Kerrville Hearing: Local Officials Absent During Deadly Flash Flood

State lawmakers are in Kerrville Thursday for a public hearing responding to the deadly July 4 flash floods that killed more than 130 people in Texas, including 27 campers and counselors in the Hill Country.

The hearing is likely to be contentious, especially since local Kerr County and river authority officials – who already came under scrutiny during a legislative hearing last week – will be testifying. They’ll be followed by state officials, experts, and members of the public.

READ MORE: Flood survivors face long wait to speak at Texas hearing on disaster response in Kerrville

Flood relief is one of many items the Texas Legislature is taking up in the 30-day special session called by Gov. Greg Abbott. Lawmakers have yet to put forward a comprehensive agenda, but Thursday’s testimony could help shape legislation that is eventually filed.

Here are the key takeaways so far:

Local officials were not home, out sick

County Judge Rob Kelly testified that he was not home when the deadly floods hit his county. He said he was at his lake house setting up for a family gathering.

He said he received no “no alerts suggesting an extreme weather event was imminent,” even though he gets a lot of alerts about weather. Kelly said that he woke up to texts and calls from Texas Division of Emergency Management Nim Kidd, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha and Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice. By then, he said, flooding had already overtaken Camp Mystic and other camps.

READ MORE: Did July 4 floods catch top Kerr County emergency officials sleeping?

“Something I could never have imagined,” he said, adding National Weather Service didn’t forecast this “in a timely manner.”

W.B. “Dub” Thomas, the county’s emergency management coordinator, said he was ill and on paid time off on July 3 in the runup to the deadly storm. He said he was awoken at 5:30 a.m. on July by a call call asking him to respond to the floods.

“Based on the data we had at the time there was no indication that a catastrophic flood was imminent,” Thomas said.

Flood itself ‘worth studying’

Kerr County commissioned an independent hydrology assessment that confirms that “this was a 1000 year flood,” Kerr County Judge Kelly said. He described the event as “very much worth studying.” It also sat “in a location with very few rain monitors or flood gauges.” The storm was “not typical for our weather patterns” because it stayed, “it did not pass through, it overwhelmed the watershed.”

“This was not foreseeable,” Kelly said. It “reveals the urgent need for stronger tools, better detection, and modernized infrastructure.”

Kerr County officials request more resources

Kelly said his county would need a flood warning and detection system to better predict future floods, more interconnectivity to address cell phone dead zones, and more resources for emergency management to better address future floods.

Much of the western portion of the county has very poor cell service, he said.

“Even if people wanted to call .. and warn folks … they didn’t have the ability,” he said.

Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said there needs to be investments in localized predictive weather modeling and expanded broadband infrastructure.

“Kerrville will rebuild, but we need the tools and the funding to do it right,” he said.

Texas’ top GOP leaders are in attendance

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows don’t serve on legislative committees and usually don’t attend public hearings, but they showed up to this one in Kerrville.

In opening statements, Patrick, a Republican who presides over the state Senate, said this hearing is just the beginning.

“We will pass bills dealing with the immediacy of things that we can address now, but we will be doing this in the next session and the session after that,” he told the crowd. “We will not quit until you feel like we’ve done everything that we can do that you’ve asked us to do.”

Burrows, R-Lubbock, encouraged officials to be forthright in their testimony.

“We cannot come up with solutions, we cannot try to improve things, if we don’t know everything that you can share with us,” he said.

This is a developing story and will be updated.