KERR COUNTY, Texas – John David Trolinger was in his home’s radio room listening intently early Friday morning as the first water rescues took place on a rising Guadalupe River.
“I was expecting the alerts to go off,” said Trolinger, who worked as Kerr County’s longtime IT director before retiring in 2019.
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He pushed for the county to first bring in the CodeRED emergency alert system in 2009.
The service, which he recalled costing the county $25,000 a year, does not cost people anything to sign up and sends text and voice alerts to a user’s phone during emergency events, including severe weather.
A log from Trolinger of emergency dispatch calls Friday morning included a note he wrote down well before 4 a.m. that a CodeRED should be sent out.
County dispatch audio, provided to KSAT by Trolinger, confirmed that a firefighter called for a CodeRED alert at 4:22 a.m. Friday, as water covered State Highway 39 in Hunt.
“Is there any way we can send a CodeRED to our Hunt residents asking them to find higher ground?” the first responder asked.
“10-4 standby. We have to get that approved with our supervisor,” a county dispatcher replied, before telling the first responder a water rescue team was en route.
Trolinger said it was standard practice during his tenure with the county to obtain a supervisor’s approval before sending out a CodeRED.
What was not standard, according to Trolinger, was the hour and 12 minutes it took for the first alerts to be sent out Friday at 5:34 a.m., finally.
“That’s the problem,” said Trolinger, who added that the emergency response from rescuers and dispatchers was as good as it possibly could be with no alert having been sent out.
Trolinger recalled the massive public relations campaign that encouraged residents to sign up for CodeRED when the program was first introduced in Kerr County.
He said county employees at that time fielded phone calls and assisted people with enrolling in the program.
“I think the institutional memory of what the river can do was lost. It’s the elected officials. The county judge and the county sheriff are the ones responsible for notifying the public,” said Trolinger.
Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said Wednesday answers about emergency communication during the floods will come at a later date, and that his priority continues to be finding victims and notifying families.
Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.
