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- Texas officials scrapped 'Flash Flood Alley' warning system before 27 killed at Camp Mystic — because it was too expensive</p>
<p>Anthony BlairJuly 7, 2025 at 8:45 AM</p>
<p>Officials in Kerr County, Texas — where 27 campers and counselors at a Christian summer camp were killed in catastrophic flooding — had discussed installing a flood warning system along the banks of the Guadalupe River, known as "Flash Flood Alley," but it was rejected as too expensive.</p>
<p>Kerr County, home to around 50,000 people, had looked into installing sirens, river gauges and other modern communication tools along the waterway in 2017, but ultimately decided against it, the New York Times reported.</p>
<p>"We can do all the water-level monitoring we want, but if we don't get that information to the public in a timely way, then this whole thing is not worth it," Kerr County Commissioner Tom Moser said at the time.</p>
<p>Search and recovery workers dig through debris looking for any survivors or remains of people swept up in the flash flooding at Camp Mystic on July 6, 2025, in Hunt, Texas. Getty Images</p>
<p>A volunteer looks for missing people in the flood near Camp Mystic. AFP via Getty Images</p>
<p>But the county, which has an annual budget of around $67 million, lost out on a bid to secure a $1 million grant to fund the project in 2017, county commission meeting minutes show.</p>
<p>It is unclear how much installing a flood warning system would have cost specifically.</p>
<p>Aerial illustration of Camp Mystic in Texas after flooding, showing distances from the Guadalupe River and locations of senior and junior cabins. Falon Wriede / NY Post Design</p>
<p>Instead, local officials relied on a word-of-mouth system to pass messages about raging floodwaters downriver from the camps upstream.</p>
<p>In a recent interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said residents were hesitant about the high cost of a warning system.</p>
<p>Widespread damage is visible in and around Kerrville, Texas, on July 6, 2025, following a deadly flash flood. Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto/Shutterstock</p>
<p>"Taxpayers won't pay for it," he said, according to the Times.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, county commissioners discussed using a flood warning system being developed by a regional agency as recently as May, budget meeting minutes show.</p>
<p>A flood warning system was first suggested in 2015 in the wake of deadly floods in Wimberley, Texas, some 75 miles east of Kerrville, the Kerr County seat.</p>
<p>Wimberley, which is located in neighboring Hays County, installed a more sophisticated monitoring system in the wake of the flooding, putting up cell towers to send out notices to all cellphones locally.</p>
<p>People at the ruins of Camp Mystic. AP</p>
<p>The flood warning system in Hays County had a projected cost of $2 million, with $500,000 coming from the Texas Water Development Board in grant funding and the rest coming from the county, the Austin American-Statesman reported.</p>
<p>Former commissioner Moser visited Wimberley to view their new flood system and came back to Kerr County to push for a similar strategy.</p>
<p>His proposal would have featured extra water detection systems and ways to alert the public, but budget concerns saw the scheme go nowhere.</p>
<p>"It sort of evaporated. It just didn't happen," he told the Times.</p>
<p>He admitted that he "didn't know" if people might reconsider their position in light of the recent tragedy.</p>
<p>Moser admitted it isn't certain that a flood warning system like the one he proposed a decade ago would have prevented the recent tragedy in the county, which has seen more than 100 killed, including some 28 children — but he does believe it would have made a difference.</p>
<p>"I think it could have helped a lot of people," he said.</p>
<p>The area is known as "Flash Flood County" because of its unique combination of weather patterns, soil and lack of green space.</p>
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