Lost Years, Lost Lives - How Texas Knowingly Accepted a Catastrophe

Kerrville, Texas – It would have cost less than half a police car or courthouse security. One million dollars - that’s how much a flood warning system would have cost, a system that could have saved dozens of young lives on July 4, 2025. But over the course of more than a decade, that amount always seemed just a bit too much. Too complicated, too loud, too impractical - so went the objections. And so, children died in tents, parents in cars, and helpers in the mud. The Kerr County disaster was foreseeable. And it was preventable. The scene now unfolding in the Texas Hill Country is heartbreaking: smashed vehicles along the banks of the Guadalupe River, torn tents in the mire of Camp Mystic, distraught faces in makeshift morgues. At least 120 people are dead, many more are missing. Most of the victims came from youth camps along the river - a region known for decades as “flash-flood alley.” And yet: no functioning siren system, no automatic evacuation orders, no centrally coordinated early warning system had been put in place. Why? The answer reads like a textbook on political failure.

Already after the devastating Memorial Day flood of 2015, in which several people in Kerr County lost their lives, experts called for a modern early warning system. Sensors, sirens, radio links to the camps - that was the plan. And even the cost was manageable: around one million dollars. About as much as the county spends on courthouse security every two years. But instead of approval, the idea met resistance - due to potential noise pollution. The sirens might be disruptive, they said. The sound too shrill. The effort too great. Priorities: elsewhere. The county commissioners sought a compromise - a system without sirens that would measure water levels but not trigger automatic alerts. But even that was ultimately not implemented - because neither the state nor the city of Kerrville was willing to contribute. The city would have had to contribute $50,000 to a joint funding application. In 2017, they unanimously decided against it. Meanwhile, other cities - like nearby Comfort - invested in functioning warning systems. There, during the July 4 rains, a piercing three-minute signal sounded. Residents fled in time. In Kerr County, there was silence. Not even an interest-free loan from the Texas flood fund amounting to $950,000 - plus a $50,000 grant - could later convince the responsible parties. The conditions were too unattractive, said the river authority. The project was buried. And with it, years later, over a hundred people.

“There wasn’t enough fight in them. But this time, there has to be,” says Nicole Wilson, mother of two daughters whom she pulled out of a camp just in time. Her petition for a siren system in Kerr County has already garnered thousands of signatures. “Whether it’s federal, state, or local funding - this time the answer simply cannot be ‘no.’” But the political reflex followed the familiar pattern: silence, evasion, deferral. Governor Greg Abbott urged restraint. Former city councilman Glenn Andrew, who voted against the funding project in 2017, stated, “I’d be willing to talk about it - but not now. It’s still too fresh.” A “too fresh” that sounds like mockery to the ears of the bereaved. The anger is growing. Raymond Howard, city councilman from Ingram in Kerr County, voiced what many are thinking: “It’s unfathomable. They talked about it for years, but never acted. For everything else, they raise our taxes - but not for what really matters: lives. Families. Safety. This is heartbreaking.” Back in 2016, the county had tried to initiate a funding project through the Texas emergency management program. But the application failed due to bureaucratic requirements - including a missing, up-to-date hazard mitigation plan. A new application was prepared, sensors planned, evacuation chains outlined. But then came Hurricane Harvey. The funds were redirected - not to Kerrville, but to where the storm raged. The county was left behind. Without sirens. Without protection. In 2019, Texas voters approved a new flood infrastructure funding initiative - with a proud $800 million investment. But when the Upper Guadalupe River Authority once again submitted a request for one million last year, the state offered only a fraction of that as a grant - the rest as a loan. That offer too was rejected. What remains is rubble. And a harrowing realization: it wasn’t the rain that was the problem. It was the looking away. The postponing. The refusal. The siren that was never installed now echoes silently in every statistic. In every obituary. In every desperate look of the survivors. Texas had ten years. And for ten years, it chose - not to act.