Texas officials are still looking for nearly 200 missing people as of Thursday after floods slammed central Texas over the Fourth of July weekend.
Notably, state politicians had a bill in the works to strengthen emergency services across the state, but it failed in the Senate before the disaster occurred.
Over the weekend of July 4, the Guadalupe River rose an unprecedented 30 feet in just 45 minutes.
The floods killed an estimated 120 people in five different counties, destroyed hundreds of acres of land, and left 170 people missing.
It is important to note that this specific region of Texas is no stranger to flash flooding. Texas locals have nicknamed that stretch along the Guadalupe "flash flood alley."
“This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States, and we deal with floods on a regular basis," said Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly. "When it rains, we get water. We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever.”
Other local officials stated that the forecasts for the region were inaccurate and did not accurately reflect the storm's severity.
“The original forecast that we received on Wednesday from the National Weather Service predicted 3 to 6 inches of rain in the Concho Valley and 4 to 8 inches of rain in the Hill Country,” Texas Emergency Management Chief W. Nim Kidd said on Friday. “The amount of rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts, nonetheless."
However, the NWS said it sent out “considerable” or “catastrophic” flood warnings at 1:14 a.m. local time Friday. This should have enabled push notifications on mobile phones. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said that the state had “assets, resources, and personnel” in place two days before the floods began.
Some residents of hard-hit Kerr County said that they were not aware of the floods until around 5 a.m., when the Guadalupe River was already meters high. It is estimated that 161 people are missing from Kerr alone, and at least 95 people died there, including 30 children from Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp.
Kerr does not have an emergency alert system, though local leaders considered putting one in place in 2017. Local officials in Kerr said that they did not think the measure would go over well with citizens because of its cost.
Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring said that he was unaware of the emergency services in his area and did not recieve the NWS alerts.
“I haven't seen the governor’s remarks ... I don't know what resources TDEM had in place at that time,” Herring said.
Abbott announced that a special session of the Texas State legislature will vote in two weeks on emergency measures related to the floods.
A few short months ago, Texas legislators voted on House Bill 13, which would’ve created a statewide plan to improve Texas’s disaster response. Measures proposed in the bill included improved alert systems in the event of inclement weather, as well as grants for cash-strapped rural counties to purchase emergency communication equipment.
It died in the state senate, but wouldn’t have taken effect if had passed until September 1.
Kerr County Rep. Wes Virdell said that he voted against the measure when it was in the House because of the bill's $500 million price tag.
Virdell told the Texas Tribune that his “vote would probably be different now,” a pattern that many other state officials have followed.
Lt. -Gov. Dan Patrick, who did not prioritize inclement weather in his 2025 agenda, told Fox News that the state government could step up and fund emergency alert measures if localities cannot afford it.
"If the city can't afford to do it, then let us do it," Patrick said. "We have a special session starting two weeks from today, and I think we can take that up and do some other things of funding these sirens. If there had been a siren, maybe that would have sparked people to say, 'Oh, we have a massive disaster, like, five minutes away.'"
He added that the sirens could be similar to the alerts Israelis receive for an incoming rocket and stated that he would want them operable by next summer.
“It's possible that that would've saved some of these lives."
On the ground, leaders of the affected communities said that a warning system would be crucial.
“We need a practical warning system that will work for this area, and the key word there is practical,” Mayor Herring told the Texas Tribune.
Abbott announced that the special session would include four items related to the floods, including legislation for strengthening emergency service warnings and communication, as well as relief funding for the affected communities.
"We want to make sure that when we end that session, we end it by making sure these communities are better, more resilient, and have the resources that they need."
While he noted that Texas would open an investigation to look into "every aspect" of the floods, but said that officials weren't interested in taking the blame.
“Every football team makes mistakes,” Abbott said. “The losing teams are the ones that try to point out whose to blame. The championship teams are the ones that say, ‘Don’t worry about it, man, we’ve got this.’"
"The way winners talk is not to point fingers. They talk about solutions. What Texas is all about is solutions.”