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Texas county’s emergency management coordinator was likely asleep in critical morning hours of deadly floods, sheriff says

By CNN Newsource

Published July 22, 2025 9:01 PM

By Shimon Prokupecz, Matthew J. Friedman and Rachel Clarke, CNN

Austin, Texas (CNN) — In critical minutes and hours when deadly flash floods hurtled down the Guadalupe River washing away children’s camps and RVs, the county official responsible for coordinating emergency response was likely asleep at home, the Kerr County sheriff tells CNN.

When asked if he knew whether Kerr County Emergency Management Coordinator W.B. “Dub” Thomas was working the night before the early morning July 4 flooding that killed at least 136 people in the state, Sheriff Larry Leitha said: “I’m sure he was at home asleep at that time,” and added that he was also asleep.

This revelation that, as a flurry of National Weather Service alerts sounding increasingly dire warnings came in, the key emergency official in charge was likely not awake to receive the information – has not been reported before.

The National Weather Service began forecasting the threat of flooding in Kerr County as early as Thursday morning with a hazardous flooding outlook, CNN previously reported. A flood watch was issued at 1:18 p.m. CT, that highlighted Kerrville, among other locations, as being at risk of flash flooding — though notably, as local officials have raised, the forecast was for less rainfall than what fell: as much as 5 to 7 inches for an event that ultimately dropped as much as 15 inches on parts of central Texas.

Several technical forecasts followed that afternoon and evening with increasingly heightened language about the magnitude of the potential flooding. At 6:30 p.m., river forecasters were calling for locally intense rain rates that would “quickly overwhelm” the ground’s ability to absorb the water.

More than 100 of those killed in the flooding were in Kerr County where children’s camps and RV parks sat on the banks of the Guadalupe. The area lies in the heart of “Flash Flood Alley,” but Kerr County has no network of sirens along the river to alert both residents and visitors when they should get to higher ground.

The first warning for “life-threatening flash flooding” for Kerrville came at 1:14 a.m. Friday, July 4, and was marked specifically to trigger the Emergency Alert System. It would have sounded the alarm on cell phones in the warned area, assuming those phones had service, and their users hadn’t turned off EAS weather alerts.

Three hours later, the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office sent the first report of flooding at low-water crossings.

Thomas, who is also a deputy sheriff in the county, did not immediately respond to CNN’s renewed request for comment, and has declined multiple attempts to speak in the weeks since the storm. “I don’t have time for an interview, so I’m going to cancel this call,” he told CNN on July 7.

The county’s emergency operations center wasn’t up and running at around 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. when the most intense flooding started, Leitha said. “We’re in a rural area; we don’t have a 24-hour service, or anything open like that.”

The sheriff said officials are going to take a “hard look” at whether they should have done more to prepare for the weather event and as Thomas’ employer, review his job performance leading up to and during the tragedy.

The interview comes as a special hearing in Texas started on Wednesday, scrutinizing the state’s safety preparations and the events leading up to the tragedy. There’s already a split emerging about exactly what should be prioritized: the efficiency of those who tried to save lives once the water arrived or whether more should have been done before the storm.

“We need to find out what happened. We need to know for us to go forward and make sure that we prevent the loss of life on the scale,” said José Menéndez, a Democrat state senator, who will be on the joint select committee on disaster preparedness and flooding.

His Republican colleague on the committee, Wes Virdell, who is the state representative for Kerr county, the area hardest hit, urged more caution in a separate interview with CNN.

“Government’s natural inclination is to overreact, and so I want to make sure that we don’t have that happening,” Virdell said.

Gov. Greg Abbott issued a proclamation for a special legislative session that began Monday to address flood warning systems, emergency communications, and relief funding for victims — as well as other issues that are more political in nature including redistricting.

Wednesday’s hearing included testimony from officials in charge of managing the rivers throughout Flash Flood Alley, as well as Chief Nim Kidd, head of the state’s Division of Emergency Management (TDEM), and members of the Department of Public Safety, the state’s police force. The agenda indicates lawmakers will seek information on disaster preparedness and response, flood planning and first responder communications.

Members of the joint select committee have not received any briefing materials or confidential information in advance of the meeting in Austin, CNN has learned.

State officials, lawmakers call for improved radio, alert systems

“All disasters in Texas are locally managed,” Kidd said Wednesday in his opening remarks to the joint committee of the state legislature investigating the flood response. “I always say we are responsible, but we are not in charge. The responsibility of being in charge rests with local officials.”

First responders need better and more coordinated radio systems when handling severe weather events, Kidd told lawmakers. He noticed some problems the morning of July 4 when he went to Kerrville and ran into members of the San Antonio fire department who had badly working radios.

“We’re better than that,” Kidd said, while stressing the need for improved technological capability. “Now I’m not suggesting we go build a brand-new system from the ground up. I think there’s plenty of broadband, fiber technology capability, Starlink, you name it out there,” he said.

Rep. Virdell noted people have “become desensitized” to flash flood warnings or alerts on their phone and asked Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Freeman Martin if the agency has a way to address the issue.

“I would agree with that,” said Martin. For the department’s 19th anniversary, Martin said, they’re working on a public awareness campaign to educate people and remind them to “turn their alerts on, to look for Amber alerts, especially weather alerts.”

But Martin said he has friends who turn off alerts entirely, adding: “I don’t know what the answer to that is, but I agree with you.”

“We’re working with families every day,” Martin continued. “We realize the magnitude of what happened but we’re talking about what we did, the response suggestions for improvement moving forward.”

Partisan split on views about emergency response

A rare confluence of events contributed to the disaster — a summer’s worth of rain landing on drought-dried soil, the area’s geography gathering the water in the river until it could break its banks near the town of Hunt, a community that is often saturated with weather alerts and the worst happening in the middle of the night before the July 4 holiday and many people in the affected zones not having access to phones or cell service.

“You talk to the locals, and they don’t feel like there was anything more that could have been done at that point,” said Virdell, who arrived in Kerr County the morning of the floods and stayed for 10 days. “That’s not saying every local, but (it) seems to be the general consensus.”

Virdell first went to check on the coordination of emergency operations. “TDEM and all the agencies that came in — Texas Parks and Wildlife, DPS, National Guard — all of those guys worked very well together. It was impressive to watch, and the local officials with them.”

He said his constituents recognized the unparalleled nature of the event. “Outside of Kerr you see several people trying to point fingers and what not. You go talk to the people that live there, and they’re not blaming people.”

But Menéndez is concerned that more could have been done, especially with the children’s camps on the river where youngsters slept in cabins with counselors.

“We cannot just say it was a freak of nature. Yes, it was. But can we do a better job? I believe we can,” he said.

“I think they needed to have better preparation, especially when you have children who are being supervised by just a little bit older children, maybe young adults. That’s a dangerous situation. You need to have ultimate preparation,” he said, adding he wanted more clarity on the emergency operations process in Kerr and neighboring counties.

“If you have nothing to fear, you should have nothing to hide. If you really did the best you can, then come out and say it. People deserve to have honest answers, no matter how painful they may be.”

Controversially, Texas Republicans have signaled they will first use this special legislative session to force a vote on aggressive redistricting maps pushed by the White House that could give the GOP five more seats in the US House of Representatives. The move will likely hamper state Democrats’ efforts to block the new maps, because they won’t want to disrupt the session before there is a vote to approve the flood relief.

The committee will reconvene the following week in Kerrville, Texas — the epicenter of some of the worst flooding, where both members said they are looking forward to hearing directly from flood victims.

CNN’s Emma Tucker and Holly Yan contributed to this report.