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Eight years ago, in the aftermath of yet another river flood in the Texas Hill Country, officials in Kerr County debated whether more needed to be done to build a warning system along the banks of the Guadalupe River.
A series of summer camps along the river were often packed with children. For years, local officials kept them safe with a word-of-mouth system: When floodwaters started raging, upriver camp leaders warned those downriver of the water surge coming their way.
But was that enough? Officials considered supplementing the system with sirens and river gauges, along with other modern communications tools. “We can do all the water-level monitoring we want, but if we don’t get that information to the public in a timely way, then this whole thing is not worth it,” said Tom Moser, a Kerr County commissioner at the time.
In the end, little was done. When catastrophic floodwaters surged through Kerr County last week, there were no sirens or early flooding monitors. Instead, there were text alerts that came late for some residents and were dismissed or unseen by others.
The rural county of a little over 50,000 people, in a part of Texas known as Flash Flood Alley, contemplated installing a flood warning system in 2017, but it was rejected as too expensive. The county, which has an annual budget of around $67 million, lost out on a bid at the time to secure a $1 million grant to fund the project, county commission meeting minutes show.
As recently as a May budget meeting, county commissioners were discussing a flood warning system being developed by a regional agency as something that they might be able to make use of.
