At 4:22 a.m. on Friday, as the Texas Hill Country faced severe flooding, a firefighter in Ingram, located just upstream from Kerrville, reached out to the Kerr County Sheriff's Office to warn local residents. This urgent plea for action was captured in audio obtained by ABC affiliate KSAT. Despite the immediate threat, it took nearly six hours for Kerr County officials to respond effectively to this call for help.
The situation escalated when the firefighter reported that the Guadalupe Schumacher sign was submerged on State Highway 39. He requested that a CodeRED alert be sent out to the residents of Hunt, urging them to seek higher ground or remain indoors. The dispatcher from the Kerr County Sheriff's Office responded that they needed to get approval from a supervisor before proceeding. Unfortunately, the first alert through the Kerr County's CodeRED system was delayed by 90 minutes, and many alerts did not reach residents until after 10 a.m. By that time, the floodwaters had already swept away hundreds of individuals.
The Kerr County Sheriff's Office has not provided immediate feedback regarding the delayed emergency alerts. During a press conference on Wednesday, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha avoided questions related to the timing of the emergency notifications, suggesting that a thorough after-action report would be conducted following the search and rescue operations. "Those questions are gonna be answered," he stated, indicating a future commitment to transparency.
For over a decade, Kerr County has utilized the CodeRED Emergency Notification System, designed to alert subscribers about emergencies via pre-recorded messages. When CodeRED was launched in 2014, a government press release touted its capability to notify the entire City and County within minutes. However, the system relied on local white pages for contact information, meaning residents had to actively sign up to receive these critical alerts.
In 2021, Kerr County integrated FEMA's Integrated Public Alert & Warning System (IPAWS) into the CodeRED system, allowing messages to reach tourists and others not included in the local database. This system enables local officials to broadcast emergency alerts and send text messages to all phones in the vicinity. At the time, some county officials expressed skepticism about the benefits of this change. "What's the benefit?" asked Kerr County Commissioner Jonathan Letz during a May 2021 commissioners' meeting. Emergency Management Coordinator William Dub Thomas responded that it provided another avenue for notifying the public during emergencies.
Despite some reservations, Kerr County adopted IPAWS alongside CodeRED. However, when the flooding occurred on Friday, Ingram City Council Member Ray Howard reported receiving multiple flash flood alerts from the National Weather Service, yet none from Kerr County authorities.
On Monday, former Commissioner Harley David Belew discussed the flooding on The Michael Berry Show, recalling that Kerr County Commissioners had previously considered implementing an early warning system. However, the presence of inadequate cell towers in rural areas led to the abandonment of that idea. Records indicate that the topic of a flood warning system has been raised in at least 20 county commissioners' meetings since its introduction in 2016, long before Belew joined the Court.
Belew mentioned that funding had also been a significant barrier to implementing a warning system. Following last week's tragic events, he continued to voice concerns about potential government waste associated with such a system. "God only knows what's going to happen," he remarked on the radio show, but he acknowledged that an early alert system could provide residents with much-needed peace of mind. "It's always been needed," he concluded.
