Texas Emergency Chief Blames the Locals
and NWS as FEMA Boss Cites State Delay Capitol Inside
July 23, 2025
A special legislative investigation into the deadliest flood in 100 years in Texas kicked off on Wednesday with finger-pointing that its leader promised to avoid as the state emergency chief sought to blame federal weather forecasts and local authorities in the Hill Country for the magnitude of the disaster.
GOP State Senator Charles Perry of Lubbock set the ground rules for the Select Disaster Preparedness and Flooding Committee's first hearing when he said the panel would not engage in second-guessing as it pursued the singular goal of finding "constructive policy solutions” for the future's sake.
“Our select committee will not armchair quarterback," Perry said at a joint meeting with a special House committee with the same name and assignment for the session that started on Monday. One of two co-chairs along with Republican State Rep. King King of Canadian, Perry said the committee had no interest in assigning blame in the flooding's aftermath.
But the blame game got under way without delay despite Perry's promise when the panel's first key witness - Texas Department of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd - defended his agency's actions and said the buck stops with local authorities in the case of the killer flood on the Guadalupe River this month.
“I always say we are responsible. We are not in charge," Kidd told the panel in reference to the state. "The responsibility of being in charge rests with local officials."
Kidd said the state agency he leads did as much in advance as it could by having personnel positioned on the river a day before the river flooded. But Kidd said that the TDEM was spread thin across an area the size of Indiana. The TDEM boss said the event was unpredictable and impossible to manage as a result.
“We had no idea where rain would fall, but we knew that there was moisture in the atmosphere throughout Thursday," Kidd said. But the state disaster management chief told legislators that the "credentialing of emergency managers" at the local level should be a topic for conversation among during the summer session.
The blame game on the flood as the Federal Emergency Management Agency's leader defended his agency's response to the Texas flood at a U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing in Washington D.C. today. FEMA's acting director David Richardson said the agency waited for three days after the flood before providing assistance in Texas because the state failed to request it officially throughout that span of time.
Local officials in Kerr County pointed fingers initially at the National Weather Service for a forecast that underestimated the amount of rain that would fall on Central Texas in the early morning hours of July 4. Kidd told the special committee that the flood was a freak event that was unpredictable and impossible to manage.
But Kidd said the NWS issued a flash flood warning for Hunt and Ingram at 1:14 a.m. before extending it to 13 additional Texas counties at 1:32 a.m. on July 4. Kidd said the National Weather Service sent another message at 3:08 a.m. on a "very dangerous flash flood event" in Kerr County. An NWS alert at 3:19 a.m. that the Guadalupe River was expected to crest 16.6 feet at Hunt before a message at 4 a.m. predicted it would crest at nearly 25 feet.
"Less than an hour they changed the forecast like that," Kidd said.
Governor Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump have criticized media scrutiny into the disaster that claimed at least 135 lives on the nation's holiday when torrential downpours transformed the Guadalupe River into a torrent of destruction that campers in areas with histories of flooding never knew was coming. But the consignment of fault will be inevitable if the House and Senate joint committee is a serious effort.
While FEMA has been accused of dragging feet on the Texas flood, Richardson praised the agency's efforts here as a model response.
more to come ...
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