State Agency Governor Oversees Spurned
Local Bids for Flood Warning System Funds Capitol Inside
July 8, 2025
Initial attempts to blame the deadly consequences of historic Hill Country flooding on federal forecasters appear to be off base in light of revelations that the state repeatedly refused to help Kerr County improve an antiquated warning system for the sake of protecting children at summer youth camps on the Guadalupe River there.
The focus has turned to the state in the post-mortem on the deadliest flood in Texas in more than 100 years with a death toll that soared past the century mark on Monday with countless more people still missing and feared to be dead.
The Texas Division of Emergency Management that Governor Greg Abbott controls denied at least two requests from Kerr County for $1 million to fortify the local emergency system for warning people of violent weather and the dangers that it could pose in a swath of the Hill Country where flash flooding is common.
The grants that Kerr County officials sought from the state without success were part of a $100 million pool of federal funds that Democrat Barack Obama made available for recovery efforts and disaster preparedness as the president in 2016 when he declared a major disaster in the Lone Star State after flooding that claimed 20 lives and destroyed hundreds of homes. But the TDEM spurned Kerr County's bid for federal funding that the state controls in 2017 and again in 2018.
The county tried again in 2018 after Abbott encouraged local entities to apply for federal help for flood warning and readiness in the wake of Hurricane Harvey that slammed the Texas coast the previous year. funding. But the state agency turned down Kerr County's second request for funding for an emergency warning system in flood-prone areas as well.
The Upper Guadalupe River Authority agreed to foot the bill for 5 percent of the seven-figure price tag for a modernized emergency system in Kerr County - according to a report on Tuesday in the Houston Chronicle. But the county said it couldn't afford the rest of the project with an annual budget of only $30 million.
The TDEM refused to comment on its potential culpability on Monday when a public relations officer said the agency was preoccupied with the response to the Independence Day catastrophe with the public's safety as its singular concern.
But Texas Department of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd didn't mention the agency's rejection of Kerr's request for federal disaster funds at a press conference that that County Judge Rob Kelly and the local sheriff attended with Abbott several hours after the flood slammed the century-old Camp Mystic and washed at least 27 young female campers to their deaths.
Kelly said the county wanted to build a new warning system but couldn't afford to do so. But Kidd passed on the chance to clarify the statement by pointing out that his state agency rejected the application for federal emergency outlays on which it had the power to make the final call.
The Republican governor made no attempt to set the record straight at the news briefing or another one that he conducted the following day with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The Cabinet official gave the impression that the National Weather Service set the stage for the catastrophic developments with technology that she portrayed as obsolete and error prone. Noem promised to push to upgrade it. It isn't clear if the governor was even aware of the dead end that Kerr County encountered at TDEM with the unsuccessful attempts to federal disaster funding twice during the past decade.
But President Donald Trump's chief spokesperson rejected assertions on Monday that budget cuts and layoffs at the National Weather Service set the stage for the horror show on the Guadalupe in the early morning darkness on July the 4th.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the president plans to travel to Texas Hill Country on Friday to tour the area that took the hardest hit when campers were swept to watery graves without a clue that they were in harm's path. .
Leavitt rejected assertions that budget cuts and layoffs at the NWS contributed to the disaster in Texas by adversely affecting its ability to predict violent weather in a credible and timely fashion. "The National Weather Service did its job, despite unprecedented rainfall," Leavitt said.
The Trump press aide's remarks directly contradicted Noem's comments two days before in Kerrville when she characterized the NWS forecasting system as an ancient relic of the Biden administration.
Local officials claimed that the NWS failed to provide sufficient information for them on the potential severity of the storm. The county judge and the Kerrville city manager say they received no urgent messages about the looming dangers and were caught off guard like the campers in the path of a raging Guadalupe River that surged more than 20 feet above the banks.
But the federal weather agency says the record shows that it warned the public early Thursday afternoon on the potential for flash flooding in the area before firing off a series of alerts in text messages that warned people in low-lying areas to get to higher ground immediately. Emergency officials and law enforcement in Kerr County either missed the messages or failed to take them seriously if they did.
Abbott said the Hill County flood and aftermath will be a subject that he wants the Texas Legislature to tackle in a special session that starts on July 21. The governor and the TDEM can expect intensive scrutiny for a decade of inaction in the case of Kerr County and its failed attempts to make an area safer for thousands of kids who spend parts of their summers at camps there.
more to come ...
| 
