It’s hard to know where to start with this.
Rep. Wes Virdell
For the last three days, state Rep. Wes Virdell has been out with first responders in Kerr County as they searched for victims and survivors from the devastating floods that swept through Central Texas early Friday morning.
“All the focus right now is let’s save all the lives we can,” Virdell, who was still on the scene in Kerrville, told The Texas Tribune on Sunday.
Virdell’s closeup view of the havoc wreaked on his district has made a lasting impression, he said, and left him reconsidering a vote he made just a few months ago against a bill that would have established a statewide plan to improve Texas’ disaster response, including better alert systems, along with a grant program for counties to buy new emergency communication equipment and build new infrastructure like radio towers.
“I can tell you in hindsight, watching what it takes to deal with a disaster like this, my vote would probably be different now,” said Virdell, a freshman GOP lawmaker from Brady.
The measure, House Bill 13, would have created a new government council to establish the emergency response plan and administer the grant program, both of which would have been aimed at facilitating better communication between first responders. The bill also called for the plan to include “the use of outdoor warning sirens,” like those used in tornado-prone Texas counties, and develop new “emergency alert systems.”
Authored by Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, the legislation was inspired by last year’s devastating wildfires in the Panhandle, where more than 1 million acres burned — including part of King’s property — and three people died. The bill failed in the Texas Senate, prompting newfound questions about whether lawmakers should have done more to help rural, cash-strapped counties stave off the deadly effects of future natural disasters.
As of Sunday evening, at least 79 people had died in the floods. Of those, 68 were in Kerr County, many of them camping or attending a private summer camp along the Guadalupe River.
Virdell, a Hill Country native who lives about 100 miles away, made his way to Kerrville early Friday after seeing news that rains raised the Guadalupe more than two feet, swamping its banks in Hunt and other river communities that host thousands of holiday vacationers.
He stressed an alarm system may not have helped much in this instance because the floodwaters came so quickly. Between 2 and 7 a.m., the Guadalupe River in Kerrville rose from 1 to more than 34 feet in height, according to a flood gauge in the area.
“I don’t think there was enough evidence to even suspect something like this was going to happen,” he said. ”I think even if you had a warning system there, this came in so fast and early in the morning it’s very unlikely the warning system would have had much effect.”
Virdell said he doesn’t recall the specifics of the bill or why he opposed it, though he guessed “it had to do with how much funding” was tied to the measure.
Even if it had passed, it would not have gone into effect until Sept. 1, after the Hill Country flooding.
The bill’s initial $500 million cost drew heavy criticism from fellow Republicans including state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington.
“This shouldn’t be about anything other than the fact that it’s a half a billion dollars,” Tinderholt, a hardline conservative and budget hawk, said during the April 1 House floor debate. “This is probably one of the most simple votes we should be able to take today. It’s that this interoperability council is going to spend money to try and get these departments to be able to talk together.”
Steven Aranyi, a spokesperson for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, noted that lawmakers — including the Texas Senate, which Patrick oversees — made several “unprecedented” investments in disaster response during this year’s legislative session, totaling $547 million. That included:
- $257 million for disaster response aircraft,
- $135 million for regional operation facilities,
- $90 million to provide ambulances to rural counties,
- $65 million for emergency response drone technology.
The flaw with HB 13, Aranyi said, was that it proposed rolling out the local grant money over an estimated timeline of up to 10 years.
“By the time any system was developed, it would be outdated due to advances in technology,” Aranyi said. “The grants in the bill were limited to planning purposes only; they did not support disaster response.”
I’m just going to bullet point this, because my thoughts are falling all over each other…
– How many times do we have to have an emergency in this state before the Republicans in the Legislature, not to mention Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick, do something to try to mitigate against it happening again? They failed us on Beryl, they failed us on Winter Storm Uri, they failed on the Panhandle fires, and now they’ve failed on disaster alert systems. The pattern here is stark.
– I don’t know if HB13 was the best possible way to increase our disaster preparedness capabilities, but it was a reasonable attempt by a legislator with a good reputation, and it passed the House by a vote of 129-18. Surely it had some merit, and even if it was flawed it had passed on April 2, meaning that there was ample time for the Senate to hold a hearing, make some amendments, and at least send a version of it back. But HB13 never even got assigned to a committee – its Senate companion bill did get assigned to the Finance committee, the day after HB13 passed in the House, and then was left to die. That’s on Dan Patrick.
– Spending some money on disaster response is nice, but that’s primarily reactive. It does nothing to help prevent or mitigate disasters before they happen. Now again, there are legitimate questions about how this could be done effectively – we must acknowledge that the floods happened very quickly, in the middle of the night, and many people had become accustomed to the risk of more normal levels of flooding. It’s entirely possible that even with the best alert systems available, many lives would still have been lost. But we’ll never know that.
– It’s also true that even if HB13 had passed, that law wouldn’t have been in effect until September 1, and there would be a significant lag between then and the counties doing something with the funding they would have been able to apply for. But not passing HB13 means that we would have been waiting another two years to try again (modulo whatever Abbott does with the special session call). If your argument is “we wouldn’t have been able to move fast enough to do anything”, then waiting another two years seems like an odd way to approach that.
– Then there’s the money complaint, as put forth by the lowlife Tony Tinderholt. Obviously, there’s a risk/reward tradeoff to consider, and there is a limit to how much money we should spend on any security system, especially when we can only speculate about the value of said system. But that’s not the issue for Tinderholt or his nihilist crew. They just don’t want to spend money on anything other than border security or various corporate giveaways. And so here we are.
– I don’t know enough about Rep. Virdell to know how comfortably he fits in that camp, or if maybe he just balked at the price tag and/or got bad advice. I will say, maybe next time have a staffer who is able to brief you on a bill like this before you vote on it. There are thousands of bills filed each session, and 80% or so never see the light of day, so I’m not saying “read them all”, as that would be ridiculous and pointless. But do read the ones that matter, and have a staff in place that can tell which ones they are. This is why electing people who care about these things is important.
I really don’t know what could have been different if we had better emergency alert systems in place, or if local officials had done more to warn their residents of this threat, or if the people who did know of the threat had acted more quickly. There is as I’ve said a lot we will need to learn from this, and to pass laws and get into a different mindset for the next time. Because I do know that the death toll is now 84, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, which still does not include the ten campers and one counselor who remain unaccounted for. I would like to think that this time, at least, we’ll take what happened seriously and try our best to prevent it, or at least lessen its impact, in the future. I’ll turn this over to the Chron editorial board:
As families grieve, Gov. Greg Abbott can act by adding a formal investigation and policy response to the agenda for his upcoming special session, which begins on July 21. Texas is too vulnerable to sudden, catastrophic flooding for our leaders in Austin to let this tragedy become just another unheeded warning. To his credit, Abbott has hinted that something is in the works.
“We have a special session coming up and the way to respond to this is something the special session will address,” he said at a Sunday press conference.
This time it was the Guadalupe River. Next time it could be the Brazos. Or the Trinity. Or Buffalo Bayou. Whether driven by climate change or upstream development or nature’s sheer unpredictability, these sorts of unprecedented floods are no longer once-in-a-generation events. They are a grim routine — and our state is unprepared.
Could campers have been saved if local officials had acted more urgently? Hours passed between when the National Weather Service issued a flood warning and a wall of water hit Camp Mystic.
AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter said in a statement Saturday that had camp organizers and local officials heeded warnings they could have saved lives. And when asked why the camps weren’t evacuated, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly had no answer.
Where did communication break down? Were late-night cell phone warnings ignored after years of overuse for far-away Amber Alerts? Does Texas need to step in to mandate flood sirens in flood-prone areas or invest in stronger resiliency infrastructure for our state’s Flash Flood Alley?
We don’t yet know what actions could have saved lives from the tragic Hill Country flood. But we do know the Legislature has the power to find out — and to help prevent the next one.
“When Texans face a challenge, we come together,” Abbott said at a press conference on Saturday. “We unite.”
Houstonians know that unity fades not long after the skies clear.
No special session followed Hurricane Harvey. Sixty inches of precipitation wasn’t enough to tap the state’s Rainy Day Fund. After Hurricane Beryl, lawmakers promised they would hold CenterPoint accountable for blackouts and corporate opacity. Yet the strongest reforms quietly died in the Legislature.
The Panhandle knows this struggle, too, as Suzanne Bellsnyder has documented at the Texas Rural Reporter. After the devastating 2023 wildfires, state Rep. Ken King led an investigation that called for better emergency communications infrastructure in rural Texas. House Bill 13 could have funded those upgrades — but it died in the Senate. That bill, too, deserves another chance in the special session.
Sadly, disaster investigations and infrastructure funding often cannot compete with political priorities such as securing the border or banning THC.
Too often, natural disasters are treated as a distraction from the Austin agenda — or worse, a stage for political theater. Some have already tried to twist this moment into a partisan spectacle. State Rep. Biscoe Cain bizarrely warned of a growing government. Too many progressives leapt at any opportunity to blame this tragedy on President Trump and his federal staffing cuts.
“In this particular case, we have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that current staffing or budget issues within NOAA and the NWS played any role at all in this event,” Houston meteorologist Matt Lanza wrote on The Eyewall. “Anyone using this event to claim that is being dishonest.”
In a moment of mourning, partisan posturing only deepens the pain.
Texans deserve better. Families deserve real answers. Flooding deserves to be treated with the seriousness it demands.
Yes it does. It also demands that people not act like assholes, or get in the way of rescue efforts. (I mean, Jesus H. Christ on a goddamn pogo stick.) Stop pointing fingers and spreading conspiracy theories, and start working to figure out how to do better. Go take a vacation if you can’t commit to any of that.
re: “…and left him reconsidering a vote he made just a few months ago against a bill that would have established a statewide plan to improve Texas’ disaster response, including better alert systems, along with a grant program for counties to buy new emergency communication equipment and build new infrastructure like radio towers.”.
If you’re the State Representative for ‘the highly dangerous and subject to frequent flash floods in the watershed’ area of Central Texas and are second guessing your decision to vote against steps that possibley could have saved 100 lives and a zillion dollars in damages….’cause it cost too much (in your opinion), then I have to question your abilty to effectively govern.
There is no need to point fingers; it must have been God’s will, for He alone knows the reason. No more pointing fingers unless you point them at God.
I will wear my anal opening label proudly, while putting the blame where it belongs with the Magas. About 25,000 children die yearly by firearms, the Mags just don’t give a shite about people dying, as one said people die.
as one Maga congressman said