Kerrville city manager says change needed to prevent another flooding tragedy

Kerrville City Manager on preventing another flooding

Residents along the Guadalupe River in the Hill Country are being evacuated, and search efforts continue for missing people after severe flooding on Friday. The search area spans 60 miles, and some are expressing the need for improved alert systems in the city, which currently lacks evacuation sirens. Volunteer groups are assisting with debris removal and the cautious search for victims.

KERRVILLE, Texas - Search efforts continue for those still missing after the July Fourth flooding in Central Texas. While the 60-mile search area is scoured, some Texans are in the area providing relief and assistance to those affected.

While the focus in the short term is certainly search and rescue and clearing debris, one Kerrville leader believes that long-term change is also necessary to keep something like this from happening again.

Kerrville flooding latest

Makayla Goodrum says an Ingram firefighter rolled through her RV park, warning people to evacuate from flooding on Friday morning. 

Goodrum and her children live on the Guadalupe River, an area where Texas Game Wardens and volunteer groups are removing debris while searching for missing people. 

Kerrville cleanup

Hunter Poteet, a project manager for a home improvement company in San Marcos, says he could not sit around, and instead organized his crew to assist. 

Kerrville cleanup

At this stage, however, with people still missing, they have to be extra cautious. Poteet said they are being sure to carefully navigate the area while the search continues for missing people, and while heavy equipment is used in the area.

What they're saying:

"My heart goes out to the ones that are lost and the ones that are still missing," Poteet said.

In a sit-down interview with FOX 4, Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice says the search area is a 60-mile straight-line distance. Rice says he was running along the river at 3 a.m. the morning of the flood to see if it was safe.

Dalton Rice

"I was a first responder at one point in my life too, so I’m always assessing what’s going on, so I deliberately ran that river trail next to the park," Rice said.

Rice left at 4 a.m., thinking it was fine. However, he says calls started coming in around 4:45 a.m., and he quickly learned it was not fine. 

Moving forward, Rice says there needs to be something done to change how his city alerts residents. The city does not have evacuation sirens, but he would not specify what specifically needs to change. 

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When asked if Kerrville residents should have been evacuated, Rice said:

"A lot of these places, it’s shelter-in-place during a flood. Go to the high ground, and stay there. Because if you get out, especially when you’re 45 minutes away from anything, cell service is gone, you know, help is gone, that flood will come in, and you won’t even see it coming. Especially at night when everybody is sleeping because it’s a holiday weekend."

"Of course, there’s ways that this could’ve been prevented, but we can’t blame anybody, you know. The weather is unpredictable. We get flash flood warnings all the time," Rice continued.

Goodrum points to a flash-flood warning on Sunday turning out to be mild, but as for Friday's warning, she’s just glad a firefighter told her and neighbors to get away from the river.

"Had that firefighter not rolled through here? We’d probably be down the river. We’d for sure be down the river if it weren’t for them. Cause nobody would’ve known."