By Jim Carlton

A local agency that helps manage the Guadalupe River was in the process of setting up a software program to help Kerr County officials better assess flood threats three months before flash floods killed more than 110 people and left dozens missing, according to public records.

The Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which oversees the river winding through Kerr County in the Texas Hill Country, in April contracted with a company to create a "dashboard" to aggregate disparate rainfall and other weather data so emergency managers could more readily spot a flood threat. The status of the contract, for $73,000, was unclear, and officials of the authority, a government agency, referred questions to the county, which declined to respond.

Members of the authority board that approved the contract included Dick Eastland, the co-owner of Camp Mystic, who died in the floods. Leaders from two other prominent summer camps, Camp La Junta and Camp Waldemar, also sat on the board. They declined to comment.

"Our UGRA Family is heartbroken for our community and the devastation caused by the July 4th Flood," the authority said in a statement on its website.

The proceedings at the Upper Guadalupe River Authority further show how the area's history of floods was on the mind of local officials well before July 4, when a predawn wall of water swept away cabins, RVs and people. At least 27 girls and staff died at the century-old Camp Mystic alone.

Separately, Kerr County had for a decade debated installing outdoor warning sirens along the river but hadn't done so, even as other Texas cities and counties adopted them to sound loud alerts ahead of floods and other natural disasters. Minutes of Kerr County commission meetings showed the officials struggled to secure grants to pay for the sirens and were reluctant to spend money themselves.

Now, after last week's deadly floods, county officials are facing questions about why people didn't get more notice before floodwaters hit the camps around 4 a.m. as preteens slept. The National Weather Service had issued a 1:14 a.m., July 4, flash-flood warning for Kerr County with "catastrophic" potential for loss of life. Some public figures and disaster veterans have questioned why summer camps weren't evacuated.

"It is a huge tragedy, many heads will roll and many lawsuits will be filed," predicted Clint Dawson, chair of the aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics department at the University of Texas at Austin.

State and county officials have said the time for reviewing their emergency response will come after they finish the difficult job of trying to find still-missing flood victims. Local officials have declined to give a timeline for their response to the flood. In a statement on its website, Camp Mystic said, "We have been in communication with local and state authorities who are tirelessly deploying extensive resources to search for our missing girls."

The Upper Guadalupe River Authority directors raised the idea of developing a flood-warning system for Kerr County in January of last year, according to meeting minutes. The authority noted in a 2024 report that the county, situated on a plateau with steep canyons that funnel rainwater like a hose, alternates between drought and flood with nine major floods going back to 1932.

Later that year, an executive from a weather-data company called Kisters North America appeared at a meeting to present options. Officials of the Dutch company, whose North American division is based in Boerne, Texas, weren't immediately available for comment.

A video on its website shows rainfall, temperature and other weather data overlaid on points of a map to give a visual picture of what's going on. A 2018 report by Kisters and others said it had developed a demonstration project using National Weather Service forecasts for flood impacts at stream and street level.

"Emergency management professionals can easily view approximate flood levels and address inundation using...$(NWS.AU)$ forecasts," the report said.

In February, the Upper Guadalupe River Authority's board president, William Rector, said priorities for 2025 and 2026 would include implementing the flood-warning dashboard.

The board awarded the contract to Kisters in April. "Information from this dashboard will be used by UGRA staff and local emergency coordinators and decision makers," the authority wrote in its 2025 Strategic Plan.

Disaster experts say such a flood-warning dashboard could serve as an important tool in helping prevent future tragedies, but would need to be used as part of a larger plan. "It's very straightforward to build a model that shows you what is going to flood and when," said James Doss-Gollin, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. "The hard part is you need to have a plan to reach people to get out of the way."

Write to Jim Carlton at Jim.Carlton@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 09, 2025 20:11 ET (00:11 GMT)

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