{"id":362757,"date":"2026-07-06T15:44:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T15:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/362757\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T15:44:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T15:44:15","slug":"we-were-one-second-late-over-and-over-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/362757\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We were one second late over and over again’"},"content":{"rendered":"

One year after catastrophic flooding<\/a> devastated parts of Central Texas, two Austin-Travis County EMS leaders are reflecting on the challenges they faced responding to one of the deadliest disasters in recent state history.<\/p>\n

On July 4, 2025, Austin-Travis County EMS Captain Ross Copland was staged in New Braunfels with a state task force when he received an urgent call around 5 a.m.<\/p>\n

“Hey guys, San Antonio lost both their vehicles. Get to Kerrville as quick as possible,” it said.<\/p>\n

Copland’s special operations team quickly headed toward Kerrville, but almost immediately encountered obstacles.<\/p>\n

He said silt in the floodwaters caused their rescue boat’s motor to fail. During the response, one team member fell overboard before being rescued, and the disabled boat drifted into a tree.<\/p>\n

“I still don’t believe how we got it started and drove out of this water,” Copland said. “We get to shore … everyone was OK … and we moved on to the next call.”<\/p>\n

But mechanical failures were only part of the challenge.<\/p>\n

Copland said emergency crews dealt with communication breakdowns, incomplete information and limited access into Kerrville from their staging location as floodwaters overwhelmed roads and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

“It was almost like we were in a self-dispatch phase,” he said.<\/p>\n

Many emergency calls lacked enough information for rescuers to find victims.<\/p>\n

“Someone would call a friend and say, ‘Hey, I’m trapped in a tree. I need help.’ But we had no way of finding them because they didn’t know themselves where they were,” he said.<\/p>\n

The delays weighed heavily on responders.<\/p>\n

“We were one second late over and over again for 24 hours,” Copland said.<\/p>\n

He described the frustration of being unable to reach victims despite being nearby.<\/p>\n

“There’s nothing worse than trying to impact a rescue and having something like that where you really have no control over it,” he said.<\/p>\n

For Copland’s unit, the following two weeks brought no rescues \u2013 only recovery operations.<\/p>\n

“We held onto the fact that we were bringing closure to the families, and that was the No. 1 priority,” he said.<\/p>\n

Response closer to home<\/p>\n

While crews responded in Kerrville, Austin-Travis County EMS Commander Kim Griffith was called into action much closer to home.<\/p>\n

Early on July 5, 2025, Griffith rushed to Sandy Creek in northwest Travis County after reports of people trapped by rapidly rising floodwaters.<\/p>\n

“It’s one of those things you can’t fully understand until you actually get to see it and experience it,” she said.<\/p>\n

She remembers blinding rain, submerged low-water crossings and chaotic radio communications.<\/p>\n

“Usually phones are the backup, but you would have to be inside to use it, so you had to jump in and out and hope the phone screen was working,” Griffith said.<\/p>\n

Griffith helped assess people rescued from the floodwaters, directed ambulances along safe routes and searched for a place where displaced residents could shelter.<\/p>\n

Her solution came with a phone call to a nearby H-E-B just minutes before the store opened.<\/p>\n

“‘Can I use your store?’ And their response was, ‘Yes, absolutely,'” Griffith recalled. “‘Great. When can I be there?’ ‘As soon as you need.’ I said, ‘I’ll see you in 15 minutes.’ We loaded everybody into ambulances and did a caravan.”<\/p>\n

Preparing for the next disaster<\/p>\n

A year later, both responders said lessons learned from the floods continue to shape how Austin-Travis County EMS prepares for future emergencies.<\/p>\n

Copland credits extensive training before the disaster with saving first responders’ lives and detailed debriefs afterward for helping crews improve their response.<\/p>\n

“We could have done this better; we should have done this better. Next time we need to carry this equipment with us,” he said.<\/p>\n

Both Copland and Griffith also emphasized the importance of mental health resources after responding to traumatic events.<\/p>\n

“If you’re able to talk to people that were there, it can be really helpful for closure and just knowing what happened,” Griffith said.<\/p>\n

Despite the memories that remain, both say they’re focused on what comes next: being ready to answer the next call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One year after catastrophic flooding devastated parts of Central Texas, two Austin-Travis County EMS leaders are reflecting on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,128644,5892,4035,128643,394],"class_list":["post-362757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-austin-travis","tag-austin-travis-county-ems","tag-kerrville","tag-ross-copland","tag-travis-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}