His optimism was fading. He paused along a Texas 39 grape orchard as friends searched across the highway in a massive field spanning half a mile. Trees once blocked the roadside view. Now, the still-swollen river, a mess of uprooted trees and scattering of volunteer searchers were visible from the road.

Searchers used helicopters, boats and drones to search for victims in flash floods that tore across Texas’s Hill Country at the start of the Fourth of July weekend.

A grief-stricken Texas is asking whether meteorologists and local officials did enough to prevent flood devastation.