After deadly flooding killed more than 100 people in Texas’ Hill Country last July, officials promised major changes in hopes of preventing the failures that contributed to the high death toll. They promised better flood warning systems, stricter safety standards for children’s camps and improvements to the state’s water infrastructure.

That work was far from done when a new round of storms began to hit the state this week, causing catastrophic flash flooding in some of the same devastated areas in 2025. At least two people died. Hundreds needed rescue.

But residents in some hardest-hit areas said a year of preparation did make a difference. Newly installed flood sirens sounded in the darkness, warning people to get out. Phones buzzed with alerts that were not sent during last year’s disaster.

Still, stories of people surprised to find their homes flooded by rising rivers illustrate the challenges of trying to bolster early warning systems in a vast rural area known as Flash Flood Alley.

Over the past decade, a variety of Texas state and local agencies missed opportunities to implement flood warning systems along the Guadalupe River, the AP reported after last summer’s floods killed 136 people, including 28 at a girls’ camp.

That changed after the tragedy, when lawmakers and others examined the lack of preparedness of government agencies and riverside camps.

Unlike last summer, when local Kerr County officials said they had been reluctant to “cry wolf” and order evacuations and did not send out wireless alerts to warn of flash flooding, Kerr County issued four alerts and the city of Kerrville issued one early Thursday as the risk of flooding became apparent, according to a review of available data by the Associated Press.

They warned residents along Quinlan Creek to evacuate to higher ground and of “extremely dangerous” flash flooding. These alerts occurred in conjunction with flood watches, warnings and emergencies sent to broadcast media, weather radios and mobile phones by the National Weather Service. People who signed up for the CodeRED emergency notification system in Kerr County also received text message warnings.

“Last year we didn’t have any alarms. We had no idea what was going on,” said Suzanne Sutphin Gschwind, of Kerrville.

“This year, very different,” he said, with multiple text messages and calls from local authorities, a weather channel and his doorbell camera. One night the warnings came “about every two hours.”

“I think we would all like to err on the side of excessiveness,” he said.

Between early Tuesday morning and around 9 a.m. Thursday, the National Weather Service sent 38 alerts to people in certain Southwest Texas communities, including 14 tornado warnings and 24 warnings of flooding that was occurring or imminent and that could be “life-threatening.”

However, those Weather Service notifications often don’t contain the highly localized information included in the alerts sometimes sent out by municipal and county emergency agencies, and people in some places may not have received any of those local alerts, which may be more decisive for people considering seeking high ground.

An Associated Press review of wireless emergency alert data found none listed as being sent by agencies in Uvalde County, which was hit hard by the flooding, although agencies in that county could have used other means to alert the public.

Jaclyn Gonzales was woken up at 2 a.m. Wednesday by a friend who called to warn that a tornado could be headed toward her home in the Uvalde area. When he jumped out of bed, the floor was wet.

“It was the impact of the water on my feet that really woke me up,” he said.

Kat Sprawls learned floodwaters were approaching her home in Batesville when a friend called her at 3:30 a.m. Friday. It took five or six calls before he woke up, because he had his phone on do not disturb mode.

“There’s no warning system. It’s like the flood in Kerrville last year: we didn’t have any warning,” Sprawls said. “More than half of Batesville is now under water.”

Zavala County Sheriff’s Department Secretary Jessica Belmarez said the department is updating its Facebook page with evacuation information and that law enforcement officers were going door-to-door in affected areas, including Batesville.

Newly installed sirens were used this week in Ingram and Kerr and Kendall counties to warn residents, said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, author of the 2025 legislation to help fund the sirens. Twenty-eight additional counties are also eligible to receive flood warning funding. Most are in the process of developing implementation plans for review by the Texas Water Development Board.

“Between the outside sirens and the cell phone alerts, the response was very positive in getting people off the road and to higher ground,” Bettencourt said. “It’s a huge improvement from a year ago.”

Three of the six new sirens installed in Kerr County were used to warn people to seek high ground, said Tara Bushnoe, manager of the Upper Guadalupe River Authority. The other three were in areas with minor flooding, Bushnoe said.

The small town of Comfort had a warning siren for years. The volunteer fire department recently installed two more.

“Some people just don’t want to leave; that’s our problem here,” said Deputy Fire Chief Danny Morales. “But we activated them twice, probably an hour apart, just because there were people who were staying there and didn’t want to move.”

Ian Cunningham founded River Sentry after the 2025 floods, building flood siren towers for privately owned sites such as caravan parks, campgrounds and hotels. The sirens are activated when the water level rises.

So far, the company has installed 104 sirens along the Guadalupe River, Cunningham said, including several near the site of a trailer park where more than three dozen people died in 2025.

“We installed them about three months ago and we didn’t expect them to be used so soon,” Cunningham said.

Hononu, which has developed water level sensor technology and a real-time data network, received a state contract that will make it easier for agencies to purchase its flood warning technology.

Watch Duty, a fire monitoring app used by millions of people, was expanded earlier this year to help monitor flooding.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the lessons of 2025 led to a better emergency response this time.

“Everyone in Texas has been much more prepared to deal with what happened this year,” Abbott said during a news conference in Uvalde. “Lives have been saved.”

___ Associated Press reporters Jamie Stengle in Dallas, Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia and Jesse Bedayn in Uvalde, Texas, contributed to this report.