As state and local officials in Texas have been subject to the lack of sirens to warn people of imminent floods in the Guadalupe River that killed more than 100 people, the records reviewed by the ABC News show authorities of one of the most affected counties have had discussions about the implementation of such a warning alert system for almost a decade.
The destructive flood reached the first hours of the morning of July 4, which caused the Guadalupe River in Kerr’s county to rise in 26 feet in less than an hour, spilling its banks and flooding multiple summer camps and recreational vehicles parks along the Sinuous River.
On Monday, the number of the floods rose to more than 100, according to the officials. At least 84 of the deaths occurred in Kerr County, including 27 children in Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp near the banks of Guadalupe, authorities said.
A volunteer helps in search and rescue operations near the Guadalupe River after a sudden flood swept the area, on July 7, 2025, in Ingram, Texas.
Eli Hartman/AP
Ten girls and a Camp Mystic counselor remained without accounting on Monday while search and rescue efforts extended to their fourth day.
From the catastrophe, local officials have faced questions about how warnings were sent to the community, why evacuations were not ordered in low areas and why there were no audible warning systems to alert campers throughout the Guadalupo.
“There should have been sirens here,” Texas Lieutenant, Dan Patrick, Fox News on Monday, added that the issue will probably appear in a special session of the state legislature to analyze what happened during the floods.
The chairs are inside a damaged room after flooding on the Guadalupe River, in Camp Mystic, Hunt, Texas, on July 7, 2025.
Bello/Reuters Marco
Patrick added: “If we had had mermaids around this area, up and down, the same type of mermaids they have in Israel when there is an attack, which would have flown very strong, it is possible that he has saved some of these lives.”
“I spent hours in those helicopters taking the children out of trees”
The records reviewed by ABC News show that many of the same questions have been discussed, specifically in Kerr County, for almost a decade.
He Minutes of a meeting of March 28, 2016 From the Kerr County Commissioner Court, they show that the former Sheriff of Ker Rusty Hugolzer county pressed the commission to update the county alert system. At that time, Hugolzer told the commission that he was in favor of placing outdoor sirens of high decibel along the river that could sound and be heard from a distance of 3 miles when the water meters indicated floods, according to the online records of the meeting.
According to the minutes of the meeting, First reported by the Wall Street JournalThe then commissioner Tomoser said that there are avant -garde warning systems, including those with sirens, in other parts of the state, “despite the fact that this [Kerr County] It is probably one of the highest regions prone to floods throughout the State. “
A crew of Firefighters from Ciudad Acuna, on the left, helps in the search and rescue efforts near the Guadalupe River after a sudden flood dragged by the area, on July 7, 2025, in Ingram, Texas.
Eli Hartman/AP
Hoholzer told the commission that the Sirens, in addition to the emergency notification system of the county, would work to quickly disseminate the word of imminent danger, according to the minutes of the meeting.
At that meeting, according to the minutes, Hugolzer raised what he called the “most important” theme: to warn the summer camps along the Guadalupe, remembering a sudden flood of 1987 in which 10 children of the Christian Camp Pot or ‘Gold Ranch in Comfort, Texas, were killed when trying to evacuate the camp on a bus.
“I have spent hours in those helicopters taking the children out of the trees,” Hoholzer told the commission, according to the minutes of the meeting.
At that time, Hugolzer added that many people in the county did not sign up for alerts with coding and that it was difficult to get people to register for telephone alerts.
“Then, yes, you need both. You need the sirens and you need to code to try to make sure we notify everyone that we can when you arrive,” said Hugolzer, according to the minutes of the meeting.
The soldiers of the Texas Public Security Department carry a recovered body in the back of a vehicle near the Guadalupe River after a sudden flood swept the area, on July 7, 2025, in Ingram, Texas.
Eli Hartman/AP
Moser, according to the minutes of the meeting, told his fellow commissioners to update the warning system to include “was not very expensive” sirens, and added that the units would cost around $ 40,000 each.
The Kerr County Commissioners Court requested a FEMA subsidy of almost $ 1 million, according to the minutes of the meeting. The county application was not selected, but it was not clear why.
ABC News could not contact Moser to comment on Monday. He told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday that the County considered paying the update of its flood warning system, but finally decided not to include it in its annual budget.
“It was probably alone, I hate saying the word, priorities. Trying not to increase taxes,” Moser told the newspaper.
Consisted by ABC News on Monday, Hugolzer declined to comment on the statements made to the commissioners more than nine years ago.
“This is probably one of the worst disasters that Kerr County has seen. So at this time, I don’t want to enter all this kind of political things, what we could, we should have done,” Hugolzer told ABC News.
Officials recognize that they were captured by surprise
Kerr County officials said during a press conference on Saturday that they were taken by surprise by torrential rains that caused the Guadalupe River to rise to almost historical levels in minutes.
“We didn’t know that this flood approached,” Kerr’s County judge said Rob Kelly. “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 were not right to believe that this was going to be like what happened here, none.”
But during a press conference on Sunday, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, said that the State began to prepare for the storm last Wednesday through the previous position of assets and resources in areas prone to floods of the state, including Kerr County.
Chief W. Nim Kidd, of the Texas emergency management division, said alerts were also sent.
A search and rescue team is looking for people along the Guadalupe River near Camp Mestic in Hunt, Texas, on July 7, 2025.
Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP through Getty Images
“From a technical perspective, there were multiple warning systems that are out there, and we can all choose to register for warning systems in certain areas depending on the local government in which they are and the way in which their system works,” Kidd said during the governor’s press conference. But he added that some places have an irregular reception of the cell phone.
Kidd added: “There may be all kinds of alert systems that are sent, and we know that some early messages were sent early, some urgent warnings were sent several times. But only sending the message is not the same as receiving the message, having a plan to do something when receiving the message and then the ability to implement that plan.”
During a press conference on Monday, the manager of the city of Kerville, Dalton Rice, said that the staff of some of the summer camps in Guadalupe was monitoring the Rising River at 3:30 am on the day of the flood and managed to transfer the campists to a higher land.
Asked by journalists why the city or the county did not issue mandatory evacuations, Rice said: “Evacuations are a delicate balance because if it evacuates too late, then runs the risk of putting buses, cars, or vehicles, or campists on the roads … trying to take them out, which may make it more challenging because these floods flashes happen very fast.”
When they were pressed why the evacuations were not announced long before the storm, Rice added: “It’s like Disasters in Texas everywhere: it is very difficult to make those calls because what we do not want to do is cry Wolf.”
