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Texans did not immediately receive flood alerts after request, audio reveals

A Texas firefighter asked if emergency flood alerts could be sent to Kerr County residents about an hour before the first warnings were received, audio reveals.

In the recording, obtained by US outlets, the firefighter asks at 04:22 on 4 July if a CodeRED alert can be issued. The dispatcher says a supervisor needs to approve the request.

Some residents received the alert an hour later - for others it took up to six hours, according to reports. Asked about the delays, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said officials were putting together a timeline.

1 comments

  • “I have no idea what’s going on with David Richardson’s absence,” one FEMA employee told E&E News.

    “If this is how they are going to do a major hurricane response, people are fucked,” one FEMA source told independent journalist Marisa Kabas, author of the newsletter The Handbasket.

    Kristi Noem, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees FEMA and several other agencies, seems to have effectively taken over Richardson’s role. She arrived in Texas within days of the floods, conducting a press conference with Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) and touring the hardest-hit sites, including Camp Mystic, the Christian girls’ camp where at least 27 children, counselors, and staff died. But Noem has also sought to downplay the federal government’s role in responding to the disaster: “We, as a federal government, don’t manage these disasters—the state does. We come in and support them, and that’s exactly what we did here in this situation,” Noem said at a Cabinet meeting earlier this week.

    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/what-we-know-about-how-fema-officials-are-failing-texas/