What survivors revealed has officials searching for solutions.
KERRVILLE, Texas — An all-day meeting in Kerr County led to explosive testimony on the response to the July 4, 2025, floods.
The Texas Legislature’s Special Committee on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding’s joint session in the Hill Country took place from sunrise to sundown.
On Thursday, officials revealed new details about the official response.
The committee learned Kerr County Emergency Operations Manager William “Dub” Thomas was ill and awakened by his wife at 5:30 a.m. on July 4, when he realized something was wrong after receiving numerous calls and messages.
Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said he was awakened by a call at 4:20 a.m. Friday morning and began coordinating rescue operations. The sheriff said deputies drove to roads they regularly patrolled only to find water had overtaken them.
Kerr County Judge Ron Kelly was out of town with his family when the floods hit but returned to the county. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said he spoke with numerous officials but didn’t remember seeing the judge on July 4.
Legislators also heard from people who said the floodwaters took everything from them. For some, it took their family. For others, it took their home or their sense of peace.
Regardless of what everyone lost, all testimonies shared a similar tone: the need to be proactive in addressing safety gaps.
The rushing floodwaters on July 4 created a horror the people of Kerr County won’t soon forget.
“The flood overtook our property at 3:15 a.m. with water rising so fast that all routes were blocked upstream and downstream,” Richard Stocker said.
Stocker and his daughter Nancy spoke before Texas’ Joint Special Committee Meeting on Thursday.
Their family home in Hunt sits 40 feet above the river level on a bluff that had never flooded before. Now, it has been ripped off its foundation, leaving only the studs. They lost friends they had known for years and live near Camp Mystic, where 27 campers and counselors died.
The father-daughter duo recalled the terrifying details of how close they came to not surviving when all their escape routes were blocked by water.
“The water was rising too quickly for us to try to make it to higher ground on foot. So, we climbed on top of our cars and then we climbed into cedar trees,” Nancy said. She also described helping her mother climb into a tree to reach safety.
State legislators traveled to Kerr County to get answers about the official response to the disaster and hear what those directly impacted want to see done.
The message from those who spoke was clear.
“We need alerts that differentiate between, I’ll call them normal floods and catastrophic events, and we need reliable cell coverage in remote areas to make them work,” Nancy said.
“My suggestion would be that instead of just sirens, we actually have sensors in the water that would then alert sirens to go off because if you just have sirens that go off, people stop paying attention to them,” Alicia Baker said.
Through tears, Baker shared a personal plea to officials, having lost her parents and daughter in the floods. Baker said she waited 12 hours for someone to give her information, and her daughter’s body was eventually identified by a charm bracelet she wore.
“When we know better, we do better, and so we need to do better for the people in this community, for the people that are suffering,” Baker said.
Speaking with reporters one-on-one before testifying, Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr. said a new early alert system needs to be installed before summer 2026. He said it needs to be data-driven, automatic and able to warn people in harm’s way.
“When you talk about the alert system and making sure everyone has it on, I’m assuming that also means city leadership as well,” KHOU 11 Reporter Amanda Henderson asked Herring Jr.
“Yes ma’am,” Herring Jr. replied.
A better system is what Bud Bolton hopes for.
He said it was his neighbor, not an official alert, who made him aware of the nine feet of water outside his front door.
“We went up to higher ground. I watched all these… I watched 108 RVs float right by me from the three RV parks, watching these screaming kids inside these RVs,” Bolton said.
Some people testifying said they need help clearing debris as they work to address the potential of human remains being found on their properties.
Once the meeting concludes, state leaders will take their notes back to Austin and continue addressing solutions in the special session.