This is only going to get worse unless we take steps to mitigate it.
Less than 5% of residential properties in high-risk areas in Kerr County were covered by flood insurance before the July 4 storm, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis, highlighting a growing problem for inland regions in Texas that are experiencing stronger and more frequent rainfall.
The county has nearly 3,000 residential properties that fall within the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s 100-year floodplain. Yet fewer than 150 of those properties were insured through the federal government’s flood insurance program on July 4.
That puts the county far below the national average: over 15% of homes in FEMA’s 100-year floodplain typically have federal flood insurance.
The Chronicle also found FEMA’s flood maps didn’t adequately demonstrate the risk to Kerr County homeowners, thousands of whom fell outside the agency’s mapped floodplains but still saw their properties impacted. Nearly all of those homes – over 98% – lacked federal flood coverage.
The vast majority of flood insurance is provided through the federal government.
Any property with a federally backed mortgage in a floodway or in the 100-year FEMA floodplain, where there is a 1% chance of flooding each year, is required to carry flood insurance. But experts say enforcement can be spotty, and homeowners who don’t have mortgages often choose to forgo the expense, leaving what is for many their largest asset vulnerable to financial devastation.
Homeowners in Kerr County without flood insurance will receive far less federal recovery assistance than if they had coverage, and may be left to rely on savings or donations to rebuild.
“For those who are impacted who have insurance, they have an immediate pathway to recovery,” said Roy Wright, the president and CEO at the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety and the former chief executive of the National Flood Insurance Program. “Those who don’t have insurance, it’s a much, much longer road home.”
Many of the federal agency’s maps are long out of date, and critics say they don’t adequately capture the risks of climate change or take into account high-intensity rainfall events like the one that hit the Hill Country. If communities were better informed of risk, they said, property owners and local government officials might be better prepared, elevating new structures above the floodplain, setting up more reliable emergency response systems for disasters and buying flood protection for recovery.
No one should hold their breath waiting for this version of FEMA to update the floodplain maps. Regardless of that, the risk should be clear to anyone living in the area. Hell, anyone living anywhere in this state ought to be checking out what their risk is, because after the flood is too late. The cost of insurance – if it’s even available – is going to be a big problem, especially at a time when everyone says they’re concerned about the cost and availability of housing. I’m sure you don’t need to be told that climate change is exacerbating all of this, and that is also going to be getting worse at a time when we have a federal government that is hostile to anything that would mitigate it. Be that as it may, this is a problem that needs to be addressed at the federal and state level. And since neither the current Congress nor the current Legislature have any answers, Democratic candidates need to be talking about it.
And speaking of FEMA…
Two days after torrential rains set off fatal flash flooding in the Texas Hill Country, President Donald Trump authorized staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to travel to the flood zone to help state and local officials begin the rebuilding process.
But that quick response, following widespread media coverage of a disaster that claimed at least 134 lives and left 100 people missing, marked a sharp shift in approach since Trump took office in January, experts say.
As natural disasters like flooding, tornadoes and landslides piled up across the country this spring, FEMA accumulated a backlog of disaster requests that is still lingering as the Gulf of Mexico’s hurricane season gets underway.
Currently, five states including Indiana, Oregon and Maryland are awaiting a federal response more than a month after they requested a federal disaster declaration to unlock funds and other critical resources.
“You’re waiting weeks, sometimes months to have your disasters declared,” said Sarah Labowitz, a senior fellow at the non-profit Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Texas is the exception, not the rule.”
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Disaster declarations are necessary to allow the release of federal disaster funds that do everything from giving survivors money to buy food and other necessities and begin large-scale debris removal.
In the two weeks leading up to hurricane season, which began on June 1, FEMA had an average of almost 13 disaster requests pending each day, compared to an average of four during that same period over the previous nine years, according to analysis of federal data by Carnegie.
The backlog comes amid mass firings and departures that have resulted in a 20% decrease in FEMA staff, according to an op-ed by MaryAnn Tierney, the former Region 3 administrator for FEMA.
“Thousands of temporary employees remain on the job, but their contracts are running out. These are people trained to work with disaster survivors. FEMA cannot replace them or bring in new talent because of hiring restrictions,” she wrote.
Tierney, along with Region 6 Administrator Tony Robinson who covered Texas and four other states, were among a wave of senior FEMA officials who left the agency in recent months, amid what critics have characterized as a “brain drain” at the agency.
That has left some wondering how FEMA will manage once hurricane season gets into full swing later this summer.
“When you lose that expertise it means you don’t have the knowledge about what’s possible and how to cut through the red tape,” said Caitlin Durkovich, the former deputy homeland security advisor for resilience and response during the Biden administration. “These are people experiencing the worst day of their lives. They have nothing left. They’re lucky if they have a phone. And when you delay approval it’s delaying money going to people when they need it most.”
In Missouri, officials waited more than a month for FEMA assistance after a tornado struck St. Louis in May, killing five people. In West Virginia, which is still waiting for a response from its June 20 request for FEMA assistance, torrential rains caused rivers to overflow their banks, flooding dozens of homes and businesses and killing nine people.
Even when FEMA officials are on the ground, they no longer have the freedom to order up cleanup crews and debris removal contractors as they once did. Under new Trump administration rules, they must get clearance from Noem to move ahead on all contracts over $100,000.
We’ve talked about this before. We’re not even into the heavy part of hurricane season. I think we got a fast response because of the scope and visibility of the disaster, plus Trump favors Texas and he will always do more for an ally than for an enemy. (And yes, the fact that we have to talk about a President in those terms is disgusting, but here we are.) It is inevitable that a future disaster will get a thoroughly bungled response from Trump’s FEMA. It’s just a matter of when. Oh, and the death toll of the flood is now officially 135. With many more still missing.
And we have to talk about alert fatigue.
Of the questions surrounding the deadly July 4th Kerr County flooding, one of the most consequential involves the flash flood warnings issued ahead of the high water. The National Weather Service began broadcasting alerts to nearby cell phones well before the waters began dramatically rising: Why weren’t they more effective at getting people to evacuate?
Wireless reception can be spotty in the area, and some in the Guadalupe River basin said the warnings never arrived. Yet there is another possibility: People ignored the alerts because they have received so many in the past that the pocket vibrations and jarring tone had blended into the daily soundscape of living near a river.
“As soon as it starts raining we get them, because of the low water crossings,” Lorena Guillén, who owns the Blue Oak RV Park, told Hearst Newspapers.
Some may even have become so annoyed at the steady chirp of alarms that they deliberately set their phones to block them. Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice told NBC News he didn’t hear the early morning flood warning because he had silenced his cell phone’s weather alerts.
In Texas, he’s far from alone. A recent study of the system that beams emergency alerts to mobile phones found that residents here opt out of the warnings at nearly double the national average, and far more than any other state. A likely reason: The sheer volume of warnings Texans receive has numbed them to any sense of urgency, known as “alert fatigue.”
Many notify residents of the wide variety of wild weather that hits the state. At any given time, Texas can see life-threatening hurricanes, tornados, severe thunderstorms, high winds, coastal flooding and freezes.
Yet some of the barrage is manmade. Texas lawmakers have steadily added to the list of public safety alerts that regularly light up cell phones at all hours. Residents can receive Silver Alerts (missing mentally impaired elderly), Blue Alerts (violent attacks against law enforcement), Endangered Missing Person Alerts (those with intellectual disabilities) and CLEAR Alerts (everyone else). That doesn’t include the self-explanatory Power Outage and Active Shooter Alerts.
Perhaps the most well-known are Amber Alerts, broadcast when a child is thought to have been abducted. Conceived in Texas, the warnings have spread across the country. But Texans receive far more of them than any other place — by a margin too large to account for the state’s population alone.
In 2021, Texas broadcast 13% of the country’s total Amber Alerts. Last year, authorities here broadcast 29% of Amber Alerts sent out nationally — more than three times as many as California, the next-closest state.
Individually, each alert signals an emergency. But collectively, experts say, they can be noise. In all, the number of public safety alerts Texas authorities sent out has more than doubled since 2018.
Such numbers raise questions about whether the balance between important public warnings and alert fatigue has been lethally tipped in Texas.
I’m pretty sure I have most of these silenced on my phone. They are very loud and can be disruptive when you’re, say, at work. But this is a reasonably solvable problem. First, limit some of these alerts to a tighter geographic area – that Lubbock blue alert that woke up people across the state should never happen – and assign risk levels to everything while giving people the ability to receive only the alerts at whatever risk level they want. That’s not perfect, but it should at least reduce the fatigue factor – there’s more on that in the story. For areas with acute and life-threatening weather-related risks, other alerting methods such as sirens need to be in the mix as well. Point being, there’s a lot that can be done here to improve this situation. If the Lege doesn’t make that a priority for this special session, you know where the responsibility lies.
We close once again with some positive news.
The Texas Diaper Bank is set to distribute at least 500,000 essential items over the next several months to people across six counties impacted by the recent catastrophic flooding.
Diapers, adult diapers, bed pads, feminine hygiene products, supplies, household products and other hygiene products will be among the about 100,000 items distributed by the nonprofit this week alone. Items will be provided to flood victims in communities like Kerrville, Hunt, Mason, Kempner, Sandy Creek and San Saba.
Individuals needing assistance or nonprofits needing supplies can reach out to the Texas Diaper Bank at 210-731-8118 and press 8 option or email info@texasdiaperbank.org.
The diaper bank’s CEO, Jorge Medina, said once first responders begin wrapping up their work, the diaper bank will step in to provide essential supplies.
“It’s very rewarding when we are able to respond to people that are in need,” Medina said. “We plan to provide support and assistance to the families for the next six months or more, depending on how long the supplies last.”
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More information on how to donate to the Texas Diaper Bank can be found here.
That story was produced by Texas Public Radio. I get a lot of news for myself and my blog from TPR and various member stations – KUHF in Houston, KUT, KERA, and more. You know what’s going on right now. Give your local public broadcasting company a hand if you can. That’s a resource we can’t afford to lose.
Regardless of your political predilections, if you live in Flood Zone A and chose not to obtain coverage (regardless of whether or not you have a mortgage), if your home floods, I have zero sympathy for the financial crisis you could have avoided. I’ll be happy to send you thoughts and prayers, tho.
An ounce of prevention, a pound of cure.
C.L., I’m not sure if you have flood insurance, but flood insurance can be very expensive. I have been paying close to $3,000 a year for over a decade. I don’t live by the coast; one is limited to what one can recover, regardless of the building’s price.
The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) offers maximum coverage limits of $250,000 for building coverage and $100,000 for contents coverage for residential properties. For non-residential buildings, the maximum coverage is $500,000 for the building and $500,000 for contents.