Kerr County flood death reports mapped in new 911 call data

After flash flooding ripped through Kerr County earlier this month, the area’s relatively small local law enforcement agencies fielded more than 600 calls for service in less than 48 hours, according to new data obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

Of those calls, records show at least 60 – or roughly 10% – related to possible deaths. At least 16 of those were linked to a 10-mile stretch of Texas 39, from just south of the area’s popular children’s camps to the small city of Ingram.

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The data – derived from call logs provided by the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office and the Kerrville Police Department – offers a new look at how the catastrophic Independence Day flooding turned into the county’s deadliest disaster in recent years, though it leaves many unanswered questions.

The logs do not show which of the requests for death investigations led to confirmed deaths and which ones may have been false alarms. And they do not say whether the deaths were all determined to be clearly flood-related, or whether some may have been due to other causes.

According to the most recent figures, 71 adults and 37 children died after heavy rains engorged the Guadalupe River in the early hours of July 4, sending water into homes, cabins and trailers in low-lying areas. Two people were still missing as of Wednesday.

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“This call to action generated a large volume of reports,” the flood response’s joint information center said in a statement Wednesday. “The initial count of missing persons was a raw number based on unverified reports from concerned family and friends. Each of these required thorough review and verification.”

The Kerr County Sheriff’s Office has 63 peace officers licensed with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which trains and certifies police. Kerrville Police Department – which also receives and routes incoming 911 calls for the whole county – has 51 officers, according to state data.

The first request for a death investigation came in around 8:15 a.m. on July 4, when Kerr County sheriff’s deputies were summoned to a riverside address in Ingram a few ticks west of Camp Rio Vista. By the end of July 5, logs show the sheriff’s office fielded another 41 such calls, while Kerrville police fielded 18. Combined, the possible fatalities represent the majority of the confirmed deaths in the county from the July 4 floods.

The death investigations were just a sliver of the demand placed on officials as daylight revealed the extent of the damage. Between midnight and 6 a.m., city and police dispatchers reported 53 calls for service. From 6 a.m. to noon on July 4, dispatchers routed 146 calls to police, fire and EMS, then another 191 between noon and midnight.

Over the two days, emergency personnel responded to 171 welfare checks – the vast majority by Kerr County deputies as they looked for residents and visitors missing from homes and campsites in the hardest hit areas near where the two forks of the Guadalupe converge. The area is home to numerous summer camps and RV parks that were occupied for the busy holiday weekend.