The residents of Kerr County, Texas, are still recovering from the disastrous flooding that swept through the region over the Independence Day weekend. While the cleanup goes on, those people are (understandably) demanding some answers from local authorities about the area’s warning systems, and what happened in the hours leading up to the floods.
State lawmakers have been holding hearings on the matter, and out of one of those hearings came an eyebrow-raising admission: One of the key emergency management officials was, on the night of the flood, ill and asleep.
The emergency management coordinator of Kerr County, which bore the brunt of the deadly July 4 floods in the Texas Hill Country, testified on Thursday that he was sick and asleep when the floodwaters rose in the middle of the night, eventually killing 108 people in the county.
The admission by the official, William B. Thomas IV, came at the start of an extraordinary hearing held by state lawmakers in a packed convention center in the city of Kerrville, a short walk from the banks of the Guadalupe River, which surged to record levels in the predawn darkness of July 4.
Now, we can’t blame Mr. Thomas for being sick, or for taking to his bed to fight off his illness. That’s what anyone would do. What’s more, his co-workers and management knew of his absence.
Mr. Thomas said his supervisors were aware that he was off that day. He testified that he slept through most of July 3; awoke briefly around 2 p.m., when he said there was no indication of local rainfall; and then went back to sleep again until his wife woke him up at 5:30 a.m. on July 4.
By that point, the worst of the flooding had already surged through low-lying communities in the county, including the unincorporated town of Hunt and the summer camps and recreational vehicle parks that sit near the river’s banks.