Search and rescue officials assess damage in Comfort, Texas on July 9, 2025. Credit :

Jim Vondruska/Getty

• Officials in one Texas community are attributing their investment into an updated siren system with saving lives amid the devastating floods that impacted several counties in central Texas last week
• Danny Morales, assistant chief of the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department, told NBC News that residents “knew that if they heard the siren, they gotta get out”
• “Anything we can do to add to the safety, we’re going to sit down and try to make it work,” he said

One Texas community hit by last week’s multi-county flooding activated an emergency siren system for the first time, which officials believe helped save lives

Danny Morales, assistant chief of the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department, said that nobody died in Comfort, according to NBC News. The small town home to about 2,300 people in Kendall County, which is about 20 miles away from Kerr County, where the majority of deaths from the flooding disaster occurred and at least 96 have died.

“People knew that if they heard the siren, they gotta get out,” Morales told NBC News.

Damage at an RV park along the Guadalupe River in Comfort, Texas on July 5, 2025. Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via Getty 

In a separate interview with the Associated Press, Morales, who has been with the fire department for decades, said that he helped secure funding for the security system last year when the opportunity came up — years after a 1978 flood killed 15 people in Comfort, including his grandfather.

Last year, the firehouse was given a new siren, while an old siren was refurbished and moved to Comfort Park, where officials hooked it up to a U.S. Geological Survey sensor at Cypress Creek, the AP. reported While the siren can be manually triggered, the sensor also does the same when water levels reach a certain point.

According to the news agency, the sirens use a specific flat tone for floods and a different sound for tornados.

“We do for ourselves and for the community,” Morales said. “If we hadn’t had a drought the past months and the [Cypress] Creek hadn’t been down, we could have had another ’78. The past few days, I’ll tell you, it brings back a lot.”

“Anything we can do to add to the safety, we’re going to sit down and try to make it work,” he added, sharing that funders have contacted him about adding a third siren in town. “The way things are happening, it might be time to enhance the system even further.”

As noted by NBC News, despite years of talks about installing a sirens in Kerr County, there was none in place at the time of the tragedy, although it’s difficult to know the impact that kind of warning system could have had.

The outlet went on to point out that the flooding hit Kerr Counter earlier, at a time when many residents were either sleeping or at least still indoors. In Kendall County, where Comfort is located, by the time the sirens went off, many people were already awake and aware of the devastating situation at hand. 

Still, Lorena Guillen, owner of Blue Oak RV Park in Kerrville — who went door to door to urge her guests to flee last week — told MSNBC that cell service in Texas Hill Country is spotty and having “a siren like they do with tornadoes” could have helped.

Brady Constantine, fire marshal and emergency management coordinator for Kendall County, told ABC affiliate KSAT that he awoke to the a warning he set up around 2 a.m. on the day of the floods and learned of the rising waters of the Guadalupe River. He then called up Morales, who set up a command at the fire station by 4:30 a.m.

The county sent out its first wireless emergency message by 5:30 a.m. — ahead of three additional alerts all before 8:06 a.m., per KSAT. The county also issued a mandatory evacuation for those living near the river, which began rising around 9 a.m. in Comfort, according to the outlet. At 10:52 a.m., the fire department sounded the flood sirens — both at the park and at the fire station.

Together, the sirens cost the county about $70,000, with 80% covered by a nonprofit, according to KSAT.

“We’re going to sit back and do an evaluation after this to see how we can improve our system,” said County Judge Shane Stolarczyk.

Beyond the sirens themselves, residents were also sent a flash flood warnings and additional notifications, per the outlet. “That warning system was utilized and was a significant factor in us having a quick response,” Stolarczyk said.

Cruz Newberry, owner of Table Rock Alerting Systems which installed Comfort’s system last year, told NBC News that the sirens are a measure of a last resort — following media alerts, phone warnings and social media.

“The nice thing with an outdoor warning system is it’s one of the few methods that local officials have at their disposal where they can literally press a button and warn citizens themselves,” Newberry said. “It’s difficult to ignore a siren blaring for three minutes straight.”

To learn how to help support the victims and recovery efforts from the Texas floods, click here.