With more than 170 still missing, communities must reconcile how to pick up the pieces around a waterway that remains both a wellspring and a looming menace.

The Guadalupe River has a history of deadly flooding. Here is a look over the decades. (AP video Marshall Ritzel/Albee Zhang)

In what experts call "Flash Flood Alley," the terrain reacts quickly to rainfall steep slopes, rocky ground, and narrow riverbeds leave little time for warning.

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 of youth campers and others in Kerr County,

Search teams persisted in sifting through debris in Texas Hill Country on Wednesday as hopes of finding more survivors dimmed five days after flash floods tore through the region, killing at least 110 people,

Officials are being pressed about their response and whether there could have been a better warning system.

Over 100 people have died after heavy rain pounded Kerr County, Texas, early Friday, leading to "catastrophic" flooding, the sheriff said.

Officials in flood-stricken central Texas on Wednesday again deflected mounting questions about whether they could have done more to warn people ahead of devastating flash flooding that killed at least 119 people on July 4.