Death on a Texas River

Journalists are piecing together what was -and wasn’t- done by Texas officials and the National Weather Service as the Guadalupe River roared over its banks.

A portion of Texas, already known as “Flash Flood Alley” suffered a devastating flood on July 4th with tragic consequences. The search for survivors is ongoing, but more than 119 are already confirmed dead. At least 173 are still missing. The largest loss of life happened in Kerr County. There some 90 people died including 27 campers and counselors at the girls sleep-away camp, Camp Mystic.

Questions are now mounting about whether Kerr County officials made mistakes that contributed to the heartbreaking death toll. Those officials are, in turn, questioning the work of the National Weather Service. So far, there’s no evidence the NWS failed to do its job but the local and state leaders surely have some explaining to do about their roles.

Local and national news outlets are doing an exemplary job piecing together what happened on that fateful July 4th morning. CNN reports that prior to the Guadalupe River surging 26 feet, the NWS used an intergovernmental messaging platform to share key storm information with local emergency managers. It appears that officials from Kerr County may not have participated.

“The messages show that after initial briefings on the afternoon of Thursday, July 3, about the potential of heavy rains to come, emergency managers from some counties in the region were posting on the system, querying forecasters about what to expect. Those messages picked up in pace as the flooding began in the early hours of July 4. But no emergency manager from Kerr County participated in those discussions on the messaging platform. It’s unclear whether officials were reviewing the information being shared.”

The NWS issued many publicly shared alerts that would have also automatically been sent to cell phones and radios. Those included several flash flood warnings leading up to a rare flash flood emergency alert early Friday morning. This alert indicated imminent, life- threatening danger. It read, in part, “This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION and a Flash Flood EMERGENCY is in effect.”

A deadly gap

According to Austin’s KXAN-TV, some local Texas officials- including Kerr County- waited up to 4 hours to pass on those alerts to local residents.

The Texas Tribune is now reporting that Kerr County officials are refusing to account for that big gap:

“Weather warnings gave officials a 3 hour, 21 minute window to save lives in Kerr County. What happened then remains unclear. Federal forecasters issued their first flood warning at 1:14 a.m. on July 4. Local officials haven’t shed light on when they saw the warnings or whether they saw them in time to take action.”

Further, we have learned that local systems that could have warned victims in Kerr Country- where most of the fatalities occurred- were not promptly deployed. The Texas Newsroom reports:

“According to emergency radio transmissions The Texas Newsroom reviewed, volunteer firefighters asked for what’s called a “CodeRED” alert to be sent as early as 4:22 a.m. Dispatchers delayed, saying they needed special authorization. Some residents received flood warnings from CodeRED within an hour. Others told The Texas Newsroom they did not receive their first alert until after 10 a.m., raising questions about why the messages that residents received were sporadic and inconsistent.”

Telephone alerts might not have helped prevent the unspeakable loss at Camp Mystic because campers and counselors aren’t allowed to have phones. Loud sirens could have provided some advance warning if only the county had some. But the local government in Kerr County, where floods are common, has repeatedly refused to install sirens, citing the expense.

Some nearby counties did make the investment in safety warnings that were put to use on July 4th. The Boerne Star reports that in nearby Comfort, Texas, “Emergency sirens wailed…signaling emergency conditions and a mandatory evacuation, as the surging Guadalupe River continued its historic rise.” No one in Comfort was killed in the flooding.

While Kerr County officials are mostly silent on their role in this flooding disaster, some have gone in front of the TV cameras this week to blame the National Weather Service for the failure to forecast the severity of the flood. “Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly claimed officials “didn’t know this flood was coming.” But officials in counties adjacent to Kerr County said the NWS warnings were sufficient.

Weather experts weigh in

Many outside meteorologists also agree that the forecasting and alerts were satisfactory. Texas meteorologist Matt Lanza wrote: “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. Anyone using this event to claim that is being dishonest.“

Chicago meteorologist Tom Skilling told me: “It’s a bit rich to hear officials there are going after the National Weather Service which, as I understand it, had accurately put out a flash flood watch ahead of the onset of heavy rain.“

The National Weather Service offices in Texas- including the ones in the area of this flooding disaster- are understaffed because of the Trump/ DOGE cutbacks. Several key leadership spots are vacant and one office is also minus a hydrologist, the specialist who monitors rivers. The NWS says it cobbled together enough people to work the storm but that’s a band-aid approach that is not sustainable.- including

Republicans continue defunding weather forecasting

Every Republican member of the Texas congressional delegation supports Trump’s devastating cuts to the NWS and its parent agency, NOAA. Texas Senator Ted Cruz single-handedly made the cuts even worse. The Guardian US reports that before his Grecian vacation last week, “Cruz inserted language into the Republicans’ “big beautiful” reconciliation bill, before its signing by Donald Trump on Friday, that eliminates a $150m fund to “accelerate advances and improvements in research, observation systems, modeling, forecasting, assessments, and dissemination of information to the public” around weather forecasting.”

Nor have the flooding deaths prompted any Republicans to protest the Trump 2026 budget that calls for the complete elimination of NOAA’s research into severe weather, tornadoes, hurricanes, and… flash floods. Instead, GOP lawmakers calling for investigations and vague remedies, even making odd football analogies but none have yet to support something sensible, like restoring funding to the embattled National Weather Service.

As brave Texans continue tirelessly to search for lost loved ones, journalists will keep digging into what really happened- and what didn’t- on that fateful July 4th. Maybe those involved will own up to their mistakes, even try to fix them by investing in much needed weather safety alert systems and leading calls to fully fund the National Weather Service. But for that to happen, Republicans have to stop vilifying our government and instead invest in it.

Jennifer Schulze is a longtime Chicago journalist. She’s on Bluesky @newsjennifer.bsky.social and Substack at “Indistinct Chatter.”