Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Kerrville Flood Response topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
DPS describes Kerrville flood response, identifies interoperability and analytic gaps for after‑action review
Summary
At the meeting DPS leaders reviewed the July 4 Kerrville flood response, praised field response, and said interoperability, deployable analysts, and victim identification need improvement; two people remained missing.
Colonel Martin, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, briefed the commission on the department's response to the catastrophic flooding in Kerrville on July 4 and outlined areas for an after‑action review.
"On July 4, we had catastrophic flooding in Kerrville," Col. Martin said, praising troopers, rangers, tactical marine units, aircraft crews and local partners for rescues and recovery operations. He said the department staged aircraft and hoist‑equipped helicopters and deployed Zodiac boats and other assets, which he credited with saving lives.
Martin said that while the response generated many success stories, the event revealed gaps the department must address. He identified interoperability problems with radios when agencies moved across counties, a delayed deployment of intelligence and counterterrorism analysts to manage a rapidly growing missing‑persons list, and the need for deployable communications trailers and caches of portable radios. He said analysts were late to deploy and the missing‑person list ballooned to roughly 800 entries with many duplicates and false reports before rangers and a team of analysts began resolving the list.
"We noticed right off the bat... an interoperability problem," Col. Martin said, describing training and equipment issues related to radio groups and the need to stage communications resources on the front end of incidents. He said the department will develop deployable analytic and communications packages that can be sent immediately to disaster scenes.
Martin said the department still had 139 DPS employees working in Kerr County at the time of the briefing and that two people remained missing in Kerr County (one a child from the Mystic area) and one person remained missing in Burnet County (a firefighter). He also described resource staging across San Antonio, Austin, San Angelo and other locations to reduce response times across a large area that covered roughly 160 square miles.
Martin said the legislature has funded aviation hoists, additional commissioned positions and other resources that improved response capability compared with past events, but he said the department will request additional funding in future sessions for lab equipment, expanded analytic capability and other needs identified in the after‑action review.
Why this matters: The briefing outlines operational lessons the state intends to address and signals potential future legislative funding requests. The department emphasized that quick deployment of communications and analytic teams is essential in large, multi‑county flood events.
Provenance: First related transcript excerpt: "On July 4, we had catastrophic flooding in Kerrville..." Last related transcript excerpt: "I will say that there are still 2 missing in Kerr County... 1 of those is a child from Mystic."
