Emergency officials and community leaders emphasized personal readiness, reliable alert systems, and coordination among agencies during the Bandera County Interagency Coalition’s (BCIC) regular meeting Aug. 19 at Silver Sage.
The meeting featured presentations from Bandera County Emergency Management and the Bandera County River and Groundwater District Authority (BCRAGD).
Larry Thomas, BCRAGD’s flood science manager, explained the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) stream gauge system, which provides flood monitoring data through satellite transmissions. “During an event, our job is to look at what’s happening at the headwaters,” Thomas said. “Everything with USGS goes through a satellite. It transmits that data through the internet and that only takes a few seconds to occur. But before it becomes a flood warning system, it has to have certain transmit intervals. For a regular non-flood warning system, the stream gauge’s data transmits once an hour. That doesn’t help us. We need it every 15 minutes. And so that’s what we have on flood warning systems.”
Thomas encouraged residents to use the USGS website to track local conditions, including a Bandera gauge, and provided bookmarks with information on how to sign up for alerts. “To sign up for daily or hourly email or text alerts about water conditions…go to https://accounts.waterdata.usgs. gov/wateralert/my-alerts,” he said.
Referencing the July 4 flood in Kerr County, Bandera City Councilwoman Lynn Palmer raised concerns about overnight alerts. “What we need to look at as a County and a City is something that is going to alert us by sound, because if the cell phones are down and the internet is down, then nobody is getting alerted. We need to figure out a solution.”
Bandera County Emergency Management Coordinator Judy Lefevers shifted the discussion to individual responsibility in preparedness. “I want you to remember that there is always a personal component of preparedness, and we seem to forget that, especially when something bad happens and everybody wants to start pointing fingers,” Lefevers said. “How many people remember those old weather radios? When there’s no cell coverage, those babies still work and they do wake you up in the night and they’re not a very expensive tool.”
Lefevers explained that the county’s emergency operations center at the Justice Center on Highway 173 activates during crises to coordinate responses among the sheriff’s office, EMS, fire departments, and city officials. She also cautioned residents to rely on official sources. “Another component that arises is that we have to kind of dispel all kinds of crazy rumors that begin to generate whenever anything is going on,” she said. “Bandera Chat is not what I consider a trusted source. You can go to the County website, the County’s official Facebook pages, that’s where we are posting that critical information.”
While discussing potential siren systems, Lefevers said officials are weighing the complexities. “If you are going to activate a siren, you are expecting a response. You want people to do something. So the question is, what do you want them to do? … In Bandera County our response potentially will not always be evacuation. Sometimes there isn’t an available route. The last thing we want to do is initiate an action that puts people in harm’s way.”
She emphasized that the county has agreements in place to ensure cooperation. “We’ve got mutual aid agreements in place. We have a county liaison officer up in Kerr County – a direct liaison to the State. We have most recently developed a mitigation plan to take a look at those longterm projects, the things that we know we need but don’t have the immediate funding to put into place.”
Officials attending included BCRAGD Assistant General Manager Luke Whitmire, BCRAGD board member Bruce Hayes, County Judge Richard Evans, Commissioners Jody Rutherford, Troy Konvicka, Greg Grothues, and Jack Moseley, Sheriff Josh Teitge, Bandera Mayor Denise Griffin, City Councilwoman Lynn Palmer, City Secretary and Interim City Manager Jill Shelton, BISD Superintendent Gary Bitzkie, EMS Director Shannon Griffin, and EMC Captain Amber Mckenna.
Represented organizations included American Legion Post 157, Bandera Methodist Church, SRJC Belong, CentroMed, Christian Journey Courses, Don’t Make Waste Bandera, Faithful Recovery, Hill Country MHDD, Lakehills United Methodist Church, Lions Club, Mercy Gate Ministries, Bandera Kronkosky Public Library, San Antonio Food Bank, Silver Sage, St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church, St. Vincent de Paul (St. Stanislaus), Texas Health Steps, Texas A&M Agrilife Extension, Texas Department of State Health Services, Workforce Solutions Alamo, Hill Country Alliance, and Grace Redemption Community Church.
Levin Crawford, Silver Sage project manager, told the Bulletin that BCIC is made up of nonprofits, service groups, agencies and churches that aim to fill service gaps in the county. The coalition has identified three key areas of focus: affordable housing, public transportation, and funding for rural nonprofits and community services. BCIC meets monthly, with Silver Sage as the default location.
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