Kerr County, Texas, lacked a “last mile” warning mechanism that could have saved residents before the deadly floods devastated the area, including a children’s summer camp, killing more than 80 people.

The county received multiple weather alerts before the water rose on Friday, but the county is not equipped with a siren system that could have woken up residents who were sleeping during the storm and did not see the National Weather Service alerts on their electronic devices.

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“The crux of this disaster is a failure of the last mile of communication,” said Tom Fahy, the legislative director of a NWS union. “The forecasts went out, they communicated the forecasts, they disseminated the watches and warnings. And the dilemma we have is there was nobody listening at 4 o’clock in the morning for these watches and warnings.”

Some Central Texas cities use sirens to warn residents of extreme weather events such as floods or tornadoes. But Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said the systems are expensive and that “taxpayers won’t pay for it.” Nevertheless, he seemed to criticize forecasts, saying at a press conference that “we didn’t know this kind of flood was coming.”

Cuts at the NWS have been criticized by Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who wrote a letter to the Commerce Department inspector general asking him to investigate whether the cuts affected the flooding event. One of the top questions Schumer posed was whether vacancies at the NWS affected their coordination with emergency officials.

“Reduced staffing puts that in jeopardy,” John Sokich, former director of congressional affairs for the National Weather Service, said about the cuts as they pertain to communication between local officials and the NWS.

But Fahy said that NWS San Angelo and NWS Austin/San Antonio were “all hands on deck” to make sure they were staffed during the flooding and added “they knew this was a critical life and death situation — bodies and lives were on the line in this one.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said one of the offices was overstaffed.

“There were record-breaking lead times in the lead up to this catastrophe … in fact, one of the offices was actually overstaffed,” she said. “They had more people than they need.”

“Blaming President Trump for these floods is a depraved lie,” Leavitt continued. “… In the lead-up to this tragic natural disaster, the National Weather Service did its job.”

Cellphone alerts went out hours before the flooding began, giving residents time to prepare if they saw them before the flooding escalated near dawn on Friday. Climate scientist Daniel Swain said any claims that the NWS did not foresee the flooding are “simply not true.”

“This was undoubtedly an extreme event, but messaging rapidly escalated beginning ~12 hrs prior,” he wrote in a Bluesky post. “Flood Watch mid PM, ‘heads up’ outlook late PM, flash flood warnings ~1am.”

“This truly was a sudden & massive event and occurred at worst possible time (middle of the night),” he added. “But problem, once again, was not a bad weather prediction: it was one of ‘last mile’ forecast/warning dissemination.”

Swain said the portion of Texas affected by the floods is “infamous for sudden and violent flood risk.”

Reporters pressed Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice on why emergency officials had not done more to notify or evacuate the public, but he said they were focused on the missing victims.

Rice also said officials did not want to “cry wolf” and issue evacuation notices too early. He said some first responders were swept away by floodwaters when they were driving to areas in need.

“It’s very tough to make those calls,” he said.

Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp, has been mourned as one of the most tragic aspects of the floods. The world has mourned the loss of 27 campers and counselors, and 10 girls are still missing, according to the camp.

The Texas legislature failed to pass a bill earlier this year that would have bolstered local disaster warning systems and included a grant program for counties to buy new emergency communication equipment.

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Republican state Rep. Wes Virdell, who represents nearby Brady and voted against the bill, said he would probably change his vote after seeing the disaster.

“I can tell you in hindsight, watching what it takes to deal with a disaster like this, my vote would probably be different now,” he said.