At a Wednesday morning press conference, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha declined to answer a question about delayed emergency alerts, saying that an "after-action" would follow the search and rescue efforts. "Those questions are gonna be answered," he added.

FOX 4’s Steven Dial rode along the Guadalupe River with the sheriff of Andrews County, located in West Texas, to get his first-hand account of the recovery effort.

Crews are using construction equipment to clear vehicles, trees and homes in a race to locate the 161 people still missing since Friday’s devastating flood.

Flash floods surged through in the middle of the night, but many local officials appeared unaware of the unfolding catastrophe, initially leaving people near the river on their own.

As the Guadalupe River swelled from a wall of water heading downstream, sirens blared over the tiny river community of Comfort -- a last-ditch warning to get out for those who had missed cellphone alerts and firefighters going street-to-street telling people to get out.

A Kerrville-area river authority executed a contract for a flood warning system that would have been used to help with emergency response, local officials said.

Jonathan McComb was the sole family member to survive a Texas flooding in 2015. Now, he's in Kerrville searching for victims in from the latest flooding.

Over the last decade, an array of local and state agencies have missed opportunities to fund a flood warning system intended to avert the type of disaster that swept away dozens in Kerr County, Texas.