Plans for Guadalupe River flood monitoring system were scheduled to get underway in mid-July

After years of unsuccessful attempts to finance and build a public alarm network that would warn residents of Kerr County, Texas, about dangerous flooding, officials in the region, nicknamed "flash flood alley," were going to start developing a centralized flood monitoring system this summer to help leaders and emergency managers plan ahead.

On July 4, storms in Central Texas caused the Guadalupe River to overflow, rising as high as 26 feet over about an hour in the very early morning. At least 121 people from several counties have been confirmed dead so far, and even more remain missing six days after the disaster. The majority of those deaths happened in Kerr County, where at least 96 people perished in floodwaters and another 161 are unaccounted for, local authorities said Thursday. In Hunt, a section of the county that faced particularly formidable inundation, at least 27 children and counselors from a girls' summer camp called Camp Mystic are among the dead, the camp announced.

The Upper Guadalupe River Authority, a leadership board that manages the river, had approved funding earlier this year for a dashboard "to support local flood monitoring and emergency response," a spokesperson for the joint information center established in Kerr County since the disaster said in a statement to CBS News on Thursday.