{"id":360543,"date":"2026-07-04T00:51:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T00:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/360543\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T00:51:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T00:51:14","slug":"a-year-after-deadly-floods-texas-lawmakers-havent-addressed-training-for-emergency-coordinators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/360543\/","title":{"rendered":"A year after deadly floods, Texas lawmakers haven\u2019t addressed training for emergency coordinators"},"content":{"rendered":"

In legislative hearings after last year\u2019s July 4 floods, the state\u2019s emergency management chief made some\u00a0recommendations<\/a>\u00a0to state lawmakers. They included empowering the agency to vet volunteers who show up after disasters and establishing clearer guidelines for local officials to decide whether to perform autopsies during mass-casualty events.<\/p>\n

There was another glaring problem that Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd told legislators about:\u00a0Unlike paid firefighters and police officers, the state has no required training for all local emergency management coordinators, the people tasked with planning for and helping to lead the response to disasters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think it\u2019s time that we as a state decide there needs to be a baseline for people that get appointed into that position,\u201d Kidd told lawmakers at a July 23 hearing focused on the floods.<\/p>\n

Nine months later, in April, he told another\u00a0state committee investigating<\/a>\u00a0the disaster: \u201cTo be an emergency management coordinator in the state of Texas, you need the signature of a mayor or judge. Period. That needs to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two bills meant to address that issue, and others Kidd highlighted,\u00a0failed in the final special legislative session<\/a>\u00a0of 2025. And as the one-year anniversary of the disaster arrives, that lack of action means that leaders in Texas\u2019 254 counties, as well as all of its cities, can hire people with no formal training in the field.<\/p>\n

After the floods, which left more than 130 people dead, state lawmakers required flood warning sirens to be installed in areas struck by the summer disaster that also have histories of flooding. In Kerr County, where the vast majority of deaths happened, six of the first eight planned sirens are in place.<\/p>\n

Legislators also passed two camp safety bills,\u00a0championed by<\/a>\u00a0the parents of 27 girls who died at Camp Mystic, which include requirements for camps to have more robust emergency plans and\u00a0move cabins from flood-prone spots by rivers. Nearly 300 camps have been licensed under the new regulations, according to\u00a0state data<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Legislators\u2019 next opportunity to address Kidd\u2019s recommendations \u2014 if they choose to \u2014 happens in January when they return to the Capitol for their regular session.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have work to do next session,\u201d state\u00a0Sen. Charles Perry<\/a>, a Republican from Lubbock who authored the failed bill to address licensing, said in the April hearing.\u00a0\u201cWe just don\u2019t have to start from ground zero.\u201d<\/p>\n

Absent leaders<\/p>\n

Then-Kerr County Emergency Management Coordinator William \u201cDub\u201d Thomas\u00a0was notably absent early on the morning of July 4. He\u2019d been feeling badly since July 2 and taken the day off on July 3,\u00a0according to his testimony<\/a>\u00a0to lawmakers. Legislative investigators later found no evidence that a representative of Kerr County dialed into a state emergency preparation call on July 3 to learn about potential storms over the holiday weekend.<\/p>\n

County Judge Rob Kelly was at his Austin-area lake house for the holiday, he testified.\u00a0According to the county\u2019s emergency plan, in their absences, the judge\u2019s role should have fallen to the most senior county commissioner, while the coordinator\u2019s role should have fallen to someone designated by the judge.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0state legislative investigation<\/a>\u00a0concluded that the state\u2019s \u201calerts and warnings effectively were disregarded by Kerr County officials, who were substantially absent from duty, and who failed to conduct effective local emergency coordination relating to summer camps in advance of the storm. As flooding began, the county judge was away and unaware, and the county\u2019s emergency coordinator was sick and asleep in bed with no delegate at the watch while the entire tragedy unfolded.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amid a series of\u00a0increasingly urgent National Weather Service alerts<\/a>\u00a0that night, a 911 call came in from upstream on the Guadalupe River\u2019s south fork at 2:52 a.m., warning that the river was rising high and fast. The flooding began its precipitous rise around that time in Hunt, where the river’s north and south forks meet. It peaked around 6:45 a.m. downstream in Kerrville, the county seat, according to US Geological Survey data.<\/p>\n

As the morning wore on, county law enforcement helped lead the response.\u00a0Text messages<\/a>\u00a0among a group that included several Sheriff\u2019s Office officials, obtained through an open records request by the Texas Newsroom and shared with The Texas Tribune, reveal some of the issues they faced. The text thread included Thomas.<\/p>\n

By 7:18 a.m., the sheriff\u2019s office leaders and others were working through where to send evacuees.\u00a0At 9:15 a.m., they were texting about where to stage media and, at 9:40 a.m., where to stage resources. Later in the morning, they considered whether to set up a hotline or email for families to report missing relatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very common in the middle of a response for there to be a lot of back and forth and for people to be confused where resources are, how things are changing and evolving in the moment,\u201d\u00a0said Samantha Montano, an associate professor of emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. \u201cThat\u2019s really why you want to have an emergency manager, somebody who is overseeing all of that and funneling correct and updated information out to the people who need it.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to his resume,\u00a0Thomas had spent much of his career moving up the ranks of the Texas Highway Patrol and had spent less than two years working as regional preparedness manager with the local American Red Cross when he took the Kerr County job in 2015. Thomas had completed various state and federal training courses related to emergency management before the flood, county records showed.<\/p>\n

Thomas retired from his post at the end of March, according to county records.\u00a0Kelly, the county judge, did not seek reelection this year.<\/p>\n

County commissioners hired Shorey Harmon, the Texas Division of Emergency Management\u2019s liaison officer for Kerr and Bandera counties, to replace Thomas.<\/p>\n

Harmon had earlier served in the U.S. Navy and worked for Texas Parks and Wildlife and Texas A&M Forest Service, according to his resume, then became a TDEM cadet in 2022 \u2014 attending what the resume described as \u201cthe first-ever emergency management academy in the United States for training in all-hazards emergency preparedness and response.\u201d<\/p>\n

A developing field<\/p>\n

The emergency management field is relatively young, with beginnings tied to Cold War concerns about nuclear war, said Romeo Lavarias, lecturer at the University of Central Florida\u2019s emergency management program. The field\u00a0has developed because emergency management became more complicated and expensive, involving much more than the immediate disaster response, Lavarias said.<\/p>\n

A recent study from Argonne National Laboratory found that an emergency management director\u2019s professional background could matter greatly. The study found most local directors had worked in the field more than 10 years and that nearly a third of them were between 50 and 59 years old.<\/p>\n

As one person told the researchers: \u201cIn our agency, the director position has historically been occupied with people with no formal training in emergency management (myself included).\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2024 in Florida, lawmakers\u00a0passed a new law<\/a>\u00a0for all county managers to have minimum emergency training.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t got a choice anymore,\u201d Lavarias said. \u201cWith the nature of hazards we\u2019re dealing with here, their drastic impacts on everyone, the complications of politics, of social (issues) and economics, it\u2019s going to take a heck of a lot more than what we\u2019ve got going for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Texas Tribune<\/a>\u00a0is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans – and engages with them – about public policy, politics, government, and statewide issues<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In legislative hearings after last year\u2019s July 4 floods, the state\u2019s emergency management chief made some\u00a0recommendations\u00a0to state lawmakers.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[128024,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-360543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-128024","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}