The disaster left Kerr County residents comparable to Marvin Willis, 67, wanting solutions.
“I didn’t get one alert,” stated Willis, a journal writer who lives a mile and a half from the Guadalupe River and sometimes receives them on his cellphone. “I haven’t talked to anybody I do know who’s gotten one.”
He stated full transparency from leaders is required: “When you don’t know what occurred, you don’t know methods to repair it.”
Even Kerrville’s mayor, Joe Herring, stated he acquired no emergency alerts early Friday and was solely woke up by a name from Metropolis Supervisor Dalton Rice at 5:30 a.m.
“If they’d come,” Herring stated of the alerts, “and we had an opportunity to save lots of all of the individuals we’ve misplaced and are lacking — completely, we must always have had them extra. We must always have had a warning.”
Herring stated Tuesday on MSNBC that authorities leaders take threats from pure disasters significantly, however that the occasions that night time unfolded very quickly.
“The query is, ‘Do I want we had warned these individuals?’ Completely. The query is, ‘Do I hope we warn individuals higher sooner or later?’ Completely.”
Abbott, in a separate information convention later Tuesday, reiterated that the main target remained on the search and rescue effort and stated officers would get into the whys and hows of the catastrophe after that part was over.
Requested what native officers knew early Friday because the flood was bearing down, Abbott, a Republican, stated: “You’d need to ask them.”
Ronnie Barker, who has lived within the unincorporated group of Hunt in Kerr County for 23 years, stated he was among the many residents who didn’t obtain any alerts early Friday. However he’s wanting on the positives, comparable to how first responders have mobilized.
“Folks from everywhere in the nation and the world, everyone needs to come back in and do one thing,” Baker stated. “We’ve simply been flooded with individuals serving to.”
One other resident, Rena Bailey, who has lived in Hunt since 1990, received alerts however stated they may have been worded stronger.
“I’ve received notices on a regular basis about no matter. There was no urgency in what I received,” Bailey stated.
Whereas she recalled one alert saying the climate was “life threatening,” she stated individuals might have wanted extra steerage, significantly in a spot the place flooding is a lifestyle.
“If they’d stated there’s a wall of water coming or evacuate,” Bailey stated, “however I didn’t take it that manner. And so they can blame me, however don’t blame me, as a result of I dwell right here, and I do know what I get on a regular basis.”
Minyvonne Burke and Suzanne Gamboa reported from Hart and Erik Ortiz from New York.
