In what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called a "whiplash event," 135 people died and two remain missing following the floods in Kerr County on Fourth of July weekend, which saw some rivers in the area rise by nearly 30 feet in just a few hours.
Pearland, as a result, was one of several entities around the state, country and world that joined the three-week deployment to save people. Officials are now reviewing and reflecting on how the efforts went—and what lessons were learned.
The overview
Captain Rusty Ryan from Pearland Fire Department led water rescue operations, working alongside a 50-member team, which included first responders from League City Fire and later joined Nebraska Task Force One for 14 days.
“Firemen are firemen, wherever they're from,” Ryan said. “But those were really good dudes. We really, really enjoyed working with them. ... They brought us in and then just, I mean, they were just as gung ho about finding fellow Texans as we were.”
At a certain point in the deployment, the mission shifted from rescue to search-and-recovery of deceased victims.
Pearland first responders were sent to an recreational vehicle park in Ingram, which is about 12 miles northwest of Camp Mystic, to search for people, as there were still an estimated 40 people missing from that park at the time of their arrival.
The teams also searched between Camp Mystic and Boerne, covering between 6 and 12 miles per day, Ryan said. The heavy debris removal made recovery work very physically demanding.
What else?
After the rescue operations ended, a team was tasked with conducting thermal-imaging sweeps across miles of flooded areas in Kerr County to search for remaining victims using drones from the Pearland Police Department.
Sgt. Felix Williams said the software they used analyzed each pixel of thermal data, which all told, totaled more than 300,000 radiometric data points.
“We ended up taking over 44,000 individual images, which is something we've never done before,” Williams said. “It's by far the largest project ... that we've done.”
The takeaway
During major storm events, like the flooding in Kerr County, local first responder resources are spread so thin that there is often less opportunity for the immediately affected communities to share resources, Pearland Communications Director Josh Lee said.
This necessitates help coming from communities from other parts of the state. For example, during Hurricane Harvey a strike team from Dallas was sent to relieve local first responders who had been working for several days in a row, Lee said.
Still, Pearland has the authority to assist neighboring communities for fire and medical calls under standing mutual-aid practices, Ryan said.
Working with federal teams provided insight into working within a larger organizational structure, including what to expect and how to prepare his squad for flooding events in Pearland.
“One day, if something major happens here, segmenting out sections and how to split those out, and a lot of search techniques and just widespread operations—I took a lot away from that,” Ryan said.
