A year after catastrophic floods, Texas expands warning sirens as communities question whether it's enough

When a catastrophic flood hit Kerr County last summer, killing more than 100 people, residents across the state demanded to know what went wrong. One of the major issues identified: in much of the affected area, communities did not have outdoor warning sirens. 

Lawmakers vowed to address the problem. Gov. Greg Abbott called a special legislative session and lawmakers passed a new state law to help some communities pay for siren systems.

As residents in the Hill Country mark one year since the tragedy, Texas is rolling out those new flood warning sirens in the hardest hit areas. But a CBS News Texas I-Team investigation found big gaps still exist, leaving some Texans wondering whether lawmakers fixed the problem or just responded to a crisis.  

New sirens going up in flood-prone parts of Texas 

In the days after the July 4th weekend flooding last year, State Sen. Paul Bettencourt pushed to install outdoor warning sirens in flood-prone areas.

"It was obvious that if sirens had gone off down the upper Guadalupe River shed as this wall of water was coming down, then people could have had a last-minute warning to get to higher ground," Bettencourt said in a recent interview.

Lawmakers passed Senate Bill 3, the legislation authored by Bettencourt that set aside $50 million for a grant program to help flood-prone counties pay for siren installation. 

Twenty-nine Hill Country counties have signed agreements with the state, including Kerr County, where eight sirens have been installed. The sirens have been strategically located near campsites, along the south and north fork of the Guadalupe River.

Not everyone in the area is convinced these new sirens will keep them safe.

Kerr County resident Randy Murphy's family owns property along the Guadalupe. He says last year, when the floods hit, he was able to work quickly to make sure everyone got to higher ground. But while he believes the new sirens are "better than nothing" in a confined area like the campsites, he questions how effective they will be to homeowners along the river in the event of a flash flood. 

He doesn't think they would have made a difference during last year's flood: 

"You wouldn't have been able to hear them in that kind of a storm."

Murphy said he believes lawmakers oversimplified a complex problem. He argues what's needed is something more sophisticated: a connected network of sensors feeding real-time data, capable of pushing targeted alerts to cell phones, radios and sirens. 

"If they said sirens are going to be it, we're no further along today than we were back on July 4th," Murphy said. 

A patchwork of protection in many Texas counties

Thirty counties are eligible for funding through the state's new grant program. But in many of  Texas' other 224 counties, communities either don't have sirens, or have systems that are outdated. There is no statewide standard for how sirens should be used or maintained. There is not even a database.

The I-Team reached out to every county in the state in an effort to create one, and in the process uncovered a patchwork of protection, where safety can depend entirely on your zip code. The I-Team identified more than 2,000 sirens, nearly half of them in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. But large parts of the state are without any.

Cost remains a deterrent for many county governments. The price tag for sirens can vary depending on size, features and installation. 

The eight recently installed in Kerr County cost $716,000, a little less than $100,000 per siren. These are on the pricier end as they include software and an integration system. Others can cost under $50,000, but even then some local communities have told the I-Team they can't afford to install new systems.

Bettencourt said the state had to start somewhere and it made sense for lawmakers to focus on areas of Texas hit by last year's floods first, but he warned communities shouldn't wait for the state to invest in the technology.

"We don't need to go through another natural disaster for everybody to realize that we need to get outdoor warning sirens up and running," Bettencourt said. "Use our local monies wisely."

Search the table below to learn more about how different Texas counties alert residents in emergency situations.