At 4:22 a.m. on Friday, as Texas’ Hill Nation began to flood, a firefighter in Ingram – simply upstream from Kerrville – requested the Kerr County Sheriff’s Workplace to alert close by residents, based on audio obtained by ABC affiliate KSAT. However Kerr County officers took almost six hours to heed this name.
“The Guadalupe Schumacher signal is underwater on State Freeway 39,” the firefighter mentioned within the dispatch audio. “Is there any approach we are able to ship a CodeRED out to our Hunt residents, asking them to search out increased floor or keep dwelling?”
“Stand by, we’ve got to get that authorized with our supervisor,” a Kerr County Sheriff’s Workplace dispatcher replied.
A bus is seen on its aspect close to a broken constructing alongside the Guadalupe River after a flash flood swept by the realm, July 5, 2025, in Hunt, Texas.
Julio Cortez/AP
The primary alert did not come by Kerr County’s CodeRED system till 90 minutes later. Some messages did not arrive till after 10 a.m. By then, tons of of individuals had been swept away by the floodwaters.
Kerr County Sheriff’s Workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
At a Wednesday morning press convention, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha declined to reply a query about delayed emergency alerts, saying that an “after-action” would comply with the search and rescue efforts.
“These questions are gonna be answered,” he added.
Information present Kerr County’s CodeRED Emergency Notification System, which alerts subscribers to emergencies by pre-recorded cellphone messages, has been in place for at the very least a decade.
Folks view harm alongside the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas, July 5, 2025.
Dustin Safranek/EPA through Shutterstock
When CodeRED was first launched by Kerr County and the Metropolis of Kerrville in 2014, a authorities press launch claimed it might “notify your complete Metropolis / County about emergency conditions in a matter of minutes.”
CodeRED relied on the native white pages for customers’ contact data, the announcement defined, so “nobody ought to assume his or her quantity is included.” Residents had to enroll to make sure they might obtain alerts.
In 2021, Kerr County included FEMA’s Built-in Public Alert & Warning System (IPAWS) into CodeRED, in order that messages might attain vacationers and others not within the native database. The IPAWS system permits native officers to broadcast emergency messages and ship textual content blasts to all telephones within the space.
On the time, some county officers weren’t certain concerning the change.
Flood waters left particles together with automobiles and tools scattered in Louise Hays Park on July 5, 2025, in Kerrville, Texas.
Eric Vryn/Getty Pictures
“What is the profit?” Kerr County Commissioner Jonathan Letz requested at a Could 2021 commissioners’ assembly.
“It is simply one other avenue for us to inform individuals when we’ve got an emergency,” replied Emergency Administration Coordinator William “Dub” Thomas.
Then-Commissioner Harley David Belew voted towards including IPAWS to the CodeRED system after noting that it could require switching out the county’s tools, which he mentioned he’d performed just lately due to a federal coverage change a number of years earlier.
“I do not suppose it may change something,” Belew mentioned.
Regardless of these doubts, Kerr County started utilizing IPAWS alongside its CodeRED system in 2021.
When the realm flooded on Friday, Ingram Metropolis Council Member Ray Howard instructed ABC Information he acquired three flash flood alerts from the Nationwide Weather Service, however none from Kerr County authorities.
On Monday, Belew went on The Michael Berry Present to debate the catastrophic flooding. On the present, he mentioned Kerr County Commissioners had thought of placing in an early warning system years earlier, however that there weren’t sufficient cell towers to succeed in rural elements of the county, “so that concept was scrapped.”
Records show that the subject of a flood warning system for Kerr County got here up in at the very least 20 totally different county commissioners’ conferences because it was first launched in 2016 – months earlier than Belew joined the Court docket.
Belew defined on the radio present that funding for a warning system was additionally a barrier to implementation, echoing points he raised on the time, based on assembly minutes.
However even after final week’s tragic flooding, Belew expressed concern over spending on such a system: “God solely is aware of what is going on to occur, what sort of authorities waste we would get going into an alert system,” he mentioned on Monday’s section.
“But when we are able to get any early alert system for the longer term, that’d give individuals some peace of thoughts right here,” Belew added. “It is all the time been wanted.”
