NWS Texas Flood Warning left little time for people to react
Experts have questioned whether President Donald Trump’s budget cuts cut the National Weather Service.
For nearly a decade, when catastrophic floods in southern Texas killed at least 95 people, including 27 girls and counselors from their beloved summer camp, the state emergency management department has rejected a request from the county where the camp is held to provide a $1 million grant to improve its flood warning system.
Summer camp was the best during county leaders debate about the project, meeting minutes show. Tom Moser, a county commissioner at the time, had envisioned the website to monitor if evacuation was required and designated people at each camp point to alert camp counselors and attendees.
The emergency management department did not answer specific questions from USA Today regarding why the county’s application was denied.
“As we are in the midst of an ongoing response operation, our priorities are public safety for now,” Chief Communications Officer Wes Rapaport said in an email.
A Kerr County spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Phone and email messages attempting to contact Moser and Dub Thomas, Carr County deputy sheriffs and emergency management coordinators, were not recovered.
In June 2016, President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in Texas after heavy rain killed 20 people and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses in the southeast corner of the state. They freed over $100 million in money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), cleans up the damage and help communities across the state prepare for the next disaster.
Kerr County, part of a region with high flooding potential for rivers and streams, was one of the communities that sought prevention funds, earning the nickname “Flash Flood Alley.” It called for $1 million to upgrade 20 water gauge systems, add new water level sensors and posts, and build a flood warning system that created software and websites that distribute that information to the public in real time.
Nearby jurisdictions such as Cornal County have built siren systems to warn residents of flooding, but Moser noted that many people in Kerr County are opposed to sirens. The website he wanted was to fill that void.
“We can do all the water level monitoring, but all of this is worthless unless we make that information public in a timely manner,” he said at his January 2017 meeting a few days before the application deadline.
Under FEMA’s Hazard Reduction Assistance Program, the federal government can distribute money for precautions to states that require it. City, county and nonprofit organizations will then apply to the state. In Texas, the emergency management department decides which applications to approve.
The Texas Emergency Management Department rejected the show of the meeting minutes, Kerr County’s 2017 application meeting. Kerr County applied again in 2018. In 2018, more federal funds were available after Hurricane Harvey. However, minutes from the meeting show that the Texas Emergency Department again did not approve it.
Carr County has long used software called Codered to notify residents of floods, fires and other emergencies via mobile phones. In 2020, county leaders voted to expand the coded by integrating it with the FEMA system.
But the expansion is merely an expansion of the old system, not a new system with upgraded gauges, new sensors and public websites the county desperately wanted.
“We’ve been trying to get a new flood warning system here,” Thomas, the county emergency management coordinator, said at a November 2020 meeting.
“We couldn’t do that.”
