Small Texas town where everyone survived flood has sirens

By Claudia Lauer Associated Press As the Guadalupe River swelled from a wall of water heading downstream sirens blared over the tiny river population of Comfort a last-ditch warning to get out for those who had missed cellphone alerts and firefighters going street-to-street telling people to get out Daniel Morales assistant chief of the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department believes that long flat tone the morning of July Fourth saved lives Related Articles A decade of missed opportunities Texas couldn t find million for flood warning system near camps Hundreds join prayer organization for Bay Area family missing in Texas floods Child dies injured after tree falls at California summer camp FEMA cost controls delayed response to deadly floods Bay Area rescue association search dogs deployed to Texas amid deadly floods The sirens are a testament to the determination of a population that has experienced deadly floods in the past warning residents of devastating floodwaters that hours earlier had killed at least people in communities along the same river including campers and counselors in neighboring Kerr County That county did not have a warning system like the one in Comfort Everyone in Comfort a more than -person unincorporated locality in Kendall County survived the flooding with several people along the river evacuating in time Morales noted Comfort residents were driven by history Morales has been with the department for decades He was there when flooding in killed people of them in Comfort including his grandfather So when an opportunity arose last year to expand the population s crisis warning system he and other residents buckled down to find the funding The fire department s siren needed an upgrade While the firehouse got a new siren Morales ascertained a Missouri company that was willing to refurbish the old one at a low cost so it could be moved to a central location in Comfort Park where it was connected to a U S Geological Survey sensor at Cypress Creek When the water level reaches a certain point the sensor triggers the siren but it can also be sounded manually We do for ourselves and for the group Morales disclosed If we hadn t had a drought the past months and the Cypress Creek hadn t been down we could have had another The past insufficient days I ll tell you it brings back a lot Overcoming the cost hurdle for sirens Morales reported they cobbled together money from a grant from the county commission the department s own budget and from the local electric utility which also donated a siren pole They also got help installing the flood sensor gauge in the creek The price tag with all the donated materials and the costs the department fronted was somewhere around to or maybe a little more Morales noted In Kerry County the price tag for the proposed flood sirens sensors and studies for a larger swath of the Guadalupe River was close to million which caused several county and city leaders to balk when attempts at grants and other funding opportunities fell through They ultimately didn t install the warning systems near the camps where dozens of young campers died in the latest flooding In Comal County Texas about miles east of Kerr County the Guadalupe River meanders into Canyon Lake before picking back up on its journey to empty into the San Antonio Bay on the Gulf Coast The county along with Guadalupe County New Braunfels city cabinet and the Water-Oriented Recreation District- a state-created entity- agreed to fund expanded flood sirens along the Guadalupe River The project was completed in and Comal County now manages the system including the information from the river gauges and notifications about the river height A message left for Comal County authorities seeking details about the cost of the system was not returned Thursday Training residents was key to success After the updated Comfort sirens were installed the volunteer fire department spent months getting the public used to the siren tests that sound daily at noon putting out messaging that if they hear a siren any other time of day they should check local TV stations the department s Facebook page and elsewhere for urgency notifications The sirens make a specific sound for tornadoes and a long flat tone for floods So on July Fourth if people in Comfort hadn t seen the weather alerts sent to phones or broadcasted on radios if they hadn t heard shouting firefighters going from street to street to evacuate they heard the long tone and knew they had to leave their homes A Facebook post on the department s page noted a mandatory evacuation of all residents along the Guadalupe River But Comfort was also miles away from the flash flooding that overtook the camps and didn t experience the cresting of the river flooding until after the terrifying rush of water in the pitch black early morning hours hit cabins Various Comfort residents were already awake and aware of the rising water by the time the sirens sounded The Guadalupe s crest was among the highest ever recorded at Comfort rising from hip-height to three stories tall in over just two hours Morales doesn t know if sirens would have changed things in Kerr County But he knows they gave Comfort residents an extra level of warning In contemporary days Morales revealed he has been contacted by several of the funders to talk about adding a third siren in town Anything we can do to add to the safety we re going to sit down and try to make it work he announced The way things are happening it might be time to enhance the system even further Lauer informed from Philadelphia