Some former Texas county officials thought informal phone calls, not sirens, would be sufficient in a flood
Over the years that the Kerr County Commission spent discussing whether to implement a new flood warning system, some commissioners suggested that sticking with "river calling," an informal phone chain of sorts used by summer camps, would be better than installing new flood sirens, flashing lights or signs.
"The camps have had a very good system -- if there's a rise, they're phoning their competitors or colleagues down river and letting them know what happened," said commissioner Kerr County Commissioner Bob Reeves, according to minutes of a 2016 meeting, nearly a decade before devastating floods left at least 100 dead over this past weekend. "It's informal as you said, but it's been a very good system."
"They notify each other, we notify them, they notify, there's a lot of informal things that really do work real well," said former Kerr County Sheriff W.R. Hierholzer said at the time, although he noted the river can "come up in an instant."
At another meeting in 2017, a different commissioner said the "river calling" system between camps "still works" and added that "the thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of [the] night, I'm going to have to start drinking again to put up with y'all."
But to others, the status quo appeared unreliable at best: "We have a warning system out there that may or may not work," Kerr County Commissioner Jonathan Letz said in 2016.
"My gut feeling on this and it's kind of an odd way to say this but I think we have a duty to look at what we have," the commissioner continued, later noting, "We are very flood prone, we know that."
Some commissioners noted that nearby counties, including those with lower flood risk than Kerr, had already implemented upgraded flood warning systems.
According to transcripts of commission meetings, Kerr County Commissioners decided to apply for FEMA dollars made available by President Barack Obama's disaster declaration in 2017. But a county judge and some commissioners expressed discontent that such funding would have to come from the Obama administration and discussed possible exit strategies if they were to receive a FEMA grant.
Outside of applying for the FEMA funding, one commissioner said, "Our other option is don't do anything, which is an option. I mean we can just stick with what we have." This includes their system of 20 High Water Detection System crossings -- nine maintained by Texas Department of Transportation and 11 maintained by GBRA.
Another commissioner supported applying for the grant but said he wanted to make clear that "this is a kind of a straw man to put in the application because we have to have it, but it's going to be re-looked at in the future."
Commissioners acknowledged that this was "not normally the way we would do things," but that the process had to be rushed to meet the deadline of the Obama Administration ending.
Kerr County was not selected by the Texas Division of Emergency Management to receive federal funds the state received from FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Assistance Program.
