Updated 6:45 p.m. July 23
The Upper Guadalupe River Authority covers about 38 miles of the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, according to its website.
UGRA general manager Tara Bushnoe told committee members July 23 that the river authority has jurisdiction over six flood gauges on the Guadalupe River. There are no flood warning sirens in the UGRA’s jurisdiction, she said.
Lawmakers grilled Bushnoe about why the UGRA declined to either raise local tax rates or accept a loan from the state to complete $1 million in upgrades to its flood warning system along the Guadalupe River in 2024, although she did not have a clear answer to their questions.
“I find it extremely disturbing,” Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, said. “I’d like to talk to your board—I hope they're there in Kerrville to answer to the actual people of that region, the residents and their neighbors.”
Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said he thought the upgrades, which would have included flood gauges at 10 low-water crossings throughout Kerr County, would have been “perfectly suited to the problem that occurred on July 4.”
“I can't even begin to estimate the [lives] those 10 gauges and those warning systems would have saved if they had been online on that day,” Bettencourt said.
Bettencourt said lawmakers are considering allocating funding during the ongoing special legislative session for flood warning infrastructure, which could include early warning sirens along the Guadalupe River and in other flood-prone regions.
“In situations that are dealing with life and death, if a community can't do it, then the state should come in and do it. ... We should try and strive to do that before the next summer season,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads the Texas Senate, told Community Impact July 8.
During the July 23 hearing, lawmakers asked Bushnoe what she would do differently in the wake of the July 4 flooding, which killed at least 137 people in Kerr County and other parts of Central Texas. Bushnoe said she “would have done anything in [my] power to prevent the devastation if it had been projected.”
“Well, that's what [lawmakers] are going to attempt to do now,” Bettencourt said. “This decision is just pathetic. I don't have any other way to put it.”
Rep. Wes Virdell, a first-term Republican who represents the Kerrville area, asked Bushnoe if she thought flood warning sirens would be effective during extreme rainfall events in Kerr County.
“Just for reference, I have a siren that's about 200 yards from my house, and if we're inside the house, we can't even hear it,” Virdell said.
Bushnoe said she thought it would be “hard to hear” sirens or warning sirens during severe weather events.
“I don't have specific solutions for you today, but I think that notification is going to be more successful with a multi-pronged approach [and] not just one type of alert,” Bushnoe told the committee. “I believe that a solution can be found that’ll improve notification.”
Lawmakers said they did not think local emergency management officials were “behind the wheel” or prepared to respond to the July 4 floods.
“It just seems to me, the more I'm listening to this today, [Kerr County] really doesn’t have a coordinated emergency team,” committee co-chair Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, said. “They have someone that's designated who somewhat checked out on some level. They have, from what I can tell, fighting between city and county [officials] that don't communicate well.”
Kerr County leaders were not invited to testify July 23; however, lawmakers are scheduled to hear from them during a July 31 meeting, which will be held in Kerrville.
Updated 4:30 p.m. July 23
Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, noted that in April 2024, the Upper Guadalupe River Authority requested state funding to improve early flood warning systems. The project was estimated to cost about $1 million, including a $50,000 grant from the state. According to the Texas Water Development Board, the state was prepared to loan the remaining $950,000 to the UGRA with 0% interest.
TWDB Executive Administrator Bryan McMath said the river authority’s plan was based on a 2016 study, and proposed installing flood gauges at 10 low-water crossings in Kerr County. The proposed system also would have issued road closure alerts and other warnings to local residents, McMath told the committee July 23.
The UGRA declined to move forward with the project in 2024, McMath said.
“The key, I think, in this issue, is making sure that timely action is taken with the information given, and decisions are made,” Schwertner said.
Updated 3:45 p.m. July 23
The third panel included several officials from the Texas Water Development Board, who discussed the state’s flood planning efforts. The TWDB adopted an inaugural statewide flood plan last August, Community Impact previously reported.
The board, in coordination with 15 regional flood planning groups, began working on the state flood plan in 2019, in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. According to the plan, Texas leads the nation in flood-related deaths, about 70% of which occur at low-water crossings or on other flooded roadways.
Officials said the TWDB is not directly involved in the immediate emergency response to natural disasters; however, the board’s data is available to the National Weather Service and emergency response teams.
“We're not a forecasting agency; we're not an emergency response agency,” TWDB Chair L'Oreal Stepney said. “We're a planning agency, and we value working with the local entities on the process for science, planning and funding.”
Lawmakers asked the TWDB to run flood models to analyze the July 4 floods.
“I would think that given the fact that we had 137 people lost, that we would have taken a shot at running the model to see if the model actually can replicate the conditions that we saw on July 4,” Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, told the board. “And if you haven't, I would expect you to do it immediately.”
TWDB officials said they were working on modeling and intended to get results to the committee in about one week.
“I would have expected that we've already run it against the conditions that occur, because otherwise, why are we investing in this?” Bettencourt asked. “If we can't run a model in less than a month after a major event, I wouldn't consider that to be a success. In fact, I would consider it to be a failure.”
Committee co-chair Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, pointed out that asking the TWDB to “expand their role going forward into more of a predictive, forecasted, weather-based resource... would be a new mission.”
Updated 2 p.m. July 23
Rep. Wes Virdell, a first-term Republican who represents the Kerrville area, noted that “people have become desensitized to flash flood warnings or alerts on their phone over time.”
The National Weather Service issued multiple alerts related to the storm and declared a “flash flood emergency” for Kerr County around 4 a.m. July 4, Community Impact reported, although officials have said some residents and visitors missed or did not receive the warnings. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told Community Impact he thought the flooding was so deadly because it “came while everyone was sleeping.”
“Some didn't wake up. They never heard the storm was coming, and they lost their lives,” Patrick said in a July 8 interview.
Virdell asked officials July 23 what lawmakers can do to ensure as many people receive emergency alerts as possible.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Freeman Martin said DPS typically sends out AMBER alerts and other warnings at the request of local officials. He said he is sometimes “hesitant” to issue alerts when they impact a large area, because it is important to spread critical information while avoiding alert fatigue.
“I have friends where my [emergency alerts] will go off in a restaurant, and theirs do not, because they have them silenced,” Martin told the committee.
Martin said he did not have an immediate solution to the issue.
Updated 1:20 p.m. July 23
After the second set of panelists laid out their agencies’ response to the July 4 floods, Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, asked officials to provide “the most honest assessment of what went wrong.”
“This is not a normal hearing—this is a hearing to try to figure out how 137 people died,” Johnson said July 23. “I think our honest, genuine question that the families across Texas are demanding is: What do we need to do better, or what went wrong?”
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Freeman Martin said during his testimony that “several casualties” occurred because people drove on flooded roadways, including Michael Phillips, the former Marble Falls Volunteer Fire Chief, who went missing while responding to a rescue call early July 5. The fire department announced the “end of watch” for Phillips in a July 15 social media post.
The Kerrville police chief also nearly drove into floodwaters, Martin said.
"We're presented with a slide that says we monitor roadway conditions and close them, and not five minutes earlier, we heard that the chief of police in [Kerrville] drove into the water and almost got washed away,” Johnson said. “Why didn't you close the road? Did you not have the proper monitoring system? Did you not have the proper radar system? Were we not getting the data of what's actually happening in real time?”
Texas Department of Transportation Chief Engineer Carl Johnson said the agency needed to “assess all the low-water crossings” and determine ways to more effectively predict conditions in advance of future disasters.
Carl Johnson said July 23 that there are 420 low-water crossings in Central Texas, approximately 340 of which are located in rural areas. It costs about $30,000 to install and maintain stream gauges and barriers for each crossing.
“So we’re looking at about $10.2 million to get them all covered [in rural areas],” Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, said.
Updated 12:30 p.m. July 23
Kidd concluded speaking to the committee at 12:30 p.m., after about 3 hours of questions from lawmakers.
“I don’t ever want to go through this again,” he said. “I know none of you do, and we don't want the heartbreak for any other families in Texas. We've got to figure this out.”
The second panel consisted of Texas Department of Public Safety Director Freeman Martin; Ronald VanderRoest, director of law enforcement for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department; Texas Department of Transportation Chief Engineer Carl Johnson; and Public Utility Commission of Texas Executive Director Connie Corona.
As of July 23, Martin said two people remained missing as a result of the July 4 weekend floods. He noted that it has been difficult for medical examiners to identify some flood victims, because of “what the water does to the human body.”
Updated 11 a.m. July 23
Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd told the committee that under state statute, all disasters in Texas are locally managed.
“Elected mayors and county judges are the emergency management directors for their communities,” Kidd said July 23. “Our job at the state... is to support local efforts to augment capacity and capability. I always say we are responsible, but we are not in charge—the responsibility of being in charge rests with local officials.”
Kidd’s remarks echoed what U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said July 11, when President Donald Trump and other federal leaders visited disaster zones in Kerr County. Noem, whose department includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said at the time that natural disasters are best handled at the state level with federal assistance.
Kidd highlighted multiple policies that he would like state lawmakers to look into, including:
- Improving communications among first responder agencies
- Implementing a better emergency warning system
- Determining how to best handle mass fatalities after natural disasters
- Establishing certification requirements to become a local emergency manager
- Creating standard procedures for volunteers who respond to disasters
“We're better than that; we can do better than that. We need to,” Kidd said.
During the regular legislative session, which ended June 2, House lawmakers passed a bill that would have created a state interoperability council, required emergency management officials to develop new emergency alert systems and provided funding to help local governments obtain warning systems. The legislation, which would not have become law until Sept. 1, did not receive a hearing in the Senate.
Kidd also noted that there are “no minimum qualifications” to become a local emergency management coordinator in Texas, and operations are typically led by local officials, such as a county judge.
“Today in Texas, a police officer has to pass the TCOLE exam, ... a firefighter has to pass written and practical tests,” Kidd told lawmakers. “But to be an emergency manager, you need a signature. That needs to change.”
Kidd also laid out a timeline detailing the state’s preparation for the July 4 weekend floods. About 12 hours before floodwaters began rising, weather forecasters had “no indication” of how severe rainfall would be or which regions would be most heavily impacted, Kidd said. TDEM initially mobilized emergency response crews and resources across 44 Texas counties, he said.
“It was not about the intensity that we saw in the forecast, because we didn't see it—just like you didn't see it, just like no TV meteorologist ever broadcast about it,” Kidd said. “What we saw was a giant swath of Texas—we started calling it a belt—of where something may happen.”
Updated 9:30 a.m. July 23
Committee co-chair Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, opened the July 23 hearing with a prayer for the 137 people confirmed dead as a result of the Central Texas floods, those still missing and the victims’ families.
“The broken hearts and the shattered dreams... [are] not something we can fix in a hearing today. But we can sure show we have compassion and empathy for that loss and that we're there walking with them,” Perry said.
Perry emphasized that lawmakers would not “attempt to assign blame” during flood response hearings.
“To do so would undermine the very goal of the committee's creation—the goal of our committee is to find constructive policy solutions which will remit future loss of life, like what our state has suffered over the past few weeks in a tragedy,” Perry told committee members July 23. “Grace, love and compassion are essential to healing and recovery. This one is no different, and our ultimate aim is to heal our state's wounds.”
The joint committee will not vote on bills, Perry said, noting that House and Senate lawmakers will hold separate hearings to consider specific legislation after gathering information during the initial hearings. Texas’ special legislative session began July 21 and will last for up to 30 days.
Original story
About 2.5 weeks after historic flooding hit communities across Central and West Texas, killing at least 137 people, an 18-lawmaker panel met at the Capitol to discuss flood response with state and local leaders.
At least 17 invited witnesses were scheduled to speak to the bipartisan panel, including:
- Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd
- Texas Department of Public Safety Director Freeman Martin
- Texas Water Development Board Chair L'Oreal Stepney
- Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority CEO Darrell Nichols
- Lower Colorado River Authority Executive Vice President John Hofmann
- Thomas Gilbert, radio systems manager for the Brazos Valley Council of Governments
Several lawmakers whose communities flooded over the holiday weekend serve on the joint Disaster Preparedness and Flooding Committee, including Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo; Rep. Terry Wilson, R-Georgetown; Rep. Wes Virdell, R-Brady; Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock; Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown; Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels; and Sen. Pete Flores, R-Pleasanton.
Texans interested in submitting written comments about disaster preparedness and flooding to the committee can do so here.
