The lead time was crucial, said TMC's President and CEO Bill McKeon. It allowed the hospitals to shut their floodgates and evacuate basement garages before the flood hit.

In the end, the only damage the hospital sustained was downed trees and leaky roofs, McKeon said.

This was not the first time the system worked well. When Tropical Storm Allison hit Houston in 2001, the system gave accurate predictions. During the past two decades, it has been upgraded from the first version to the third and monitored more than 150 storms.

In an interview with local newspaper in 2017, Bedient said the existing National Weather Service only issues warning by county which is too general, while the TMC Flood Warning System is designed to provide its users more specific flood warnings by monitoring key watersheds. Moreover, the system is interactive and provides real time updates every five minutes.

Blackburn believed the flood alert system in TMC should be widely used in the country. "It tells them when they need to deploy their flood gates that they have, it tells them when to tell their employees not to come in, and when to shut down for business. We need that for the entire county," he said.

During and after the flood disaster, hurricane victims criticized the authorities of fragmented information. Flood alerts were given in the state, county and city levels. People complained about overwhelming, sometimes confusing or even conflicting information on social media.

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