It’s been almost a month since the deadly and devastating July 4th floods in Central Texas. Memorial services for those killed continue to take place – as well as the cleanup and recovery.
But as Texans start to rebuild, the calls for accountability and policy changes are taking focus, with the goal of preventing another such tragedy.
Our reporting partners across the state have been focused on the floods and the aftermath. As part of this month’s Drill Down series, which highlights investigative journalism from The Texas Newsroom, investigative reporter and editor Lauren McGaughy outlined what reporters have uncovered so far.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: You and other reporters started digging into the pre-storm action by local officials in Kerr County. What did you find?
Lauren McGaughy: A lot of what we’ve found had to deal with these alert systems that are in place both there locally and across the state for weather events like this and other incidents where maybe you need to get an immediate notification from a government body. We see them on our phones all the time. Maybe they’re from a federal agency, maybe they’re sent out locally by your local agency.
But we were able to find out that some of those early warnings appeared to not get to everyone in the Kerr County area at the same time. And in fact, some residents waited hours and hours before they were told to evacuate. And at that point, it was too late. You know, we were to uncover that at The Texas Newsroom.
But there was also amazing reporting at KUT over WARN warnings, which is a different kind of warning network. And, you know, a lot of the problems with these is they’re opt-in networks. You have to sign up for them in many cases.
And so there’s now been questions raised about, well, how do we get these alerts to everyone, not just people that might opt in, and how do make sure that they actually look at the alert and pay attention to it?
» MORE: Complete coverage of deadly flooding in the Texas Hill Country
Unfortunately, there was also a lot of misinformation that circulated during the floods. What did you and other public radio reporters across the state expose regarding this false information?
Right, there was a lot of work we did at different stations about the unfortunate misinformation that popped up around the flood. I think a lot of people probably saw reports on social media about alleged cloud seeding. This was something that Mose Buchele at KUT News looked into and debunked.
And that was unfortunately something that was making the rounds for several days before we started to see outlets take a look at it. So we wanted to get ahead of that.
There was also a story that kind of came from a different angle. There was reports of two girls having gotten rescued within a couple of days of the flood. That unfortunately turned out to not be true. It was false information, but it was being shared widely because, frankly, people were looking for something hopeful.
But that kind of information can be harmful as well if it means that search and rescue teams or law enforcement officials are then trying to touch base with those people who were not actually rescued. It was a false information. So we were able to put that information out there early and kind of debunk those rumors.
What else are you and the team looking into, either about the response from local and state officials during the actual flood, or changes that might take place during this special legislative session?
I think one of the biggest unanswered questions for us still is about the local response. We have filed records requests with Kerr County to try to figure out the law enforcement and the emergency personnel bodies that were responsible for sending out alerts or warning people, did they actually take those steps early?
And we’re still waiting on those records requests. We’re actually even trying to find someone in the office now to give us an update on the records that we should have already received.
So that’s what we’re keeping our eye on now, is answering some of these more specific questions about who dropped the ball in the days after so that we can ensure that that information is there and that those mistakes don’t happen again.
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As far as policy changes, are you seeing something take shape in that regard?
We’re seeing these hearings happening all over the state. There’s one in Kerr County this week, legislative hearings, trying to look back at how to keep these things from happening again.
We wrote about the State Flood Plan, which was something we found out about and wanted to get that information out there broadly. And we’re interested to see whether state lawmakers actually take a look at that plan, a plan that our own state government drew up. That ranks different projects based on how serious the need is, the seriousness of those flood needs.
And so what we really found out about them is frankly, they’re very expensive. We would need to invest a lot more state money into these projects to protect people. And so I think we’re watching to see in these legislative hearings whether that money is set aside for that.
If listeners have a tip or a question they want you to look into, how can they get in touch?
They can email tips@kut.org. And we are gonna continue to follow this. So really, even if you think maybe something has already been covered, or you haven’t gotten a response from someone else, we’re eager to hear from you, and we wanna make sure that we’re chasing down every lead.
