Sunday is a day of prayer across Texas. But as many filed into churches, first responders and volunteers filed into Kerr County, holding out up in their search and rescue efforts.

The survival of people in local camps and low-lying areas depended not on official evacuations but on whether they were paying attention, on their own, to weather alerts in the middle of the night.

Just days after floodwaters raged through the Guadalupe, parts of the riverbed lay dry – and the Texas Hill Country community must now face where it goes from here.

The county’s largest city, Kerrville, declined to participate in a joint grant application that would have required a $50,000 contribution. Meanwhile in the nearby community of Comfort, a long, flat-three minute warning sound signifying flood danger helped evacuate the town of 2,

Amid the evacuation alert in Kerrville, unverified reports began circulating online claiming that the Ingram Dam, located on the Guadalupe River, had collapsed.

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.

Hill Country residents and volunteers on Tuesday continued picking up the pieces that the deadly waterway left behind days earlier.

Without a modern flood warning system, emergency officials monitor four sensors along the Guadalupe River – including one that was knocked out in the flood.