Texas flooding: Kerr County officials provide update

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Clint Morris. I'm public information officer for the Kerr County Sheriff's Office. Our area has again experienced a powerful natural disaster that has affected many of our residents, damaged homes and businesses and led to loss of life. Our thoughts are with those experienced loss through this disaster. Today we have representative West for Dell, Texas House of Representatives, Congressman Chip Roy, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, Kerr County Commissioner Precinct One Tom Jones and Kerr County Sheriff Larry Letha. Each are going to share with us information about our response and the status of operations. First this afternoon is representative West for Dell. Thank you. First, I'll say thank you all for coming out today. Appreciate y'all being here and covering this. Been asked a lot since yesterday. You know what? What do I think is different this time than last time? And I think the best thing I can point out is last time last year we were hit with the flood that when people went to sleep, there was not a lot of a lot of indication or rain or anything like that, that a wall of water is gonna be coming down the river this time. The difference is we saw that our neighbors were being flooded for about about two days before this flood. And so that's really kind of the big difference that that has happened here. We're thankful to teed them to Texas Parks and Wildlife and to Texas for Texas Department of Public Safety. They've had a lot of guys pre positioned here, and that's been very helpful. You'll notice, uh, much different in the loss of life that has happened between this one and the last one. And that goes back to one is we weren't caught off guard by something nobody expected. And then, too, we had a lot of critical key people that were in the proper locations that were very instrumental in helping us. And the residents were very aware of the possibility of what's gonna happen when that river floods up. Yesterday morning, I called one of the camps at sunrise and I said, Hey, how is it looking? This is up in the hunt area. And they said, Honestly, it's barely come out of the banks where we got hit. The hardest was starting around Ingram and all the way downstream from there. And so the camps upstream, uh, from what we can tell, had very little little flooding, if any. And we're very grateful that there's been a much better response this time. And I'm also grateful to Kerr County sheriffs. They've been been great in the Kerr County commissioners and county judge. Also, with that, I'm gonna hand it over to U. S. Congressman Chip Roy. Thank you. Thanks, Wes. Thanks for all of you for coming out here. Thanks for this team here of friends and about public servants that are serving the people here. Um, it is, uh, you know, we're back here a year later. I will say that I agree with Wes and I agree. Everybody here that communication has been extraordinary this year, and I'm deeply, deeply proud of the people of Texas in this county and throughout the state of Texas and the response and reaction. I'm not gonna get ahead of the numbers or any of that stuff. I'll the governor's also doing a press conference in New Valley, so we'll get some updates on the statewide and the regional implications. But obviously I represent a big chunk of the area, not just Kerr. That's been impacted. I've been on the phone nonstop from the day that it's happened with Sheriff Latho, with the sheriff in Kendall County, Sheriff in Gillespie County, Blanco County, uh, Bandera County, all over the folks in real. And, um, you know, we're having conversations. I've had a good conversation with Secretary Homeland Security Mullen and what they've been doing. They've sent a couple of teams down here. I know there's a conversation ongoing about federal disaster. I'll leave that to the governor and our ongoing communications with federal authorities about what declaration may or may not occur. Obviously, there's an extraordinary amount of damage, but it's still underway, and we know that there's still flooding going up and water falling. You know, the Llano River still going. The rainfall still happening out in Sonora, and we know that there's still impacting you, so deeply appreciative of all the coordination, all of the work state, local and federal authorities coming together to do what's necessary. And we're going to continue to pray for the people in the community here have already been touched with some of the nonprofit organizations, Community Foundation and others about what we're going to do going forward. We're obviously going to need to move quickly and already had conversations again with Secretary Mullen and with DHS and with FEMA. Cameron Hamilton should be installed there as the head of FEMA this week, and he's a good friend. So we're having the conversations that we're gonna need to do to make sure that the people of this community are gonna be able to be, uh, supported, helped. Uh, some of the houses that were rebuilt from last year were some of the houses that were impacted by this flood. But we're gonna pray. And as I said last year, I'll close with this. You know, that cross stands out there on the hill overlooking Kerrville. The people of this community are strong people of faith. People of Texas. They came together last year to raise $150 million to respond. We'll do it again. But right now we just need to finish the job of getting through the current moment and they get busy rebuilding. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to County Judge Kelly. My name is Rob Kelly, and I am the Kerr County judge. I think most of you already know what my position here is. I am the emergency management director for the county. And when this whole topic came up, the government declared a declaration back on Tuesday. That's what brought it to our. We knew about it as early as Sunday, I think. But by Tuesday, we definitely knew what it was. And I wanted to share with you all what my primary responsibilities are at the beginning of an event like this, a disaster. And that is I am responsible for declaring the disaster if one is to be declared. And if the disaster is, in fact, declared is my responsibility to set up the E. O. C. The emergency management operations. And I can also set up incident command post if need be. But those are the primary responsibilities. We stood up an incident command post Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday evening, early evening in response to the governor's declaration. And with that, we used the sheriff's training facility over at the sheriff's office complex to do that. And brought in some new equipment so we could see the weather and all the other things on the screen at one time there in the incident command room. That was on Tuesday. I couldn't go to sleep very well that night. I woke up about 3 30 and decided to go over to the incident command post there at the sheriff's office and check on it. And we already already had it staffed and ready to go. The images were already up on the screens, and we were off and running. And that was on Tuesday. That was Wednesday morning. And then by Wednesday evening, we knew that the things everything was building with the rains. I think we had between looked at the National Weather Service statistics, and they say we have between 20 and 24 inches of rain in this event. Uh, and so that was Wednesday evening. Uh, I say Wednesday evening, and then I was awakened again early Thursday morning about 1 30 with the report of the rainfall in the status of where we were. At that point in time, I went ahead and declared the disaster, and it was 3 30 in the morning when I declared it, and I haven't identified some of the other players in this. But we have what I call my defacto first assistant emergency management director, which is the county judge elect Tom Jones, Commissioner Precinct one. And he and I consulted about 3 30 in the morning and decided we'd make our decisions jointly saying that we talk out together and made the decision to go ahead and declare the disaster. It was about the same time I was talking to Dalton Rice, the city manager, and we declared the city declared the disaster at the same time that we did about 3 30 in the morning. And what we learned after that is we had problems in the incident command room with the electricity and with water seeping in. So we had to move it, and we moved the incident command from the training room at the sheriff's office to here in less than 30 minutes. I got everything set up over here and began operating EOC in this in this facility. And so that is how we set up the emergency operators operating center. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Tom Jones. I am the current precinct, one county commissioner, and I was asked to come up and talk a little bit about the infrastructure and the flood sirens. We incur county. This event is very widespread. It was a totally different type of event than what we had a year ago. A lot of the the problems that we had this year was because we had such a loss of the riparian recovery. The water came down fast, and it affected further down county, probably a little more so than it would have in the western part of the county. Currently, we have 19 bridges in Kerr County. Six of those have major damage to some degree with some of them we can't get to. We can't see yet, so we're waiting to find and get a total assessment on that. We have our engineering department and road and bridge that are currently working with Tietum to do damage assessments, and so we'll get further information on that as we can. Uh, we just won't be clear to us for a little bit. We have to wait for the water to recede so we can do a complete assessment on that. Um, the flood warning system, something I'm sure is very important to everybody here. The good news is it worked, and it worked the way it was designed to work. We have good fail safes built into it. A lot of, um, areas to correct if we see that we run into stumbling blocks, troubles, and those fail safe worked perfectly. We began sending out at 1 36 a.m. A total of 59 throughout the incident. I pause and code red alerts. They started. They began through the cellular monitoring before we actually started implementing the three sirens that we did set off according to protocols. There's been a lot of questions about the emergency action plan. That emergency action plan is in place. It will be approved through the court here coming up shortly. This happened a little quicker than we thought it would, but it's still in place, and it has been activated, and it worked just exactly the way it was designed to work. But that activations two sirens were on the South Fork and one in Hunt, uh, covering that section of the western portion of the county. Um, water levels didn't warn any activation of sirens anywhere on the North Fork. So I think the plan came together. I think it worked, and I think we were extremely prepared for this event. And Sheriff Letha, you'll be next. Kirk County Sheriff Larry Letha. I just want to say a few things from my part and perspective. The sheriff's office. Uh, the Kirk County Sheriff's Office is collaborating with the Texas Game Wardens, Texas Parks and Wildlife Task Force one and two, uh, and Texas Department of Emergency Management, along with our volunteer fire departments, City of Kerrville and all other state responders. You know, it was a collaboration that we would not have went good. We didn't have all them here to help us with all these partners were involved in multiple high water rescues and evaluate evacuations across the county. You know, I know you already like like numbers. So on that particular day on the 16th, we handled 234 calls of service for this particular event that was on that one day. Only the 16th. No calls went unanswered. Our teams immediately went into work as flooding began. Also, we can confirm the identity of one gentleman who lost his life, and that's John Mark Stewart of Kerrville. Mr Stewart's home was washed away in the area of Goat Creek Road in western Kerr County. Our officers recovered him near the 300 block of Center Point River Road. Our thoughts and prayers go out with them and their family. We do have one shelter open today. We're looking at maybe closing it. I just found out right before I walked in there. There's nobody in there at this time. Uh, when I started this morning, there was 17 people in there. A couple of things I'd like to tell you offer the perspective of the sheriff and sheriff's offices. These were two different floods. Okay, we're not going to get in any detail on last year's flood. But what I want y'all to know is the differences. As far as me, I got a call at 3 40 in the morning, not knowing what exactly I had. You know, when I went to bed was 3 to 5 inches of rain where the forecast up to seven or nine. We get those all the day. That's just another day at the office. Compared to today, we had heads up. We were prepared in a way of we had the icy set up. We had notified all the cancer communicating with them. Our emergency management coordinator were. In addition to that, we had the fire departments all stood up ready to go. This year we were ready to go. We just waited for it to hit and we went into work. And I'd like to say I'm proud of every agency, all our elected officials that make this possible. I would like to thank the governor's office and the governor. You know, if it wasn't for him and the resources he gives us, I mean, it really be almost impossible for us to do our job. I don't have a $4 million helicopter, you know, just at the hand of myself. But those resources were very valuable. They were here from the start. They're still here. I don't know how long we're gonna last. We're assessing everything each and every day. We will keep you all posted. Also, I like to thank all my elected officials. This wouldn't be possible. I mean, they they contact me on a regular basis. They truly care about this county. So at this time, in closing, I'm going to ask the judge to come back up here and say a few words. Then we'll take a few questions. Want to thank our partners in all of this, in particular, the Texas Game Wardens, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Department of Emergency Management, Texas Task Force Two, Texas Task Force One, as well as dozens of responding jurisdictions from across the state. And you've seen them. There's literally hundreds of people in town helping us with this. Uh, any volunteers that would like to volunteer to help us with this, please contact the Kurt together at 98 Coronado Drive. That would be that. That is the Disaster Relief Center. Uh, for those wishing to donate, we encourage you to donate to Global Empower Mission, which is 501 C three. Uh, and with that, I'll turn it back over to Clint. All right. Uh, and with that, we'll take a couple of questions. Um, please ask that you before you state your question, if you're called on, please state your name and the media outlet you represent. Why are we doing this press conference today and not yesterday? And what was with? What was the thinking on the delay on this? Why didn't we do it yesterday? And why didn't we do it with her? Is about a unified command here? What's going on? I'll answer that. Uh, no. I mean, Louis, we were still working pretty hard. You know, we weren't prepared to it, uh, to do it yesterday. You know, I'll give you a quick example of what happened. I don't like to put out numbers until it's confirmed. You know, we were just fixing to put out a press release. Uh, at that time, I had a report of two bodies, you know, that were found. Okay, so here we go. We go out and look for this delayed me like four hours. So we're out here looking for these two bodies were fixing to put in a press release. If I put it out there, I own it. You know, you're gonna come after me. That ain't true. So when we get out there, we didn't find nothing. So it took about about four hours later, we got another report and I said, you know, we're not going to unless somebody from the Kerr County Sheriff's Office puts eyes on it. We're not going to identify anything like that. We did. We got it out. But Louis, we were. We were really busy yesterday. Still working it. I mean, we just, you know, I didn't think we weren't prepared to have one yesterday. We're prepared. We got some good, accurate numbers. I'll stand behind him. That's about the best reason I can give you, sir. Name is still going on. Search and recovery efforts. Yes, sir. Yeah, we're still there. They're going all over the county. Water starting to recede. I know yesterday late, we found a as of yesterday late, we found a couple of vehicles and R. V. Those vehicles we have identified the owners on those. And, you know, the good news and the best news right now is that we don't have any reports of anybody missing. And I'm really proud of that. So I think we're in really good shape when we're going to stand down where we're going to cancel. I don't know. At that time, this is still alive and going. You know, I wish we could have got you yesterday. We try to get you as soon as we can. Like I said, I'm only going to bring you accurate information. Thank you all for being here. We'll continue to update social media for Kirk County and the Kirk County Sheriff's Office, and we'll send out a media advisor if there is a further press event. Thank you.