Emergency crews suspended their search for victims of catastrophic flooding in Central Texas on Sunday morning amid new warnings that additional rain would again cause waterways to surge.
It was the first time a new round of severe weather has paused the search since the flooding earlier this month.
Ingram Fire Department officials ordered search crews to immediately evacuate the Guadalupe River corridor in Kerr County until further notice, warning the potential for a flash flood is high. On a Facebook post, the department warned area residents to stay away from river beds and roads.
“NOW IS NOT THE TIME to be out trying to watch rising water, take videos, or capture pictures of the devastation. We are seeing the same weather pattern today that we experienced on July 4th—and we know how quickly that turned deadly,” the post read.
Search-and-rescue teams have been searching for missing victims of the July 4 weekend flooding.
Search and rescue efforts were expected to resume on Monday, depending on river flow, Fire Department spokesperson Brian Lochte said.
“We’re working with a few crews and airboats and SAR (search-and-rescue) boats just in case,” Lochte said.
As heavy rain fell Sunday, National Weather Service forecasters warned that the Guadalupe River could rise to nearly 15 feet by Sunday afternoon, about five feet above flood stage and enough to put the Highway 39 bridge near Hunt under water. The NWS issued a flood watch — meaning flooding can occur — until 7 p.m.
“Numerous secondary roads and bridges are flooded and very dangerous,” a weather service warning said.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly on Sunday issued an emergency order restricting access to Texas State Highway 39, The Kerr County Lead reported. A candlelight vigil for flood victims scheduled for Sunday night was also postponed, according to a post in Kerr County’s Facebook page.
There’s still a lot of people missing as of today. If all of those who are missing are in fact dead, then the total number of dead from this flood will be around 300. A hundred years from now, we’re still going to be talking about the July 4 floods on the Guadalupe River in Kerr County.
Perhaps that will change the conversation about flooding and local response and preparedness capabilities going forward.
In the week after the tragic July 4 flooding in Kerr County, several officials have blamed taxpayer pressure as the reason flood warning sirens were never installed along the Guadalupe River.
“The public reeled at the cost,” Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly told reporters one day after the rain pushed Guadalupe River levels more than 32 feet, resulting in nearly 100 deaths in the county, as of Thursday.
A community that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024, Kerr County constructed an economic engine on the allure of the Guadalupe River. Government leaders acknowledged the need for more disaster mitigation, including a $1 million flood warning system that would better alert the public to emergencies, to sustain that growth, but they were hamstrung by a small and tightfisted tax base.
An examination of transcripts since 2016 from Kerr County’s governing body, the commissioners court, offers a peek into a small Texas county paralyzed by two competing interests: to make one of the country’s most dangerous region for flash flooding safer and to heed to near constant calls from constituents to reduce property taxes and government waste.
“This is a pretty conservative county,” said former Kerr County Judge Tom Pollard, 86. “Politically, of course, and financially as well.”
[…]
By the time the 1987 flood hit, the county had grown to about 35,000 people. Today, there are about 53,000 people living in Kerr County.
In 2016, Kerr County commissioners already knew they were getting outpaced by neighboring, rapidly growing counties on installing better flood warning systems and were looking for ways to pull ahead.
During a March 28 meeting that year, they said as much.
“Even though this is probably one of the highest flood-prone regions in the entire state where a lot of people are involved, their systems are state of the art,” Commissioner Tom Moser said then. He discussed how other counties like Comal had moved to sirens and more modern flood warning systems.
“And the current one that we have, it will give – all it does is flashing light,” explained W.B. “Dub” Thomas, the county’s emergency management coordinator. “I mean all – that’s all you get at river crossings or wherever they’re located at.”
Kerr County already had signed on with a company that allowed its residents to opt in and get a CodeRED alert about dangerous weather conditions. But Thomas urged the commissioners court to strive for something more. Cell service along the headwaters of the Guadalupe near Hunt was spotty in the western half of Kerr County, making a redundant system of alerts even more necessary.
“I think we need a system that can be operated or controlled by a centralized location where – whether it’s the Sheriff’s communication personnel, myself or whatever, and it’s just a redundant system that will complement what we currently have,” Thomas said that year.
By the next year, officials had sent off its application for a $731,413 grant to FEMA to help bring $976,000 worth of flood warning upgrades, including 10 high water detection systems without flashers, 20 gauges, possible outdoor sirens, and more.
“The purpose of this project is to provide Kerr County with a flood warning system,” the county wrote in its application. “The System will be utilized for mass notification to citizens about high water levels and flooding conditions throughout Kerr County.”
But the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which oversees billions of FEMA dollars designed to prevent disasters, denied the application because they didn’t have a current hazard mitigation plan. They resubmitted it, news outlets reported, but by then, priority was given to counties that had suffered damage from Hurricane Harvey.
All that concern about warning systems seemed to fade over the next five years, as the political atmosphere throughout the county became more polarized and COVID fatigue frayed local residents’ nerves.
There are some quotes that follow that are the sort of thing that people on my side of the aisle, especially from other states, will point to as examples of how Kerr County deserved what it got. I don’t endorse any of that, but I do think the stakes are a lot clearer now than they have ever been. Comal County is about as red as Kerr is, and they managed to come up with the funds for a more robust warning system. I don’t know how anyone could look at those 300 fatalities and claim that something similar for Kerr County could be considered wasteful. But then, I wouldn’t have called it that before July 4.
There is another point that needs to be considered.
We have been mapping and studying the known flood risks at Camp Mystic.
It turns out that not only was the camp in a flood zone, some cabins were located in areas that local county officials had deemed “extremely hazardous.”
Here is more of what we found.
🧵 1/9
— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) 8:50 AM – 10 July 2025
The story is here but it’s paywalled. You can get an overview from the thread.
Federal regulators repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic’s buildings from their 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous flood plain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors, a review by The Associated Press found.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency included the prestigious girls’ summer camp in a “Special Flood Hazard Area” in its National Flood Insurance map for Kerr County in 2011, which means it was required to have flood insurance and faced tighter regulation on any future construction projects.
That designation means an area is likely to be inundated during a 100-year flood — one severe enough that it only has a 1% chance of happening in any given year.
Located in a low-lying area along the Guadalupe River in a region known as flash flood alley, Camp Mystic lost at least 27 campers and counselors and longtime owner Dick Eastland when historic floodwaters tore through its property before dawn on July 4.
The flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by FEMA, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off guard in a county that lacked a warning system.
But Syracuse University associate professor Sarah Pralle, who has extensively studied FEMA’s flood map determinations, said it was “particularly disturbing” that a camp in charge of the safety of so many young people would receive exemptions from basic flood regulation.
“It’s a mystery to me why they weren’t taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk, let alone challenging what seems like a very reasonable map that shows these structures were in the 100-year flood zone,” she said.
[…]
In response to an appeal, FEMA in 2013 amended the county’s flood map to remove 15 of the camp’s buildings from the hazard area. Records show that those buildings were part of the 99-year-old Camp Mystic Guadalupe, which was devastated by last week’s flood.
After further appeals, FEMA removed 15 more Camp Mystic structures in 2019 and 2020 from the designation. Those buildings were located on nearby Camp Mystic Cypress Lake, a sister site that opened to campers in 2020 as part of a major expansion and suffered less damage in the flood.
Campers have said the cabins at Cypress Lake withstood significant damage, but those nicknamed “the flats” at the Guadalupe River camp were inundated.
Experts say Camp Mystic’s requests to amend the FEMA map could have been an attempt to avoid the requirement to carry flood insurance, to lower the camp’s insurance premiums or to pave the way for renovating or adding new structures under less costly regulations.
Pralle said the appeals were not surprising because communities and property owners have used them successfully to shield specific properties from regulation.
There’s more, so read the rest. The point here is that as Houston and Harris County have tried to deal with its flood risk post-Harvey by adding more restrictions on where new construction can occur and buying out some properties that were in high-risk areas, the same kind of approach needs to be taken in Flash Flood Alley. The 100- and 500-year flood plains, whose official maps still need to be updated, ain’t what they used to be. We can accept that reality and adjust accordingly, or we can accept that another disaster like this is just a matter of time, and we don’t mean centuries. Maybe the Lege will deal with this in the special session, and maybe (much more likely) they won’t. But it’s the reality we face.
The people who lost their lives, for the most part, did not live there. The people with property damage don’t deserve help from FEMA. They voted for the people that represent them, of course, the 20% Democrats should get some help.