The Texas flash flooding on July 4th along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County was horrifying to see unfold, and the tragic loss of life is heartbreaking. It’s been over a week since this terrible event, when the river reached a flood stage of 36 feet and surged 26 feet in just 45 minutes, thanks to extremely heavy rainfall that’s being fueled by global warming. Flood waters raged and carried with them humans, pets, trees, cars, and houses along miles of river taking 134 lives to date with 101 people still unaccounted for.
Mis- and disinformation about FEMA response efforts by the Trump administration and other administration leadership is shameful and dangerous. Instead we must ensure lessons are learned and improvements are made to better safeguard people in the future. There’s a lot to unpack on how poorly the Trump administration’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) handled this disaster, as well as the roles the local and state governments had in contributing to the tragedy.
Thankfully, the Trump administration took swift action and quickly approved Texas Governor Abbott’s request for a major disaster declaration a day after it was submitted. A disaster declaration begins the federal process to release funds to individuals and deploy resources to help state and local governments in disaster response and recovery.
However this contrasts sharply with his threat to withhold disaster aid from California after the January wildfires and with the administration’s several delayed approvals and denied requests—all of which show that the administration is politicizing disaster aid.
FEMA’s response was dysfunctional, delinquent and irresponsible
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem—whose agency oversees FEMA—has been a big part of why FEMA’s response has been so flawed. Since the former acting FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton was fired for supporting FEMA during a Congressional hearing, his replacement David Richardson—who has no previous emergency management experience– has been a figurehead only. Instead, in another unprecedented action by the Trump administration, DHS Secretary Noem is holding the reins on FEMA. The Trump administration has also significantly cut FEMA staffing, especially at the senior experienced levels.
Dysfunctional
In what has been a whirlwind of activity, DHS Secretary Noem has repeatedly attacked FEMA, aided in staff firings, and even threatened to abolish it. All of which has significantly hampered FEMA’s recovery efforts in Texas. In June, CNN reported that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem issued a directive to DHS, including FEMA (and 21 other agencies and offices), that every contract over $100,000 must be reviewed by the Secretary. When it comes to disaster response and recovery, time is of the essence and every minute matters when it comes to saving lives. The bureaucratic directive caused a glaring bottleneck for funding disaster response that typically needs to be released in a moment’s notice and in amounts much larger than $100,000. A FEMA employee told CNN that a request for aerial imagery to help local search and rescue operations in Texas was delayed as they waited for Secretary Noem’s approval and a contract to implement the work. Secretary Noem has flat out denied the evidence-based reporting.
In this Washington Post article, a FEMA employee was emphatic on the impact of this directive: “There has been a major breakdown in diverting resources to the sites.” Securing the approval of the Homeland Security secretary, “was never part of the process previously and is absolutely hampering our ability to provide immediate assistance,” the Washington Post story reported, citing another FEMA employee.
Delinquent
Since the former acting FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton was fired for supporting FEMA during a Congressional hearing, his replacement David Richardson has been a figurehead only. Instead, in another unprecedented action by the Trump administration, DHS Secretary Noem is holding the reins on FEMA.
Multiple FEMA officials told CNN that they were taken aback by the agency’s relatively limited response in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. FEMA search and rescue operations were delayed days after flooding began Friday and were not deployed until Monday evening, while three teams were deployed on Tuesday. This is in sharp contrast to what FEMA officials say the deployment of search and rescue teams happens normally within hours of a storm, not days.
And there was a fraction of the FEMA staff that were deployed to Texas compared with a response to a disaster of that scale under previous administrations. Monday night, there were reportedly 86 FEMA staff and by Tuesday night the number grew to 311. However, in one of many examples of misinformation spread by this administration, on Fox News Sunday Kristi Noem stated that “she and over 700 FEMA workers were in the area within hours of a call with Texas officials.”
In an unprecedented move, FEMA’s acting head, David Richardson was missing in action during and after the Texas flooding until recently—reporter Marisa Kabas of the Handbasket wrote “Have You Seen this Man” including his image on a milk jug. In what continue to be bizarre moves by the acting FEMA administrator, his visit on July 12 wasn’t announced or promoted, and photos were only shared on social media.
Irresponsible
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem did not renew contracts for four companies and fired hundreds of call center contractors on July 5th , The New York Times reported. Her actions made it nearly impossible for Texas flood survivors to reach FEMA when they needed the agency the most. In fact, the reports found that the call centers answered only roughly 36 percent of the calls on July 6 and 16 percent on July 7. In comparison, prior to the cancellation of the contracts and firing of contractors almost all of the calls were answered (99.7 percent).
In a Meet the Press interview, Secretary Noem flat out denied each of these reports and—staying true to the Trump administration’s propaganda—called these reports “false reporting and fake news,” astoundingly called the Trump administration’s response the best response and better than any of the Biden administration’s response to disasters. And she shamefully lied about the call center effectiveness and the cancellation of the contractors.
Plan to push FEMA response to states is afoot
FEMA’s response was also part of the Trump administration’s plan to push the burden of disaster response and recovery down to the states.
While ignorance of emergency management plays a role in the indefensible FEMA response to the Texas flooding, this is all part of President Trump’s plan that Secretary Kristi Noem is carrying out to the T. The sheer audacity to lie in the face of facts, destroy the good parts of FEMA that exist today, enact policies like the preparedness executive order that pushes response and recovery burden onto states (among other things), and stand up the politicized FEMA review council to gather cover for the policies the administration already knows it wants, is stunning.
Secretary Noem spoke about how the FEMA federal response was “a very different response given the different agencies involved and that’s the way it should be” and that “these emergencies need to be conducted exactly how President Trump handled it” in which local responders execute local response, states come in and manages it and federal come in and supports.” The fact is that FEMA has always deployed multiple federal agencies to help with disaster response and, as many people have tried to explain to this administration, the local execution, state management and federal support of disasters has always been the modus operandi.
Former Deputy Acting FEMA Administrator Mary Ann Tierney stated it best:
“We are not witnessing a reimagining of federal disaster response — we are watching its demolition…With each policy rollback and staffing cut, the federal disaster management function is being hollowed out, leaving states and survivors to face storms, fires and floods with less.”
Regardless of whether the botched response was intentional or not, the result was the same: people were left in harm’s way without help.
The role of state government
There were also significant measures the state government could have done differently that might have resulted in a faster response to the Texas flash floods. Politico’s E&E news reporting uncovered unspent mitigation funding that Texas received under the federal disaster assistance Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP).
Kerr County’s request in 2016 for the state to provide funding to support a flood warning system under this program was denied given that it did not have a hazard mitigation plan, a federal requirement. But the state should have been proactive in pushing the county to meet the basic requirement of a hazard mitigation plan, which it now has, given its location in flash flood alley and its past flooding. The county also tried to get funding from the State’s Flood Infrastructure Fund but couldn’t come up with the 95 percent matching funds. Since then, the county repeatedly tried to get funding without success.
These struggles unfortunately aren’t unique and what it all points to is the need for more—not less— disaster preparedness, especially for smaller, less well-resourced places like Kerr County that are unable to pull together the resources for these projects on their own. Instead, the Trump administration is systematically getting rid of this commonsense, penny-wise funding that helps communities prepare ahead of the next climate change-related hazard.
Governor Abbott has announced a special legislative session on July 21 to address 18 agenda items, only four of which are flood policies, which is good news but news that comes with a grain of salt.
As former FEMA chief of staff Michael Coen states, it’s too little, too late: “When a state tries to make their state stronger following a disaster, that’s the wrong time. You need to be doing it before the disaster…These investments should have been made in the past. There was decisions made at the state level not to invest in alert and warning and additional mitigation measures, and now we’re seeing the costs of that.”
The four pieces of flood-related legislation on the agenda for the special session include 1) flood warning systems and other preparedness infrastructure in flood-prone areas across Texas; 2) strengthening of emergency communications and response infrastructure; 3) funding relief for response and recovery for the July flash flooding in the Hill Country; and 4) the evaluation and streamlining of rules and regulations to speed preparedness for and recovery from natural disasters.
Texans and Kerr County citizens in particular will need to hold their representatives accountable so that the right mixture of policies are in place to prevent these types of tragedies from repeating again.
Multiple actors increased risk
Then there is the complex role of multiple actors who increased risk in Flash Flood Alley.
Camps, mobile homes and other residential homes that were most at risk of flooding along the Guadalupe River were in its floodplain specifically in FEMA’s Special Hazard Flood Area (SFHA) and the riskiest, extremely dangerous area: the floodway. The floodway is like a highway for rivers—where the fastest, deepest water goes when a river floods, and where no structure of any kind should be allowed.
While the FEMA flood maps at Camp Mystic did show the floodway and special flood hazard area, they did not show other important advisory information such as flooding from updated projections of extreme rainfall or flooding expected into the future. FEMA’s Technical Mapping Advisory Committee (TMAC) provided excellent recommendations to FEMA on how the agency must modernize its flood mapping efforts— here’s a brief overview —that remain outstanding. And now, the Trump administration has disbanded the TMAC entirely.
While Texas has its challenges with prohibiting building in flood-prone areas, in 2020 Kerr County adopted floodplain regulations including prohibiting fill, construction or improvements in the floodway. Yet one year prior to these regulations going in place, Camp Mystic petitioned FEMA successfully to get six of its cabins out of FEMA’s designated floodway.
Congressional actions needed
While Texans need to hold their legislature accountable for modernizing flood risk management and preparedness, Congress must improve checks and balances on disaster recovery and response and flood preparedness under the Trump administration. This week, my colleague Carly Phillips wrote about how the multiple climate hazards like wildfires and flooding are colliding with harmful policies under this administration.
In the near term, we need Congress to:
- ensure FEMA’s FY26 budget invests in pre-disaster mitigation programs including the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program which President Trump unlawfully cancelled and which the US House has not secured funding for yet under the current appropriations process;
- continue to advance and support oversight and accountability of FEMA and the Trump administration. On July 11 the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform submitted a letter to acting FEMA administrator David Richardson with five requests for information and on July 16 twenty states sued the Trump administration for its decision to shut down the BRIC program;
- press President Trump to nominate a FEMA administrator with emergency management experience and ensure confirmation by the Senate and, by doing so, meet the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act;
- push to remove FEMA out from under DHS and establish FEMA as its own cabinet-level agency. This could be done in a standalone bill or Congress could choose to move a more comprehensive reform bill by advancing the Transportation and Infrastructure’s draft FEMA reform bill; and
- reform the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)—which has seen 33 short-term extensions—to get provisions for affordable flood insurance, modernized flood mapping and risk communication, and bold investments for mitigation among other overdue reforms. While there is appetite for reform, it’s unclear that it’ll happen anytime soon and definitely not before the time Congress will need to pass the 34th short-term extension by the end of the fiscal year in September.
While the flooding in Texas has subsided, the suffering of those who lost loved ones and those who are still helping to recover and rebuild will continue for some time to come. There must be robust investments in recovery and preparedness so these communities can rebuild their lives and do so in a more resilient way – here’s how you can act.
We also must advance policies that build on the lessons we’ve learned from this tragedy, as we have done from other big disasters in the past. After Hurricane Harvey, Irma, and Maria as well as catastrophic wildfires in California, Congress passed, and President Trump signed into law, the Disaster Recovery Reform Act (DRRA) of 2018. The DRRA was so important not least for establishing the BRIC program that President Trump has now cancelled. We can and must use this time to do more to improve the nation’s resilience.