Plans to develop a flood monitoring system in the Texas county hit hardest by deadly floods were scheduled to begin only a few weeks later.

Daniel Morales, assistant chief of the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department, believes that long, flat tone the morning of July Fourth saved lives.

Crews with GulfSAR are traveling by boat along the Guadalupe River, using artificial intelligence to scan beneath the surface for signs of human remains.

With more than 170 still missing, communities must reconcile how to pick up the pieces around a waterway that remains both a wellspring and a looming menace.

KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Over the last decade, an array of Texas state and local agencies missed opportunities to fund a flood warning system intended to avert a disaster like the one that killed dozens of young campers and scores of others in Kerr County on the Fourth of July.

In the last nine years, federal funding for a system has been denied to the county as it contends with a tax base hostile to government overspending.

At least 120 people are dead and 173 are missing in central Texas after the Guadalupe River swelled early Friday, causing destructive flash flooding throughout Kerr County.Now, new before-and-after satellite images of several sites throughout Kerry County show the devastation caused by the floods as crews embark on a seventh day of search and rescue efforts.

Many Catholics in the region have been stepping up to help, converging on Notre Dame Parish in Kerrville, located in the hardest-hit community along the Guadalupe River.