Volunteers combing through debris piles from the devastating Central Texas flooding had to sniff out decaying bodies in the “chaotic” initial days of the search-and-rescue efforts.

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.

Before hundreds of first responders and volunteers from around the country came to help, it was the local residents of Texas Hill Country who faced down a deadly wall of water along the Gaudalope River and witnessed terrifying scenes.

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.