Kerr County Disaster Coordinator Retires March 31st

Houston Public Media reported:

Kerr County’s emergency coordinator, Will Thomas, said he was ill and asleep as floodwaters began to rise and didn’t participate in early response calls on July 3. Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha also said he was asleep as the river rose, while Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, who oversees emergency management, said he was out of town.

And no first responder went to their home and knocked on the door?

William "Dub" Thomas is retiring effective March 31, 2026.   County Judge Rob Kelly, also retiring, said they would miss Dub and that Dub cannot be replaced.  I would say as Emergency Management Coordinator Dub was critical to the "asleep, asleep, out of town" leadership approach to the County's flood disaster response on July 4, 2025.

The first disaster was the abject failure to respond, to set up a command post and coordinate efforts in a timely manner.  The second was a failure of communication regarding actions not taken and not holding responsible people accountable.  The third was a failure to drill for flash flooding under Dub's tenure (as the County could produce no documents of such).

The County and Dub are yet to release their "after action" report on the July 4th flood disaster.  Conducting such evaluations are a basic in the emergency response arena.   It could happen in the next four days, but I doubt it.  This transitioned to an accountability avoidance/liability minimization exercise long ago.  

These are the words that welcomed Dub to his role with Kerr County in 2015:

This is very important, the position that Dub has as Emergency Management Coordinator. The City has an Emergency Management Coordinator; now the County has an Emergency Management Coordinator. These are the guys that are literally in charge if there's an emergency, a major fire,  major flood or whatever. And as the Sheriff pointed out the other day, the document is this thing, so Dub helped to  prepare that. So, I think this county, with Dub in place, and with the city there, it's taken us a year to redo this thing, but I think this county is going to have the best emergency management plan probably in the state. So, welcome, Dub.

Those words did not hold up so well.  All hat (plan), no cattle (implementation-flood drill or actual response).