Daniel Morales, assistant chief of the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department, believes that long, flat tone the morning of July Fourth saved lives.

With more than 170 still missing, communities must reconcile how to pick up the pieces around a waterway that remains both a wellspring and a looming menace.

KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Over the last decade, an array of Texas state and local agencies missed opportunities to fund a flood warning system intended to avert a disaster like the one that killed dozens of young campers and scores of others in Kerr County on the Fourth of July.

In the last nine years, federal funding for a system has been denied to the county as it contends with a tax base hostile to government overspending.

Also: San Antonio mourned the victims in a Travis Park vigil; UTSA said one of its teachers died in the Guadalupe River flood; Kerrville officials said a privately owned drone collided with a helicopter conducting search and rescue operations.

Flash floods last week in Texas caused the Guadalupe River to rise dramatically, reaching three stories high in just two hours.

Dondi Voigt Persyn was shocked by what she found in the flood zone. So she launched a Facebook group dedicated to saving personal effects and finding their owners.