‘Incredibly heartbreaking’ – local campaigns for warning sirens after flood tragedypublished at 19:12 British Summer Time
Gary O’Donoghue
Chief North America correspondent, reporting from Texas
As the search continues, the focus is increasingly moving to
what could have been done, if anything, to prevent this tragedy.
One local campaigner, Nicole Wilson, has already set up a
petition with 450 signatures calling for flood sirens to be
set up in Kerr County along the Guadalupe River – something in place in other counties.
Such a system has been debated in Kerr County for almost a
decade but funds have never been allocated for it.
Nicole told me she thought sirens could have prevented the
tragedy: “When you’re a child, you expect somebody, an adult’s
going to come save you… It’s incredibly heartbreaking.”
Nicole, who has children who also go to summer camps in the
area, says she’s saddened by the decisions over the years not to invest.
“To have camps, to have RV camps, to have houses that
close to a river and it flood like that, I don’t understand why Kerrville and
Kerr County hadn’t invested in flood sirens,” she says.
President Trump is expected to visit the area later in the
week and Nicole says she wants him to arrive with, as she puts it, “a blank
cheque”.