Finally!

It took 27 days for Kerr County residents to learn what their Emergency Management Coordinator did the morning of deadly Guadalupe River flash flooding.  William "Dub" Thomas had been sick and was asleep in bed.

The 30 foot rise occurred while Thomas was asleep.

Thomas also informed state officials that he helped set up the IPAWS system for Kerr County, the warning system that went unused by County officials as they had no Emergency Operations Center set up when the flooding occurred.  He also revealed he is the Emergency Management Coordinator for the City of Ingram.  Ingram city leaders have shared concerns about Thomas' absence both during the event and afterwards.

Finally, the public knows some things about that evening.  Unanswered questions include:  What attempts were made to contact Thomas prior to the successful 5:30 am phone call?  Who was backing up Thomas from an emergency management perspective while he was ill?  

Local leaders were absent.  That includes the County Judge, Sheriff and Emergency Management Coordinator.  That absence cost lives.

Update:  Rep. Drew Darby stated "We have a lot of folks who have titles, but when the time came to act, they did not do so in a timely fashion."  He added that the state pre-positioned assets for potential flooding so the idea that this came out of the blue and was totally unexpected did not wash with him.

Fortune titled their article:

Kerr County officials reveal they were asleep, out of town during night of catastrophic flood

Update 8-3-25:   A timeline shows the hours of crisis while Kerr County officials were unavailable.

Update 8-4-25:  Another timeline shows how leaders failed their people.

Update 8-10-25:  WaPo did a piece on local leadership failures early morning July 4th.

Update 8-11-25:  KSAT received 911 calls relative to Kerr County flooding that rolled over to nearby counties.  Kerr County is yet to release that information to the public.

Update 8-21-25:  Parents of the children from Camp Mystic who died in the flash flooding spoke to Texas legislators.  Words like "preventable failures", "safety being paramount", "protocols ... not followed", "their deaths will mean change",  and many more.  NYT reported:

“There needs to be better coordination with local first responders, because in an emergency, confusion kills, and we saw that on July 4.”

No one in the Kerr County Emergency Management hierarchy answered the phone calls from 911 emergency dispatch.

Update 8-22-25:  Texas Tribune reported:

“Make no mistake, House Bill 1 is fundamentally a bill about failure,” said Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, when he introduced it. “The camp failed these girls. The county failed them. The river authority failed them, and in a larger sense, their government.

Missing are the consequences for the people who failed to do their job, the one they were paid for.  The Texas Senate is in go-forward, clean-up mode.  The House has two measures in the works, one on disaster preparation for camps and the other for post disaster scams.  Isn't it a scam to take money to perform a job and then not do it?

Update 8-24-25:  Parents of the campers killed by flood waters met with Governor Abbott in the days before their testimony to the Texas legislature.

"Cile's life ended, not because of an unavoidable act of nature, but because of preventable failures..."

Failures for which their has been no public accountability to date, despite promises by Governor Coach Abbott to take action.

Update 9-25-25:  FEMA's interim chief was also missing in action for the Kerr County flash floods.  Staff could not reach him by phone.  That means there were communication failures at both the local and federal level that directly impacted the response, warning, rescue and recovery/cleanup.

Update 10-15-25:  The Texas Legislature will establish two more committees to look at the deadly flash flood event of July 4.