Texas countered a mammoth flood last week, but thanks to the new emergency siren system in one of the towns, it helped save several lives. Comfort, in Kendall County, experienced the same catastrophe but reported no casualties, whereas the same event killed at least 96 people nearby Kerr County. The assistant chief of the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department, Danny Morales, said to NBC News, “People knew that if they heard the siren, they gotta get out.”
Morales further explained that he’d help build up the siren system by contributing to securing the funding for the whole process last year. The project was primarily built up by keeping the 1978 flood in mind killed 15 people in Comfort, including his grandfather.
So the previous year, they installed a new siren at the firehouse and also renovated an old one for Comfort Park, and also linked it to a U.S. Geological Survey sensor at Cypress Creek. The best thing is that the sensor automatically triggers the siren when water levels reach a certain height
Reports say that the sirens use a particular tone for floods, which is different from the tone used for tornadoes.
Morales said: “We do for ourselves and for the community,” adding, “If we hadn’t had a drought the past months and the [Cypress] Creek hadn’t been down, we could have had another ’78. The past few days, I’ll tell you, it brings back a lot.”
A "flood wave" has been leading flooding along the Guadalupe River, which is inundating homes.
The wave reached the town of Comfort, TX where the river level rose 26 feet in 45 minutes! #TXwx pic.twitter.com/6VlDSaJ0sY
— WeatherNation (@WeatherNation) July 4, 2025
He also reflected on expanding the system, saying – Anything we can do to add to the safety, we’re going to sit down and try to make it work,” saying funders had already asked about adding a third siren. “The way things are happening, it might be time to enhance the system even further.” There have been several talks on installing the siren system in the neighboring Kerr County; however, none were there during the hazard
The flood hit the place early in the morning, when people hadn’t even got up from their beds; however, on the contrary, the sirens in Comfort went off when most of the people were already awake. The owner of Blue Oak RV Park, in Kerrville, Lorena Guillen, went door-to-door urging the people to flee, and she told the reporters that spotty cell service meant “a siren like they do with tornadoes” could have helped.
Kendall County’s fire marshal and emergency management coordinator, Brady Constantine, also said that he woke up around 2 a.m. to his own warning about the water level increase. Consequently, he called Morales, who organized a command center by 4:30 a.m.
And subsequently, the first wireless emergency alert went on at 5:30 a.m., followed by three more alerts before 8:06 a.m. and then a mandatory evacuation at 9 a.m. Eventually, the sirens themselves went off at 10:52 a.m.
