patrol Tactical Unit broke in and shot him.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department was roundly criticized for waiting around idle as Ramos perpetrated the attack. Two officers, including chief Pedro Arredondo, were later criminally indicted for their alleged mishandling of the shooting response.