By Danya Gainor, CNN

(CNN) — Nearly a week after floodwaters swept away more than a hundred lives, Texas officials are facing heated questions over how much was – or was not – done in the early morning hours of Friday as a wall of water raced down the Guadalupe River.

Several officials in the past few days have deflected or become defensive when asked clarifying questions about the county’s actions before and during the disaster.

“We’re in the process of trying to put together a timeline. That’s going to take a little bit of time,” Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said Tuesday, adding his priority was recovering victims, identifying bodies and notifying families.

Authorities were pressed again Wednesday when they shared little information about the early hours of the emergency, instead calling attention to their swift response later in the day on July 4.

“I know that this tragedy, as horrific as it is, could have been so much worse,” Kerrville Police Department Sgt. Jonathan Lamb said.

At least 120 people are dead and about 150 others are missing after the catastrophic flooding swept through central Texas in the wee hours of Independence Day.

As search and rescue efforts continue for a seventh straight day, frustration grows over lingering questions about what officials did during those crucial early hours, if existing warning systems worked and whether any loss could have been prevented.

Here’s what we know – and still don’t know – about officials’ response during the pivotal hours of a catastrophic flooding event.

Overdue alerts and missed calls

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for parts of Kerr County at 1:14 a.m. July 4. That warning was sent as a Wireless Emergency Alert to mobile devices in the warned area.

Local emergency management agencies in some other counties began monitoring forecasts and listening to briefings to determine safety and evacuation plans once they received similar alerts. It’s unclear if officials in Kerr County, which has suffered the largest number of fatalities by far, did the same.

Sheriff Leitha said he wasn’t alerted of the flooding in his county until 4 or 5 a.m. Friday — after 911 calls for help started coming in. The Guadalupe River started rising just after the NWS flash flood warning, and had climbed by 15 feet by 5 a.m., according to a water gauge in Hunt, home to Camp Mystic.

As the “wall of water” made its way down the river, according to a dire warning from the NWS, a local firefighter requested a CodeRED alert — a notification by a non-governmental mass communication system that sends emergency alerts to residents’ phones — to warn the public at 4:22 a.m., CNN affiliate KSAT reported.

But it was nearly six hours until some residents got the alert, according to audio from a dispatcher obtained by a KSAT source familiar with the emergency notification for residents near Hunt.

When asked Wednesday about the hours that passed between the firefighter’s call and when the alert was issued, Leitha deflected, saying those questions would be answered in time.

Even before the flood struck, it appears some local officials might have been out of the loop.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick previously said that county mayors and city judges were invited to a call the day before the flooding to discuss the weather forecast. A regional coordinator personally reached out to local officials, the Associated Press reported.

“I will tell you personally, I did not receive a call,” Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr. said Wednesday, noting he could not speak for the Kerr County judge.

Who was in charge?

No official in Kerr County has been able to answer who, if anyone, was in charge of emergency management the night of the flood. An emergency manager is generally someone who oversees local mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery efforts before, during and after an emergency.

“They’re effectively leading the response in these communities, even as other resources come in from neighboring communities, the state and FEMA,” said Samantha Montano, associate professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

Kerr County’s emergency manager would have been the one to guide a flash flooding procedure and evacuation plan – ideally established ahead of time – that’s designed to maximize lives saved.

Kerr County Emergency Management Coordinator W.B. “Dub” Thomas declined to comment when asked to explain the actions the county took in the early morning hours of Friday, CNN previously reported.

“I don’t have time for an interview, so I’m going to cancel this call,” he said.

Major counties in the state – like Harris, which encompasses Houston, and Dallas County – have sophisticated evacuation procedures and criteria in the face of flooding, mainly due to Texas’ reputation as one of the most flood-prone states in the country, said Phil Bedient, the director of Rice University’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education, & Evacuation from Disasters Center.

Understanding Kerr County’s threshold for evacuating, if one has been enacted, or contacting the highest-risk residents and recommending they get to higher ground, would help to paint a more complete picture of county officials’ thinking in the early hours of Friday once they realized the flooding was becoming calamitous.

“Sometimes it’s better to shelter in place – the Hill Country is not a one-size-fits-all place,” Leitha, the sheriff, said Wednesday. “First responders from emergency services throughout Kerr County promptly responded to the recent emergency as the situation unfolded.”

There are also questions about whether critical vacancies at the NWS could have affected emergency response if warnings didn’t make it to the right people.

CNN previously reported the NWS’ Austin-San Antonio office is missing a warning coordination meteorologist — a role that serves as a crucial, direct link between forecasters and emergency managers in the area — though it’s unclear if it impacted outreach to counties. NWS forecasters were actively disseminating real-time weather information to emergency managers that night.

The vacancy in the Austin-San Antonio office, along with other key roles, was the result of early retirement incentives offered by the Trump administration to shrink the size of the federal government, a NOAA official told CNN.

Camp Mystic’s plan

The July 4 flood was a 1-in-100-year event — something forecasters expect would only happen once every 100 years, on average. Put another way, it has a 1% chance of occurring in any given year.

There are clear maps around dangerous rivers like the Guadalupe outlining where a flood like this will track, which areas will be underwater, and where the flood will reach first. But at least 18 summer camps, including Camp Mystic, situated along the river, were built in these locations despite their known risks of flooding.

At Camp Mystic, the flood ripped the wall off at least one building and left a cabin covered in dirt and mud, photos show. The debris-laden water line can be seen near the top of the cabin’s doorway.

About a dozen of the summer camps sustained damage from the floodwaters, and officials have not yet explained why they were allowed to be built, maintained or added to in these areas. Camp Mystic has been in place for nearly 100 years.

Just two days before the deadly floods, an inspector with the Texas Department of State Health Services confirmed the all-girls Christian camp had a state-mandated plan “for emergency shelter and for evacuation” in case of a disaster.

The state health department does not maintain copies of youth camp emergency plans, which include circumstances of flooding, but they are reviewed during each annual inspection, a state DHS spokesperson told CNN.

But in the wake of the devastation at the camp that left at least 27 people dead, it’s not clear if that emergency plan was sufficient or how closely it was followed on July 4.

It’s also unclear if any policy change came after ten campers in 1987 were caught in the same Guadalupe River floodwaters and died.

At the heart of emergency management is evolving policies after a disaster to mitigate devastation in the future. What, if any, changes are to come for Kerr County’s emergency response in the wake of this tragedy?

Officials at Tuesday’s briefing clashed with reporters expecting answers.

“We understand you have many questions,” Texas Game Warden Ben Baker said, but officials are focused on bringing people home.

“But your community is asking these questions,” one reporter said.

“We will get answers,” Baker replied. He didn’t take any more questions.

CNN’s Mary Gilbert, Angela Fritz, Renée Rigdon, Casey Tolan, Curt Devine, Lauren Mascarenhas, Chris Boyette and Rebekah Reiss contributed to this report.

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