A Texas firefighter pleaded for an alert amid rising flood waters. It took an hour to go out [View all]
Source: The Independent
Wednesday 09 July 2025 15:48 EDT
As floodwaters in Texas rose in the early morning of July 4, a local firefighter petitioned for an emergency alert to quickly be sent out, but local officials do not appear to have followed his request until about an hour later, according to leaked audio.
The reported early-morning request raises questions about the timeline of events offered by local officials, who have said they had little advanced warning and no county system in place to alert residents about the floods, a disaster now responsible for at least 119 deaths, with even more still missing.
According to audio obtained by KSAT, at 4:22am, a fireman with the Ingram Volunteer Fire Department reportedly called into emergency dispatch to warn that the Guadalupe River appeared to be rapidly overshooting its banks. Around that time, the river rose as much as 26 feet in 45 minutes, according to state officials. The firefighter urged officials to authorize a CodeRED alert, an emergency system that would send warning messages to the cellphones of people who had previously signed up for the service.
A Kerr County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher responded that the request would need approval from a supervisor. The earliest CodeRED alerts appear to have reached local residents about an hour later, according to multiple local media outlets, while some reported not getting their first CodeRED alert until after 10am.
Read more: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/texas-flood-alert-timeline-delay-b2785898.html
I have been signed up with Ready.gov for the CodeRED alerts for awhile now (they can come on phones - cell & landline as voice calls, by text, and email). I happened to have gotten a pile of EAS and CodeRED alerts myself Tuesday evening when I was under a Tornado Warning and Flash Flood Warning, and even last night, where the blaring EAS notice and CodeRED calls/texts were coming in with more Flash Flood Warnings.
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