As the death count in the Independence Day flooding in central Texas has now surpassed that of Hurricane Harvey, with dozens of children reported dead and missing who were camping at Camp Mystic in Kerr County, Texans are asking why a warning system wasn’t in place and why the camp didn’t evacuate when others did.
On Wednesday and Thursday, a series of emergency weather alerts were issued by the National Weather Service and Texas Division of Emergency Management. Despite a decades-long history of flash floods in the Texas Hill Country, and a 1987 flash flood that killed 10 teenagers at a Christian Camp in neighboring Kendall County, Kerr County didn’t have an emergency warning system in place.
This legislative session, a bill to create a coordinated emergency warning system and provide grant funding for rural communities died in the Republican-controlled Senate.
The NWS-Austin/San Antonio issued a Flood Watch Wednesday for several counties, including Kerr County; the NWS San Angelo also issued a flood watch for several counties.
Also on Wednesday, TDEM activated state emergency response resources through 10 state agencies anticipating increased threats of flooding in West and Central Texas ahead of the holiday weekend.
“According to the National Weather Service, heavy rainfall with the potential to cause flash flooding is anticipated across West Texas and the Hill Country beginning tonight and is expected to last a few days. Texans are encouraged to monitor local forecasts and avoid driving or walking into flooded areas,” TDEM said. The next day, it escalated state emergency operations readiness and activated additional resources.
At 1:14 am on Friday, the NWS Austin/San Antonio issued a “life threatening flash flooding” warning for Bandera and Kerr counties, stating, “Some locations that will experience flash flooding include, Kerrville, Ingram, Hunt, Waltonia, Kerr Wildlife Management Area and Lost Maples State Natural Area.”
The NWS also had five people on duty, more than the standard two, to deliver forecasts for its Austin/San Antonio office covering the region, Jason Runyen, a NWS meteorologist, said.
“These warnings should have provided officials with ample time to evacuate camps such as Camp Mystic and get people to safety,” AccuWeather, which also issued reports on Thursday, citing NWS alerts, said.
By 4 a.m. on Friday, heavy rain caused the Guadeloupe River to rise by more than 26 feet in less than an hour resulting in a flash flood that tore through structures, wiped out RV parks, camper vans and cabins where vacationers or residents were sleeping.
At a news conference on Friday, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said he didn’t know why Camp Mystic and other camps in the county weren’t evacuated.
“Why weren’t these camps evacuated?” a reporter asked.
“I can’t answer that,” the judge replied. “I don’t know.”
“You’re the judge … the top official here in this county. … There’s kids missing. These camps were in harm’s way,” the reporter said.
The judge replied that no one knew “this kind of flood was coming. We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States and we deal with floods on a regular basis. When it rains, we get water. We had no reason to believe that this was going to be any anything like what’s happened.”
On Sunday, Kelly said that several years ago, county officials considered implementing a flood warning system that would function like a tornado warning siren, before he was elected, but never did.
KXAN first reported that county officials didn’t issue warnings until four hours after the NWS alerts, after 5 a.m. and 7 a.m., well after an untold number of people had already been swept away.
The Texas House, under former Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, sought to address crisis communication failures at the local and state level last year.
After a disastrous state response to the Panhandle Wildfires, which destroyed more than 1.2 million acres and caused more than $1 billion in economic losses, the Texas House launched an investigation and proposed solutions. State Rep. Phil King introduced a bill to provide grant funding for rural community emergency alert systems and streamline and improve first responder communications. It passed the House with bipartisan support, with 16 Republicans voting against it, only to die in the Senate Finance Committee.
It remains unclear why Camp Mystic didn’t evacuate children on Thursday after the first NWS and TDEM warnings were issued. Mo-Ranch Camp near Hunt moved several hundred campers and attendees to higher ground; nearby Camps Rio Vista and Sierra Vista ended their summer session early on Thursday.
As of Sunday afternoon, authorities in Kerr County had found the bodies of 40 adults and 28 children; 10 campers are still missing.
