Texas county flagged need for flood alarm months before tragedy
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The October warning, part of a 220-page 'hazard mitigation' report addressing threats that counties are required to send periodically to FEMA, followed years of failed attempts by local officials to secure funding for such a system, according to records and interviews with local officials.
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The New York Times identified at least three occasions between 2017 and 2024 when local officials sought funding for a flood warning system but were rebuffed by the state. Those came though the federal government made billions available for disaster-reduction projects — including $1.9 billion to Texas over the past decade, to be spent at the discretion of state officials, according to a Times analysis.
The Texas Division of Emergency Management rejected a 2017 request from Kerr County because it did not meet federal requirements, according to spokesperson Wes Rapaport. Those included a completed plan for addressing natural disasters.
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The state rejected a 2018 request from the county because state officials chose to focus on counties affected by Hurricane Harvey, a massive storm that caused flooding across large portions of Texas in August 2017, Rapaport said.
Kerr County, a popular resort area northwest of San Antonio with only about 50,000 full-time residents, was not among those counties.
Since 2018, Kerr County officials submitted no other grant applications for flood warning systems to the state emergency management office, according to Rapaport.
A FEMA spokesperson said the Trump administration was shifting the agency 'to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens.'
Last year, a separate body, the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, sought money for a warning system through the Texas Water Development Board, which funds flood-control projects.
That effort was also unsuccessful. The board offered to match just 5 percent of the cost, according to public records. The river authority, whose jurisdiction includes the portions of the river where most of the deaths occurred, decided it was not enough money to proceed.
The authority's president, William Rector, said in an interview he believed his organization did not get more money 'because we're considered a rich county.' He said he did not recall why the authority waited until 2024 to apply, referring questions to other representatives who did not respond to requests for comment.
'I've been really insistent on getting a system in place,' Rector said, adding the county in April hired a contractor to begin work on a warning system, spending $73,000 of its own money. 'I wish our timing had been better.'
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In a statement, a spokesperson for the Texas Water Development Board said the grant offered to the river authority was limited to 5 percent of the project's cost based on criteria that included the area's average household income. The board said it offered an interest-free loan to cover the rest.
It is not clear how many lives, if any, would have been saved by an alarm system. But other flood-prone counties have alert systems, and after the Kerr County flood, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said there 'should have been sirens here.' If local officials could not afford it, he added, 'then the state will step up.'
Officials in Kerr County did not respond to detailed questions about their efforts to install a warning system.
'Our city and county leadership are committed to a transparent and full review of past actions,' officials in Kerr County and Kerrville, the county's largest city, said in a statement. 'Our entire focus since day one has been rescue and reunification.'
The lack of an alert system in Kerr County is now drawing scrutiny amid questions over whether government inaction left people more vulnerable to flooding. While the abrupt and explosive nature of the storm caused clear challenges, the potential for a catastrophic flood was widely known. Yet neither county, state, nor federal officials took the steps that many experts and local leaders felt could have made people safer.
'The more I'm finding out about it, the more I'm getting pissed off,' said Raymond Howard, a city councilor in Ingram, in Kerr County, referring to how often the county discussed a flood warning system without getting funding. 'They spend money on all types of other stuff. It just makes me very sad that they talked about it but never followed through with it.'
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Howard said he knew some people thought any discussion about blame was premature, but disagreed. 'If we don't talk about it now and get the fire underneath everybody, it's going to get shuffled again. And I don't want to see that,' he said.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the state Legislature would investigate the floods. But he also pushed back against efforts to assign blame, calling it 'the word choice of losers.'
Nonetheless, the disaster has highlighted a range of potential failures.
Some of the buildings at Camp Mystic, the Christian camp where at least 27 girls and counselors were lost to the flooding, were inside an area that experts call the 'floodway' — a designation that indicates an exceptionally high risk of flooding, and one where construction is generally prohibited.
In addition, while many experts credit the National Weather Service with issuing up-to-the-minute flash flood warnings, some questioned whether key vacancies in local weather service offices hurt the agency's ability to coordinate with emergency management officials.
Kerr County's inability to get help paying for a flood warning system is all the more striking because of a shift in US disaster policy in recent years that made disaster-protection money far easier to obtain.
After Hurricane Harvey inundated Texas in 2017, the start of a series of record-breaking disasters across the country, the federal government shifted its approach to protecting Americans from more frequent and severe weather catastrophes.
Instead of simply rebuilding communities after disasters, the government provided more money to build protections ahead of time. The approach, championed by the first Trump administration, became supercharged under the Biden administration, with billions of dollars directed to those preparations.
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One of the greatest beneficiaries was Texas: nearly $1.9 billion through FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program went to the state over the past decade.
The way FEMA structured that program gave the Texas Division of Emergency Management authority to decide which projects, in which counties, received the funds. Over the past decade, that money has been approved for disaster warning systems in more than two dozen of the 254 counties in Texas, federal records show.
The episode highlights a major flaw in America's disaster defenses, according to Roy Wright, who managed risk-reduction programs at FEMA during the first Trump administration. Because so many levels of government are involved, it is impossible to know who is responsible.
'Big risks aren't getting to the top of the list for funding,' said Wright, who now runs the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety. 'Clearly, it needs to be different.'
County officials began trying to install a warning system along the Guadalupe River after floodwaters swept down the nearby Blanco River on Memorial Day weekend 2015. The flood ripped through the Hill Country town of Wimberley, killing 13 people.
Some residents argued blaring outdoor sirens would ruin the natural feel of the area many prized. 'The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of the night,' then-county commissioner Buster Baldwin said during a 2016 meeting. 'I'm going to have to start drinking again to put up with y'all.'
Still, commissioners hired a local engineer, identified grant money, and worked with a grant writer to apply to the Texas Department of Emergency Management for federal money, according to county meeting minutes from January 2017. The cost: about $976,000.
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The plan would have added 10 gauges to measure rising water at river crossings and created a system for warnings to be shared with the sheriff, emergency managers, and the public, according to a description shared at the meeting.
The state denied the application in 2017, the county commissioners said, according to meeting minutes.
There are signs, though, that sirens may be in place for future flooding.
Soon after the recent tragedy, Patrick said the state would pay for a warning system.
'Whatever the problem was, why they didn't have them, we're moving on,' the lieutenant governor said.
This article originally appeared in
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