Before heading to bed before the Fourth of July holiday, Christopher
Flowers checked the weather while staying at a friend’s house along
the Guadalupe River. Nothing in the forecast alarmed him.
Hours later, he was rushing to safety: He woke up in darkness to electrical sockets popping and ankle-deep water
. Quickly, his family scrambled nine people into the attic. Phones buzzed w
ith alerts, Flowers recalled Saturday, but he did not remember when in the chaos they started.
“What they need is some kind of external system, like a tornado warnin
g that tells people to get out now,” Flowers, 44, said.
The destructive fast-moving waters that began before sunrise Frida
in the Texas Hill Country killed at least 82 people, and an unknown number of people remained missing.
But as authorities launch one of the largest search-and-res
cue efforts in recent Texas history, they have come under intensifying scrutiny over preparations and why r
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esidents and youth sum
mer camps that are dotted along the river were not alerted sooner or told to evacuate.
The National Weather Service sent out a series of flash flood warnings i
n the early hours Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies — a rare alert notifying of imminent danger.
Local officials have insisted that no one saw the flood potential coming and have defended their actions.
“There’s going to be a lot of finger-pointing, a lot of second-guessing
and Monday morning quarterbacking,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, whose district includes Kerr County
. “There’s a lot of people saying ‘why’ and ‘how,’ and I understand that.”