Texas RV park says there were no flood warnings

Park managers Mary Anne Moran and Hannah Thrasher told us water was already starting to overtake the old River Road RV Resort when volunteer firefighters woke them up Friday. When you got out and saw where the water level was, what did you think? I thought it could possibly be over. Oh, my God.

They normally get an emergency alert on their phones, then send text messages to guests if they've opted in. But both of them say those texts didn't go out because they never got a notification to evacuate. We just drove around and saw how much water was in the park, and then we went up to higher ground, and that was it. That's all we could have done. Why there weren't alarms going off around here is beyond me. A lot of people in the area. Nearly 400 people were staying in RVs and cabins here on the property that morning. And the power of the flood that was coming is clear. Right here, there is a search team that is digging up a truck that is buried under sand and rock. We counted more than 20 summer camps and RV parks dotting the shoreline of the Guadalupe River in Kerr County. In a contentious press conference today, local officials refused to answer questions about who is responsible for monitoring the weather and sending out alerts. This team up here is focused on bringing people home. That's our focus.

About a decade ago, the Kerr County commission debated a new flood warning system to replace the informal phone tree system they already had known as river calling. Meeting records from 2016 show some officials pushed back against the idea of sirens. Commissioner Buster Baldwin, who is now deceased, said at the time "The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of the night, I'm going to have to start drinking again to put up with y'all." Two months later, he voted against the proposal. "I'm going to vote no because of numerous reasons," he said. "I think this whole thing is a little extravagant for Kerr County, and I see the word sirens and all that stuff in here." Back at the RV park, Mary Anne Moran told us she thinks any early warning could have saved lives. Now these people have lost their lives, and they're just all over our area. And you can't help. You can't save them. It's too late. It's too late. One man who evacuated the park today said he saw those floodwaters almost wash his wife off the road, but she and everyone else in that park they were able to get out safely. Thank goodness. You mentioned river calling, Jason. What exactly is that? How does that work? This is an old system where somebody upstream would see the water starting to rise. They'd call their neighbor downstream, they'd call their neighbor downstream, and they seemed to like this when we go back and look at media minutes. However, the park we were at today, they said those calls never made it down as far as them. They relied on media reports. They relied on these phone alerts. That is not something they were getting in the middle of the night. OK, Jason Allen, thank you so much.