'Nobody came': A look at Travis County's search and rescue response after floods

KXAN put together a day-by-day breakdown of what we witnessed as we reported from Travis County in the aftermath of these floods. You can find that breakdown below.

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- After Travis County Judge Andy Brown was questioned by state lawmakers over the county's initial response to devastating Independence Day weekend floods, the county is releasing more information about the overall search and rescue effort.

Monday, Travis County released a Texas Task Force Urban Search and Rescue report. Those search and rescue crews responded to the floods alongside local resources (locally, firefighters from emergency service districts across Travis County, the sheriff's office and Austin Fire were among those responding).

According to that report, the timeline in which the state task force was deployed to and utilized in Travis County was as follows:

• July 4: Texas Task Force 2 deploys to Llano
• July 5: State teams helped Travis County with "hasty search, damage observations"
• July 8: Task force established a base of operations and "began coordinated search ops"

Those teams say they found "numerous" vehicles, debris piles and one set of human remains. Over the next days, the search and rescue crews reported 66 "critical interactions" meaning they rescued/located someone or found human remains, according to the report. They also made 426 damage observations.

The report said more than 270 people were assigned to "Travis County Division Zulu," which is the team assigned to Travis County to assist with the flood recovery and search effort. Some of those crews came from outside of Texas including crews from Florida, Illinois, Alabama and California.

The report says all missing persons from the Sandy Creek area have been located, which means the Big Sandy Creek search is complete. Crews are still searching Cow Creek in an attempt to locate the Marble Falls Fire Chief.

According to the report, crews have found several items related to that search including equipment, a vehicle and vehicle parts, medical equipment, a department-issued T-shirt and a helmet along a 9-mile stretch.

'Nobody came': Concerns from volunteers, residents

One of the central concerns from public speakers at Thursday's Texas Legislature’s joint Select Committee on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding was that residents didn't see search and rescue crews.

"Nobody came. No emergency services came to them in the hours after the flood waters receded, their 911 calls went unanswered,” said Melanie Strong, a woman who volunteered in Sandy Creek, during her testimony.

When Brown was questioned about that later, he said the county could have better communicated directly with the residents of the impacted areas so they would know exactly what Travis County and state responders were doing.

But he also said Travis County had every available resource working search and rescue in the first few days after the floods.

“No question that we had every resource possible there from Travis County, from TDEM, on those first two days, those were the days where they were … they were doing search and rescue,” Brown said during the hearing.

A timeline from KXAN's reporting

KXAN reporter Grace Reader first touched base with Judge Brown around 9 a.m. the morning of July 5. At that point, rain was still impacting significant portions of Travis County and water was still high in impacted waterways.

Brown confirmed that he was being briefed by responding agencies, though he was not yet at the emergency operations center.

At 10:22 a.m. on July 5, Brown spoke with Reader on the phone for roughly six minutes about what his teams were telling him and answering questions KXAN had about impacted areas. Brown told Reader he was also working on a disaster declaration, which came out that afternoon.

KXAN arrived at the emergency operations center in Lago Vista before noon on July 5. There we spoke to Lago Vista City Council Member Shane Saum and Fire Chief Donnie Norman, who runs ESD 1.

Norman told Reader that starting around 1 a.m. on July 5, the county received its first water rescue call to 911. Then low water crossings started to become impassable and the calls started to pick up.

"It started a whole sequence of events with rescues. To this point, at 11 a.m., as I'm giving this interview, we've been through dozens of active rescues," Norman told KXAN on July 5. At that point, two people were confirmed dead and roughly a dozen people were reported missing.

"This is an all county response between Travis and Williamson County, not just exclusive to ESD 1," Norman said. "We have resources that are here from Travis County ESD 11, Travis County ESD 6, Austin Fire Department, Austin-Travis County EMS, Travis County Office of Emergency Management...I'm probably going to leave some people out but it's an all hazard, all hands on deck response," Norman said during that July 5 midday interview.

That day Reader also spoke to a man who helped rescue a family from rising floodwaters. We also spoke to the family who was saved. Both said that despite calling 911, help didn't come fast enough and those impacted had to take matters into their own hands.

"I had called 911 and they sent me to fire dispatch...By the rate it was going I kind of got frustrated in the moment and I said, 'well send help or not, I gotta get to work,'" Matthew Crowder, the man who saved a family near Jonestown, said. He estimated water started to rise to a dangerous level along the creek near Jonestown at roughly 4:30-5 a.m.

Reader spoke with firefighters who had been working since the first calls came in around 1 a.m. July 5, including Lt. Jared Truair, with Travis County Fire and Rescue ESD 1. He gave some insight into the challenging dynamics firefighters were facing trying to reach all the people who needed help.

Truair described the first call he was sent to where he ended up being trapped by flood waters himself, before finally being able to cross and make his way back toward his coverage area to continue taking calls.

"Water had already crossed the roadway behind us and so we were kind of stuck," Truair said. "At that point about an hour later the water in front of us receded, we decided to proceed west towards Marble Falls to come back to try to get to our district."

The next morning, Sunday, July 6, Reader met first responders, search crews and Judge Brown at the Round Mountain Baptist Church around 8 a.m. Dozens of local resources gathered for that briefing before being sent to search the Big Sandy Creek area.

KXAN spoke to Brown at the church, which on July 6 had become the new meeting place for first responders and search crews. He told us then that the dozens of crews would be searching along Big Sandy Creek all the way down to Lake Travis, along with Cow Creek.

Reader then followed those local search and rescue crews out into the Big Sandy Creek neighborhood where we watched them look through vehicles, knock on doors and sift through debris piles.

In the days following the flood, KXAN received tips from residents concerned that search and rescue crews were not still in the Travis County area. On July 10, Reader drove through the impacted area to ensure search and recovery crews were indeed in Travis County, as leaders said they were.

We found multiple crews from the Texas Task Force on July 10 as a result. One group was searching along the Big Sandy Creek banks downstream from the Sandy Creek neighborhood.

On July 15, KXAN was there as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott met with Brown, other local leaders and response teams at an operations center in Leander. At that point, several people from Travis County were still reported missing. Brown also posted photos with search and rescue crews, specifically K9 units, that day.

On July 16, Reader was with Judge Brown as he met with search and rescue crews from Alabama -- and then toured parts of Lake Travis on a boat from the sheriff's department. Brown broke down the search and rescue process for us during an interview that day.

"If you're up in the neighborhood, you would not see these teams here. But the fact is that because of the way the flood worked, a lot of the things that were in the neighborhood got washed all the way down here to the lake and so they have to search that entire area," Brown explained when we asked about concerns that search and rescue were not in Travis County.

Brown said every day crews were marking where they had been and communicating with each other about what had been searched or what needed additional attention. There was a board in the emergency operations center that helped track that information -- and crews were also using a cell phone app.

On July 17, the state task force report says all missing persons from the Big Sandy area had been accounted for.