KERRVILLE, Texas — Tears and finger-pointing punctuated a Texas Legislature hearing Thursday on the deadly July 4 floods, as grieving survivors challenged claims by local officials that little could have been done to prevent the disaster’s 138 deaths.
County and local officials argued that they reacted as quickly as possible to an unprecedented storm that hadn’t been forecast the previous day. But state lawmakers of both parties picked apart their timelines, questioned years of local decision-making and pushed back on local officials’ assertions that better warning systems, like sirens, might not have mattered.
“There’s all kinds of reasons this shouldn’t have happened,” said Republican Sen. Charles Perry, the chair of the Senate’s disaster preparedness and flooding committee. He predicted the state would crack down on floodplain development and impose new flood safety standards. “These folks out here, … everything in your world is going to change a little bit.”
Texas lawmakers held the hearing in Kerr County, where at least 108 people died in the floods, including 27 children and counselors from Camp Mystic. Survivors cast doubt on state and local officials’ descriptions of the disaster response, saying help was slow to arrive and that human remains remain scattered across the state.
