The catastrophic Central Texas floods have claimed at least 121 lives and left 173 missing, as a report reveals that Kerr County officials were repeatedly denied state funding for an emergency flood warning system.

The Texas county where nearly 100 people were killed and more than 160 remain missing had the technology to turn every cellphone in the river valley into a blaring alarm, but local officials did not do so before or during the early-morning hours of July 4 as river levels rose to record heights,