President Donald Trump met with local officials and first responders in Kerrville on July 11, one week after historic flooding killed at least 119 people during the July 4 weekend.
Before heading to Texas, the president expanded a federal disaster declaration for the floods, making residents of Burnet, Kendall, Kerr, Kimble, Menard, San Saba, Tom Green, Travis and Williamson counties eligible for federal assistance programs.
What you need to know
Trump said he toured disaster zones in the area, speaking with residents and first responders. He then held a 45-minute roundtable with state and local leaders, praising them for Texas’ handling of the flood response.
“The search for the missing continues,” Trump said. “The people that are doing it are unbelievable people. … They’re doing the job like I don’t think anybody else could, frankly.”
The president said his administration is “doing everything in its power to help Texas,” adding that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would take “historic action to ensure that such a nightmare never happens again.”
Trump defended how officials have responded to the deadly floods, dismissing concerns that emergency alerts were not sent out quickly enough as the Guadalupe River rose in the early hours of July 4.
“I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances,” Trump said July 11, calling a reporter who asked about Texas’ emergency preparedness “evil.”
State and local officials have also avoided casting blame in the days after the flooding. During a July 8 news conference in nearby Hunt, Gov. Greg Abbott said assigning blame for the lives lost was “the word choice of losers.”
“The way winners talk is not to point fingers—they talk about solutions,” Abbott said July 8. “What Texas is all about is solutions.”
Officials took a few questions near the end of the July 11 roundtable but did not provide an update on the flooding death toll or how many people remain missing.
The context
Trump described the Hill Country flooding as a “one in a thousand year” disaster.
“It’s hard to believe the devastation,” he said. “I’ve gone to [the site of] a lot of hurricanes, a lot of tornadoes, and I’ve never seen anything like this. This is a bad one.”
Meteorologists say the area is frequently hit with floods. A large stretch of Central Texas, including Kerr County, is known as “flash flood alley,” and the Guadalupe River Basin is “one of the three most dangerous regions in the U.S.A. for flash floods,” according to the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority.
Local officials have said they were caught off guard by the severity of the July 4 storms, with Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly telling reporters that “we had no reason to believe that this was gonna be anything like what’s happened here.”
The National Weather Service issued multiple alerts related to the storm and declared a “flash flood emergency” for Kerr County around 4 a.m. July 4, according to previous Community Impact reporting.
Texas lawmakers have proposed installing state-funded flood warning sirens along the Guadalupe River and other flood-prone areas in light of concerns that some residents and visitors missed or did not receive emergency alerts from the NWS.
“In high flood-prone areas such as the Guadalupe River Valley, those need to be hardwired, fixed sirens that go off with automated systems when water levels reach a certain level,” Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, said in a July 9 interview. “The state needs to pay a large part in funding some of this early warning equipment.”
Abbott has asked lawmakers to work on natural disaster preparedness during an upcoming special legislative session, which begins July 21.
The other side
Three Congressional Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, sent a July 11 letter to the Trump administration, expressing concerns that recent staffing cuts at the NWS “put the people of Texas at risk” and made it harder for federal forecasters to coordinate with local emergency management teams.
“Effective oversight saves lives,” Doggett said in a statement. “That is why we need a full account of the ways in which the Trump administration’s recent actions have undermined the federal response, both before and after this catastrophe.”
In a separate letter, Doggett and 10 other Texas Congressional Democrats asked for information about FEMA’s response to the Central Texas flooding. The lawmakers cited recent policy changes that they said delayed federal response efforts due to “the politicization of the agency and its funding.”
Trump did not directly address concerns about staffing reductions or policy changes during his Kerrville visit. He said his office would “fully fund” Texas’ requests for federal recovery assistance, adding that he felt FEMA was “headed by some very good people.”
Kristi Noem, who leads the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes FEMA, said natural disasters are best handled at the state level with federal assistance.
“Emergencies and disasters are always locally executed,” Noem said July 11. “What we are doing here is empowering the state and the local officials to make the best decisions for their people, because they know their people, they know their community. And when they ask, then we come in and support them.”
Noem said FEMA had deployed over 700 employees and volunteers to Central Texas in the wake of the floods.
What’s next
On July 23 in Austin, members of the Texas House and Senate are scheduled to hold a joint committee hearing to review the July 4 weekend flooding and consider next steps, state leaders announced July 10.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick noted July 11 that lawmakers would later meet in Kerrville to hear from local residents, although a date for that hearing has not been set.
“In three weeks, we’re going to have a hearing in this room so that the residents and the people in this area don’t have to come to Austin,” Patrick said from an exposition hall in Kerrville. “We’re going to come to them, and we’ll stay here as long as it takes to hear their stories and their needs and their wants.”
The special legislative session begins July 21 and will last for up to 30 days.
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