KERRVILLE, Texas (KXAN) – Records obtained by KXAN investigators show the mayor of Kerrville received an invite two days before the deadly July 4 flood in and around his community to attend a call with state officials briefing area leaders on the weather dangers ahead.
In an email sent by the Texas Division of Emergency Management’s State Operations Center on July 2, Mayor Joe Herring was invited to attend a “Situational Awareness Call for Severe Weather” at 10 a.m. the following day. Associated slides – which indicated a flash flooding risk for the region – were also sent by TDEM a half hour before that call to both the mayor and Jerremy Hughes, then employed by the city as its emergency management coordinator.
“I was not aware of the invitation or the phone call,” Herring told KXAN investigators Monday. “I had not seen the emailed invitation. I thought the statements made by others indicated I had received a telephone call, which I had not. I misunderstood.”
KXAN investigators requested record of any communication made between certain city officials and the state in the days surrounding the flood. The inquiry followed Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick saying in a July 4 press event – just hours after the Guadalupe River rose around 30 feet – that TDEM’s Region 6 director, Jay Hall, “personally contacted the judges and the mayors in that area and notified them all of potential flooding.”
“Yesterday morning, the message was sent,” Patrick said. “It is up to the local counties and mayors under the law to evacuate if they feel a need, but that information was passed along.”
KXAN investigators also requested record of similar communication from TDEM and a list of city and county participants on that call. The agency has not commented specifically on the matter but told KXAN following the flood its coordination “includes daily statewide situational awareness calls leading up to and during disasters.”
According to the email TDEM sent to Herring, the purpose of the call was for “situational awareness only and not for resources requests.”
“This information will focus on life safety or immediate jurisdictional support priorities only,” the email read. “This briefing is designed to provide real-time, high-level information in a very short time period.”
Herring earlier told reporters he personally “wasn’t invited to the call” but now acknowledges to KXAN investigators “an invitation had indeed been emailed” to him but he did not see it.
“I wish I had seen the invitation/email, because I would have participated in the telephone call,” he said in a statement to KXAN investigators.
The email invite was among more than 70 documents provided by the city in response to KXAN’s record request. They included communication from TDEM to Herring, Hughes and other city officials between July 2 and 7.
KXAN investigators also reached out to Hughes Monday for a comment about the records. An automatic reply received back stated “Jerremy Hughes no longer works for the City of Kerrville” and left another public information contact, which said in a statement Hughes was helping set up a “Mobile Command Post” in a city park for July 4 festivities at the time of the TDEM call and that he had “submitted his retirement on July 2nd after 31 years of dedicated service.”
At least 108 people died in the flood in Kerr County. Three people are still missing there.