Rep. Chip Roy, who represents the Texas Hill Country where flash flooding on Friday killed at least 24 people and left two dozen girls from a Christian summer camp missing, tells Newsmax that there were several "heroic rescues" from the scene and emergency workers are holding out hope for finding more survivors. 

"We've had about 24, 25 fatalities," the Texas Republican told Newsmax's Jaeson Jones on "America Right Now" Saturday. "Some of these are the little girls. I'm not going to tell the numbers on those yet because they're obviously talking to their families."

Roy said he was supposed to have been at the White House for President Donald Trump's signing of the megabill Friday, but returned home after the disastrous flooding of the Guadalupe River, which rose 26 feet in just 45 minutes before dawn Friday, washing away homes and vehicles.

"Normally, my family would be right behind us, right over here for the Fourth of July, for the Robert [Earl] Keen concert," Roy said. "This is where we come every summer."

He added that there were 237 rescues as of late Friday night, including approximately 160 air rescues, but said that number "is going up as we speak, pulling kids out of camps, finding people down the river."

"Right now, we're just praying that out of some hope, we're able to find a few of those who are still missing," said Roy. "The emergency response team here has been fantastic. The local guys, the local sheriff here in Kerrville, he's a good friend. He's a good man. The Texas DPS."

Roy said he spoke with Trump about the situation, as well as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and "they are all in. They've been responsive. It's been a state, local, federal response."

But at the end of the day, he added, "Mostly we've just got to pray for these families."

Roy told Jones that he is proud to represent the Texas Hill Country and Kerrville, as it is a "great part of the state."

"I always say on the campaign trail, it's the best part of the best state in the best country in the history of the world, and I really mean it," Roy said. "There's a reason there are all these camps here. It really is truly a remarkably beautiful and popular spot."

He said he knows people will ask how so much devastation could happen so quickly, and explained to Jones that between he hours of 4-6 a.m. Friday, "it was like a wheelbarrow of water was dumped into a small channel…the water rose 26 feet in about 45 minutes. That's unprecedented. It's hard to plan for stuff like that."

People had already started moving children out of the area because of concern about the rain and the flash floods, Roy added, "but this was historic."

"It's basically like a tropical storm sat here and it just kind of sat and spun in a way that had never really been seen," he said. 

Texans are resilient, though, and "we'll rebuild," said the congressman. 

"We'll figure all this stuff out. Infrastructure, trees, we can fix all that," he said. "We've got to go try to see if we can find any of these lives that are still out there. God bless the first responders. But like Texas resilient, country resilient, we're Americans."

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• 6 Dead Amid 'Catastrophic' Texas Flooding
• 13 Dead, More Missing After Flash Flood in Texas