For over 13 hours, Texas lawmakers listened to local leaders, survivor testimonies and experts in Kerrville at a state committee hearing to address flood response after the Hill Country floods.
County judges from Mason, Burnet, Williamson, Travis, Tom Green, Kerr, McCulloch, San Saba and Menard counties all gave timelines of the communications that transpired on the days and the night leading up to the Hill Country floods.
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The biggest spotlight was on Kerry County Judge Rob Kelly, who took a lot of the heat at the top of the 13-hour committee hearing. He had a pointed exchange with Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
“Judge Kelly, I never saw you on day one. I came here from Austin. In this room, I talked to the sheriff multiple times, and I talked to the mayor multiple times. We had a meeting and everyone was here,” Patrick said to Judge Kelly.
“And I wasn’t,” Judge Kelly answered.
Survivors want better warning systems and response support
With tears running down her face, Alicia Baker, a San Antonio resident, retold how she lost her family after a vacation near the Guadalupe River in Hunt.
Baker said her daughter was not discovered until July 10, and the only way her body was identified was by a charm bracelet on her wrist.
“The river that we’ve loved so much killed them,” Baker said as her voice choked back with tears.
Baker emphasized in her testimony the need for a better alert system when the river water rapidly rises, as it did the night of the floods.
Keli Rabon, a Houston resident, said she hopes the state can allocate funding for mental health resources in the event of disasters like these, after her 7-year-old son, a camper at Camp La Junta, barely escaped the floods when his camp counselor helped him and other campers out of their cabin, as the Guadalupe River roared outside.
“[He] scans every room for higher ground. He checks the weather constantly, he battles nightmares of water dripping from the ceiling or his mattress being wet,” Rabon said. “He lives with the terror that no child should ever have to carry, but so many of us do.”
The floods go beyond Kerrville
Travis County Judge Andy Brown also received criticism from residents of the Sandy Creek area who did not see emergency response in their neighborhoods until days after the floods.
Republican Sen. Paul Bettencourt chimed in and said, “I have never been at a hearing where we walk in thinking that we are talking about one disaster, and the first three witnesses are about another.”
Before Travis County Judge Brown went up to speak, residents from the Sandy Creek area in Travis County chipped away at the county’s emergency management response timeline.
“Nobody came, nobody came, nobody came for us,” Auburn Gallagher, a Sandy Creek resident within the Travis County area, said with tears streaming down her face.
Gallagher said it was not until posting on social media that Melanie Strong, who lives in a nearby area of the county, showed up after seeing the post.
“I spent the next few hours walking down the creek and witnessing the neighbors and volunteers with chainsaws and bobcats and small excavators, digging each other out,” Strong said. “I spoke to many of them, and their testimonies were all the same: ‘nobody came,’ no emergency services came to them.”
Monday marks one month since the floods, and the 30-day window for the Texas special legislative session is beginning to close, with the session set to end later this month.
“Now the work begins. Let’s get our bills drafted and get them over the finish line the next two weeks,” said Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, as he closed out the hearing.
