AUSTIN (KXAN) — At a public hearing in Kerrville Thursday, Travis County Judge Andy Brown defended the county's response to floods that damaged roughly 200 properties and claimed lives in the western part of the county.
Those questions came during the Texas Legislature's joint Select Committee on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding. Unlike its prior visit to Kerr County, the hearing allowed public comments.
"I spent the next few hours walking down the creek and witnessing the neighbors and volunteers with chainsaws and bobcats and small excavators digging each other out. I spoke to many of them, and their testimony was all the same. Nobody came. No emergency services came to them in the hours after the flood waters receded, their 911 calls went unanswered," said Melanie Strong, a woman who volunteered in Sandy Creek, during her testimony.
Some of those concerns, that the county didn't response fast enough or with enough resources, were addressed by Brown later in the hearing.
"I'm in touch with TDEM the entire time. So we asked them to send the teams that we needed to help us search on Saturday, they sent those right away. Those teams had to leave to come back here to Kerr County Saturday night into Sunday," Brown said. "So on Sunday, it was our group that was doing the search. So I met at 8 a.m. on Sunday morning. I was out there at the Round Mountain Baptist Church, that's where we set up the initial command."
KXAN was with Brown that Sunday morning as he showed up to the search and rescue briefing at the church, with dozens of firefighters who later took to combing through debris piles and knocking on doors and car windows. KXAN followed those crews around for most of that day.
Travis County search and rescue crews meet in the Sandy Creek neighborhood, joined by Travis County Judge Andy Brown, on July 6, 2025 (KXAN photo/Grace Reader)"No question that we had every resource possible there from Travis County, from TDEM, on those first two days, those were the days where they were ... they were doing search and rescue," Brown said during the hearing.
What could have been done better in Travis County? State leaders asked that question of Brown who said the county's regular contact from the National Weather Service left earlier this year and was not replaced.
BLOG: Lawmakers hear testimony in Kerrville on deadly July 4 floods"They did not replace him. But he was the person who would say, 'hey, Travis County. I know you get, you know, flash flood alerts, thunderstorm alerts all the time. But this, this is a big one. You need to pay attention to it.' He was the human being in there that is no longer there," Brown said.
Brown also said the county could have better communicated directly with the residents of the impacted areas so they would know exactly what Travis County and state responders were doing.
He added that while there were several search and rescue crews looking for missing county residents, that work should have been communicated better to the public.
"What they said is true for them ... they did not see enough of it," Brown said.
Finally, Brown talked about the Sandy Creek neighborhood specifically. He noted that the community was built without a second access point. This was why, when its only bridge in or out of the neighborhood was damaged by floodwaters, hundreds of residents were trapped.
"If there had been a second entrance in that subdivision back whenever they built it, that would have helped. So I would think having that as building code across the state is something I don't know if it is or not, but that would be great," Brown said.
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