Texas Floods
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Sounds very sensible.
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At 4:22 a.m. on Friday, as Texas' Hill Country began to flood, a firefighter in Ingram – just upstream from Kerrville – asked the Kerr County Sheriff's Office to alert nearby residents, according to audio obtained by ABC affiliate KSAT. But Kerr County officials took nearly six hours to heed this call.
"The Guadalupe Schumacher sign is underwater on State Highway 39," the firefighter said in the dispatch audio. "Is there any way we can send a CodeRED out to our Hunt residents, asking them to find higher ground or stay home?"
"Stand by, we have to get that approved with our supervisor," a Kerr County Sheriff's Office dispatcher replied.
The first alert didn't come through Kerr County's CodeRED system until 90 minutes later. Some messages didn't arrive until after 10 a.m. By then, hundreds of people had been swept away by the floodwaters.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/kerr-county-officials-waited-90-minutes-send-emergency/story?id=123631023
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Camp Mystic’s owner warned of floods for decades. Then the river killed himm
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/11/us/camp-mystic-owner-warnings-texas-flooding-invs
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A decade of missed opportunities:
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"Kerr County did not opt for ARPA to fund flood warning systems despite commissioners discussing such projects nearly two dozen times since 2016. In fact, a survey sent to residents about ARPA spending showed that 42% of the 180 responses wanted to reject the $10 million bonus altogether, largely on political grounds."
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-kerr-county-commissioners-flooding-warning/
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FEMA Didn’t Answer Thousands of Calls From Flood Survivors, Documents Show
Two days after deadly Texas floods, the agency struggled to answer calls from survivors because of call center contracts that weren’t extended.
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Very sad.
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FEMA exempted Camp Mystic from its flood plain maps based on appeals (from owners?).
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The head of FEMA's Urban Search and Rescue branch, Ken Pagurek, resigned on Monday, multiple sources confirmed to ABC News.
Pagurek told colleagues he was frustrated by the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to dismantle FEMA and by new hurdles that slowed the agency's response to the catastrophic flooding in Central Texas earlier this month, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Sources said he pointed to a new DHS policy requiring all spending over $100,000 to be personally approved by Secretary Kristi Noem as a key factor behind the delays and, ultimately, his decision to step down..
https://abcnews.go.com/US/head-fema-search-rescue-resigns-agencys-response-texas/story?id=123997957
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