by KERRVILLE, TX Following another river flood in the Texas Hill Country eight years ago, Kerr County officials discussed whether more work was necessary to construct a warning system along the Guadalupe River’s banks.
Along the river, a number of summer camps were frequently crowded with kids. Local authorities used a word-of-mouth strategy to keep them safe for years: When floodwaters began to surge, camp leaders upriver alerted others downstream of the impending water surge.
Was that sufficient, though? Along with other cutting-edge communications instruments, officials thought about adding river gauges and sirens to the system. Tom Moser, a Kerr County commissioner at the time, stated that no matter how much water-level monitoring we perform, it won’t be worth it if the public isn’t informed in a timely manner.
Ultimately, not much was accomplished. Neither alarms nor early flooding monitors were in place when devastating floodwaters swept through Kerr County last week. Rather, some households received text messages late, while others ignored or failed to read them.
In 2017, the rural county with a population of little over 50,000, located in what is known as “flash flood alley” in Texas, considered constructing a flood warning system but decided against it because it was too costly. According to the minutes of a county commission meeting, the county, which has an annual budget of about $67 million, lost out on a proposal to obtain a $1 million grant to finance the project at the time.
During a budget meeting in May, county commissioners discussed the possibility of using a flood warning system that was being built by a regional agency.
However, Rob Kelly, Kerr County’s most senior elected official and judge, stated in a recent interview that locals had opposed additional spending. “Taxpayers will not pay for it,” he stated, adding that he was unsure if people would now change their minds.
In 2015, following a fatal flood in Wimberley, Texas, approximately 75 miles east of Kerrville, the seat of Kerr County, the concept of a flood warning system was proposed.
When it comes to flash floods, the Guadalupe River Basin is among the most hazardous areas in the US. Heavy rainstorms frequently cause ordinary floods, which gradually raise floodwaters to the point that they threaten buildings and flood streets. Additionally, the area is vulnerable to flash floods, which can happen suddenly.
When flash floods occur late at night when people are asleep, residents of Kerr County who live close to the Guadalupe may not have much time to flee higher ground.
Flood warning systems are often straightforward networks of rain gauges or stream gauges that are activated when rain or floodwaters above a specific threshold, according to Avantika Gori, a professor at Rice University who is in charge of a federally sponsored initiative to increase flood resilience in rural Texas counties.
The gauges can then be used to alert those who are at risk of flooding, either by means of a sequence of sirens, TV and radio notifications, or text messages, which may not be useful in places with spotty mobile connection.
According to Gori, more sophisticated systems model potential flood zones and estimate rainfall using National Weather Service forecasts.
Cell towers are now used to broadcast notifications to all local smartphones following the installation of an enhanced monitoring system in the Wimberley area following the 2015 floods.
The former commissioner, Moser, led the charge to install a flood warning system in Kerr County after visiting Wimberley after its new system was operational. His plan called for more water detection equipment as well as a public notice system, but due to financial constraints, the project was never implemented.
According to Moser, it kind of vanished. It simply did not occur.
According to a press report at the time, H.A. Buster Baldwin, one of the commissioners at the time, voted against a $50,000 engineering study, stating, “I think this whole thing is a little extravagant for Kerr County, with sirens and such.”
Given the unusual circumstances of the flooding, which occurred abruptly following a period of heavy rain, Moser said it was difficult to determine whether a flood warning system would have stopped additional tragedies in Kerr County during Friday’s deluge. However, he stated that he thought there might have been some advantages to such a system.
Moser stated, “I believe it could have benefited many people.”
At least 28 children are among the 81 people who have died as a result of the flooding, while a counselor and a few girls from one of the camps near the river are still missing.
A 2017 transcript of a Kerr County Commissioners Court meeting shows that officials talked about how the county would still need a mechanism to notify citizens if water levels were increasing dangerously quickly, even with more water level monitors along the Guadalupe River.
County officials contemplated using sirens, which are used throughout Texas to warn citizens of tornadoes, to warn homes along the river of possible flooding.
According to Moser, a sequence of sirens might have given individuals in susceptible locations enough time to evacuate because of the hills and other obstacles that make phone reception in some parts of Hill Country limited.
In 2021, Moser stepped down as a Kerr County commissioner. But he stated that the floods that occurred there last week should be interpreted as a warning.
Moser stated, “I believe that many locations across the United States will examine this incident that occurred in Kerr County and decide what can be done.” This should lead to something, in my opinion. It ought to serve as a lesson.
The past discussions regarding warning systems were not brought up by current city authorities on Sunday. At a press conference, Kerrville city manager Dalton Rice avoided answering a question on the efficacy of local emergency notifications by telling reporters that now was not the time to make assumptions.
He stated that a thorough evaluation of this will be conducted in order to ensure that we concentrate on future readiness.
According to Gori, many Texas counties have already decided against installing warning systems due to financial concerns.
“The county would have fared much better in terms of preparedness if they had a flood warning system in place, but most rural counties in Texas simply do not have the funds to implement flood warning systems themselves,” she wrote in an email.
However, considering how quickly the water rose in Kerr County, some more basic systems, such as those that use stream or rain gauges, might not have given enough time for evacuations, she added.
It is hardly unusual to encounter difficulties.
“We are basically blind when it comes to identifying areas that are prone to flooding because rural counties have very little data,” Gori added.
Approximately $54 billion worth of flood management projects are still pending in Texas. The Texas Water Development Board’s state flood plan urged legislators to set aside more money for possibly life-saving infrastructure.
However, even though state lawmakers this year authorized $51 billion in property tax cuts, they have only allotted a small portion of the $669 million needed for flood repairs through the state’s Flood Infrastructure Fund.
In its previous talks on a warning system, Kerr County and other Upper Guadalupe River Authority members had looked into the potential of requesting funding through the infrastructure fund. However, after discovering that the fund would only cover roughly 5% of the project’s funding needs, the authority abandoned the plan.
Because flood warnings are common in that region of the state, some locals were confused of how seriously to take them during last week’s storm, even though they received SMS notifications alerting them to quickly rising waters.
Sujey Martin, who has lived in Kerrville for the past 15 years, reported that at around two in the morning on Friday, she was woken up by an emergency alert on her phone. She claimed to have looked at it before falling back asleep.
“I didn’t think much of it because it’s never this bad,” she remarked.
She didn’t notice she had no power until around five in the morning, at which point she began reading on Facebook about evacuations and flooding, some of which were occurring just a few blocks away. She remembered it was pouring rain.
Living in Center Point, roughly 10 miles southeast of Kerrville, Louis Kocurek, 65, claimed he had never gotten a formal government SMS notice regarding the floods. He had subscribed to CodeRED, a private emergency alert program, but his power had already been cut off by the time the notice arrived. He claimed to have been aware of the issue for at least three hours at that point, having been alerted by his son-in-law at around 6:30 a.m.
He had checked on the water level of the creek near his home and decided to stay put even though the water in the creek rose 15 feet in 15 minutes at one point. Eleven people were hunkering down at his house, which is higher up than some of his neighbors’ houses.
According to Kocurek, the CodeRED notice was received at 10:07 a.m. You know, there was no way out at that moment because the roads were closed. In the end, his house did not flood.
Linda Clanton, a retired schoolteacher who lives on the outskirts of Kerrville, said she did not know how bad the flooding had become until her sister called and woke her with the news at 8:30 a.m. Friday. The next day, she was among several people taking in the widespread destruction and piles of debris caused by the floodwaters at Louise Hays Park, along the Guadalupe River on the west side of town.
She said she couldn t be sure that even sirens would have been useful in warning people about the fast-moving water.
She remarked, “We are all dispersed throughout these hills and the trees.” If we had a siren here in town, nobody but town people would hear it, she added. You d have to have sirens all over the place, and that s a lot of money and a lot of things to go wrong.
And there was still danger ahead.
Around 3 p.m. Sunday, another emergency alert went out to people along the Guadalupe River, including the hundreds conducting searches, warning of high confidence of river flooding. Move to higher ground, the alert urged.
This article originally appeared inThe New York Times.
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