Merve Berker
09 July 2025•Update: 09 July 2025
ANKARA
Officials in Texas are under growing pressure to explain delayed emergency response efforts after a devastating flash flood killed more than 100 people and left 161 missing, press reports said Tuesday.
Four days after the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet (7.9 meters) in just 45 minutes during the early hours of July 4, leaders in Kerr County were unable to confirm whether appropriate evacuation warnings were issued in time, according to NBC News.
“We’re in the process of trying to put a timeline, that’s going to take a little bit of time,” Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha told a Tuesday news conference, stressing that immediate efforts remained focused on locating victims and notifying families.
Many of the fatalities occurred at a summer camp on the river’s edge, where 57 adults and 30 children lost their lives.
County residents have raised concerns over the lack of emergency alerts, which could have allowed the public to seek safe ground.
“I didn’t get one alert,” said Marvin Willis, who lives 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) from the river.
Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring said he was only awakened at 5.30 am local time (0830GMT) by a call from the city manager.
No sirens in Kerr County
Flash flood warnings from the National Weather Service had been issued at 1.14 am (0414GMT), but it remains unclear who within emergency management was monitoring them.
The county’s emergency coordinator, W.B. “Dub” Thomas, did not comment, and officials could not confirm whether he was actively involved during the flood’s onset.
Questions persist about how and when residents were warned. While nearby towns had outdoor sirens, Kerr County did not.
Cell signal inconsistencies and camp restrictions on phones compounded the issue.
The New York Times and other outlets have also raised red flags over job vacancies at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with key figures – including a communications coordinator with decades of experience – having left when pressured by the Trump administration, which then imposed a hiring freeze.
Greg Abbott, Texas’ governor, confirmed that the ongoing search for victims of the flash flood remains the top priority.
“You’d have to ask them,” he said when pressed about what local officials knew in the early hours of the disaster.
Some survivors said the alerts lacked urgency.
“If they had said there’s a wall of water coming or evacuate,” said Hunt resident Rena Bailey, “but I didn’t take it that way.”
