Kerr County official: Flood was 500+ year ‘tsunami’

AUSTIN (KXAN) — The deadly Fourth of July Hill Country floods were “bigger than a 500” year event, according to a local official.

“Everybody wants to blame this on somebody,” said Kerr County Engineer Charlie Hastings. “I’m telling you, there’s no escaping this one. And people are going to want to talk to engineers like me and say, ‘Tell us what happened. Tell us what happened.’ Yeah, we could tell you what happened. But we couldn’t have predicted this.”

In 2017, the county, Kerrville and Upper Guadalupe River Authority warned about the potential for “monstrous and devastating flash floods,” in an online video citing previous disasters that occurred in August 1978 and July 1987, KXAN previously found. The video urged residents to “Be Flood Aware.”

At its peak, 950,000 gallons per second flowed through the drainage basin of the South Fork of the Guadalupe River earlier this month, reaching heights of 45 feet, according to preliminary modeling shared by Hastings at Monday’s Kerr County Commissioners’ Court meeting.

“You can’t live through that,” said Hastings. “It was a tsunami. It was an inland tsunami. And it ripped everything up.”

The county is still under a burn ban as search and recovery efforts continue. In a July 16 update, Kerr County officials said at least 107 people, including 37 children, were killed in Kerr County. Over the weekend, the number of people still missing plummeted from around 100 to three, according to the Kerr County Flood Disaster Joint Information Center.

Commissioners, discussing potential budget ramifications, had asked for a loss of projected revenue.

“At this point in time it’s too early,” said Kerr County Tax Assessor-Collector Bob Reeves.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said that puts the county in a “bind.” Since tax revenues won’t be the same next year, the county will have to decide “what expenses we’re going to have to cover with whatever the tax rate may be.”

“But with the disaster, and the expenses related to the disaster that have not been reimbursed, and may not be reimbursed even in the next fiscal year, we don’t know,” said Kelly. “It’s a very big unknown. Big unknown on revenues.”

It would be a “train wreck” if the county defaulted to the previous year’s budget total, he added.

The loss in value county-wide caused by flood damage is more than $200 million, said Reeves, citing preliminary estimates.

Monday’s meeting occurred the same day state lawmakers returned to the Capitol for a special session to discuss, among other things, emergency alerts and recovery relief funding.

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