Top Kerr County leaders asleep, 'too late' to issue flood evacuation

KERRVILLE, Texas (KXAN) -- Kerr County leaders are facing mounting scrutiny over their handling of the Fourth of July flooding. On Thursday, the questions came from state lawmakers who traveled to the flood zone for a special session hearing.

Inside the packed Hill County Youth Event Center, which has been taken over by emergency responders, pointed comments were directed at local leaders.

'You were nowhere to be found'

"Everyone was here that day working their a** off and you were nowhere to be found," Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, R-Texas, told Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly. "I don't know where you were on day one, on July 4th, but you should have been here directing your response. That's your responsibility."

Kelly said he was out of town at a house at Lake Travis. He sat at a table across from lawmakers next to other local officials. Kerr County Emergency Management Coordinator W.B. Thomas said he was ill and asleep. Sheriff Larry Leitha said he didn't wake up until after people were already trapped on roofs.

Asked why an evacuation wasn't issued, Kelly replied: "It was too late. It was too late," saying the wall of water was too massive and arrived too quickly.

During more than three hours of testimony, it was revealed there are no records of communications with Camp Mystic, where at least 27 campers and counselors died. A CodeRED mobile alert requested at 4:22 a.m. wasn't issued until 5:01 a.m. -- almost 40 minutes later -- with dispatchers "overwhelmed," Leitha said, noting other life-saving measures were taking place.

"The three guys of Kerr County who were responsible for sounding the alarm were effectively not available," remarked Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston.

"We have a lot of folks who have titles but when the time came to act they did not do so in a timely fashion," said Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo.

For state lawmakers, the hearing was about seeking solutions -- including warning sirens and upgrading communications equipment, from radios to cell towers.

Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring told lawmakers he would like to see a flood warning system -- sirens or a data-driven alerting system -- installed in Kerr County by next summer.

Some proposed ideas related to sirens and ensuring radios work between different agencies were introduced in House Bill 13, co-authored by committee member Rep. Joe Moody during the recent legislative session. It failed to pass.

Another solution mentioned mirrored one from a recent KXAN investigation. Sonoma County, California Emergency Management Dep. Director, Sam Willis, said after deadly fires in 2017, they began holding weekly drills to practice using their emergency alert system.

"Lessons that we painfully had to go through, which is we have to understand what the capabilities and limitations of systems are,” Wallis told KXAN. “We have to come up with policies and procedures before the disaster, so we know exactly what to do, and we need to practice, practice, practice.”

Rep. Terry Wilson, R-Georgetown, asked how the emergency leaders how often their plans are rehearsed and suggested: "Plans are great unless they’re rehearsed ... rehearsals are key."

'I wish I had superhuman power to see the future'

"There were so many lives lost here," Rep. AJ Louderback, R-Victoria, told KXAN before the meeting started. "So, I'm interested in looking at the entire process."

Louderback said he hoped to be able to "clearly understand the process here, what happened" in order to "more efficiently, more effectively ... save our citizens" during future disasters.

The Upper Guadalupe River Authority's director, Dr. William Rector, who is appointed by the governor, told lawmakers flood sirens were never installed -- and its eight property-tax funded river gauges aren't locally monitored -- with data instead collected by the National Weather Service.

"I would say that you should be in the business of protecting people from the things that are going on in the river," said Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels. "I don't see how the Upper Guadalupe River Authority helped in any way in this flood."

Lawmakers questioned what had been done since the UGRA was created in 1939 and floated the idea of merging it with the Guadalupe Blanco River Authority.

KXAN also had our own questions for Herring after records we obtained showed he never saw emails from the Texas Division of Emergency Management asking him to join a “Situational Awareness Call for Severe Weather Affecting the State of Texas” the day before the flood.

"I think I read your reporting and it said, if I'm remembering correctly, that you reviewed those slides from that presentation," the mayor told KXAN, referencing TDEM briefing materials, which warned of a "slight" risk for flash-flooding. "So, what I think, honestly, is that the event that occurred here was beyond the limits of current meteorology science."

"Do I wish I had seen that email? I do," Herring added. "But, even if I'd seen it, I don't know that it would have prepared me for the event that followed.

KXAN asked, looking back, what, if anything, he wishes he could have done differently.

"Well," Herring replied, "I wish I had superhuman power to see the future."

Before the meeting, KXAN sent our recent investigations to every member on the House and Senate Select Committee on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding. Lawmakers told residents it will take not just this special session but future legislative sessions to address the fallout from the flood and make necessary changes.

The flooding killed 108 people, including 37 children in Kerr County. Two people are still missing, as of Thursday.