The Guadalupe River would climb 20 feet in the first three hours following the National Weather Service’s alarm at 1:14 a.m. on July 4 about potentially fatal flash flooding close to Kerrville, Texas. However, local officials would go mostly ignored, which raises concerns about local readiness as well as whether Texas should do more to alert rural counties that are vulnerable to flooding when they are in danger.
According to reports from parents whose children were at Camp Mystic, a girls’ camp by the river where at least 27 people perished, there was significant flooding at some point between two and three in the morning. In one cabin, counselors had to pry open windows to assist young females in leaving. According to Lisa Miller, whose 9-year-old daughter Birdie had to scale a counselor’s back in order to get out, the children were describing it as a rushing river.
According to camp organizers, a facilities manager at the nearby Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly camp was awake at approximately one in the morning when he noticed the rising waters and informed his supervisor. This led to a hasty attempt to evacuate people to higher ground. There were no fatalities.
However, many of Kerr County’s important local officials were either still asleep or had not been warned of the risk when these plays were taking place. People in local camps and low-lying locations often had to rely on their own attentiveness to weather advisories in the middle of the night to survive, rather than government evacuations.
The National Weather Service issued a series of warnings of increasing intensity following the flood alert, which was issued just after 1 a.m. The most recent warning, for catastrophic flooding, was issued at 4:03 a.m.
Joe Herring Jr., the mayor of Kerrville, stated at a press conference that this occurred at night when people were in bed and asleep. He then admitted to CNN that he was not woken up until 5:30 a.m. and had not gotten the weather alert.
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