Texas Emergency Official Speaks Out About Whereabouts as Deadly Floods Hit

A Texas official is speaking out after questions were raised about his whereabouts during the July 4 floods that killed more than 130 people.

William B. Thomas IV, the Kerr County Emergency Management Coordinator, made his first public comments about the flooding disaster during a joint hearing held by the Texas Senate and House’s select committees on disaster preparedness and flooding on Thursday, July 31.

“I want to directly address the questions about my whereabouts that night,” he said, stating that he began feeling unwell two days before the flooding began.

“On July 2, I worked a full day, despite not feeling well,” he said, without elaborating on the nature of his illness.

That day he said he attended a meeting “where no concerns were raised and no indications of elevated weather risk were noted beyond what is typical for this region during the summer.

By the time he returned home that night, he said his symptoms had worsened.

Thomas, who had previously requested to take a personal day on July 3 because of a “commitment to my elderly father,” said that instead, he spent the day recovering at home.

He went on to say that his supervisors and sheriff’s office leadership “were aware that I was off duty” and that when he did “briefly” wake up around 2 p.m. that afternoon “there was no local rainfall or indication of elevated risk.”

Thomas was woken up by his wife around 5:30 a.m. on July 4 after receiving a call from a Kerrville official.

“I reported immediately to the sheriff’s office,” he said, adding that while “there was no visible flooding on my drive into the office, but it quickly became clear that the situation was escalating.”

By 6 a.m., he was “actively coordinating our county’s response.”

This testimony came after weeks of frustration from members of the community over a lack of answers from Thomas.

Though he was in attendance at this meeting, he was not in attendance for a meeting last week with officials in the City of Ingraham, where he is based out of, to discuss the response to the tragedy, according to NBC News.

Thomas was not the only official who was asleep when the flooding first hit.

Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said he was woken up by on-duty deputies at 4:20 a.m., according to NBC News.

Meanwhile, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s head of emergency management, said that he was not in Kerr County at the time of the flooding and was instead preparing for a family gathering at his lake house near Austin, reported ABC News.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

As noted by the outlet, several lawmakers brought up that multiple alerts were issued by the National Weather Service, including on July 3. However, Kelly insisted that while they had “received hundreds of alerts during the summer,” none suggested that “an extreme weather event was imminent.”

“My first indication that this storm was different came when I woke up to texts and calls from Chief Kidd, Sheriff Leitha and Dalton Rice,” he testified, acknowledging that by the time those messages were sent, “the flooding had already overtaken Camp Mystic, part of the hills in La Junta and several other upriver camps.”

Asked about why he did not send out an alert through the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, Thomas said that he chose not to because several similar alerts had already been issued by the National Weather System, reported NBC News. 

Meanwhile, according to ABC News, Kelly said that “it was too late” to send a Code Red alert — and that many residents haven’t even signed up for the system anyway.

“To those who ask, what would you have done differently? The honest answer is that, based on the data we had at the time, there was no clear indicator that a catastrophic flood was imminent,” Thomas said, according to NBC News. “The situation evolved faster than anyone could have predicted.”

At the hearing, officials asked for a better system to alert Kerr County residents about flooding, including a siren alert system, according to ABC News — with Kerrville Mayor saying he wants to see a new system in place along the Guadalupe River by next summer.

As of Thursday, July 31, three people remain missing in Kerr County.