INGRAM, TEXAS – After last year’s July 4th flood investigators concluded flood sirens needed to be installed, and cell phone alerts had to be improved.
So, how did these warning systems perform this week?
The News 4 I-Team went to Ingram to find out if they provided the early warning emergency officials said they would.
The company that installed these siren towers next to Howdy’s and the River Run Campground says they went off around 3 a.m. Thursday, awakening campers before flood waters reached their RV’s.
River Sentry posted this video of one of its sirens blaring out a warning after detecting flood waters. Back in January we reported how the high tech devices were being installed near summer camps and campgrounds in Hunt and Ingram.
The worst flooding Thursday was downstream from them, but six of the siren towers activated,
“The tower sirens went off, the lights went off, the voice instructions went out, and that affected the evacuation of the River Run RV Park that was next door which we find to be a pretty good outcome,” said Ian Cunningham of River Sentry.
The campground is near the HTR RV Park where about 40 campers were swept away to their deaths last year.
The River Sentry devices aren’t the only ones that sounded Thursday.
Kerr County and the Upper Guadalupe River Authority installed their own network of six sirens.
“The flood warning system, something I’m sure is very important to everybody here. Good news is it worked. And it worked the way it was designed to work,” said Kerr County Precinct 1 Commissioner Tom Jones,
“The siren went off three times, and we could hear the volume very well,” said Hunt resident Maria Grieser.
Grieser says the siren also blasted a spoken announcement.
“Something like emergency, warning, there’s flood conditions, seek higher ground immediately,” Grieser said.
One of the harder hit areas was Comfort, where the Guadalupe River and Cypress Creek come together.
For years that community has used tornado sirens to warn of flooding and residents there tell us they heard them again Thursday morning.
Residents told us they also received a lot of those cell phone alerts from the National Weather Service and other agencies.
Including these text messages from Kerr County’s Code Red alert system at 1:37 in the morning and again at 3 a.m.
County officials were criticized for not sending out Code Red messages during last year’s flood until it was too late.
“So, I’ve got to say FEMA probably sent 20, the weather service sent maybe several. Code Red sent two or three,” Grieser said.
Grieser says this year the cell phone alerts seemed to be more specific and better conveyed the urgency of the situation.
“The text messages included where the flooding was happening or how much, it would give us enough information to know what decisions to make,” she said.
River Sentry, which makes these siren towers, says two of them are missing and one was knocked over. Demonstrating how important it will be to maintain these damaged sirens, so they continue to be effective.