Local officials emphasized the need for river gauges and real-time rainfall monitoring to better predict flash floods.

For the first time since catastrophic flooding killed more than 100 people in Kerr County, Texas, the county emergency management director conceded that he was sick and asleep as the water rose to historic levels on the Guadalupe River.

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.