Six months later, the Texas Hill Country is still living with effects from flooding

From NPR:

KERRVILLE — Joe Herrera still remembers how quickly the water rose.

It was just after midnight on July 4. Herrera, who has Parkinson’s disease, was awake watching television. At first, the rain sounded normal. Then it grew heavier — and didn’t stop for hours.

“It started coming down hard,” Herrera said.

Herrera and his wife, Lilia, live in a home in Ingram’s Bumble Bee Hills subdivision, near the Guadalupe River in the Texas Hill Country. As the rain intensified, the river began to rise.

Using his phone as a flashlight and steadying himself with his walker, Herrera moved down the hallway to wake his wife. Around the same time, the power went out.

“The water was already in the garage, pretty deep already, within minutes,” Herrera said. “The water came rushing in and threw my furniture to the other side of the house.”

Herrera said he and his wife tried to reach the attic, but the water was already knee-deep.

Suddenly, banging rang through the house. A neighbor from across the street was at the garage door, checking on the couple. Unable to move through the rising water on his own, Herrera said the neighbor tied a rope around him and helped pull him to safety, up the hill and out of the floodwaters.

They survived, but their home was badly damaged. They also lost their car. Still, Herrera says he’s happy to be alive. He was back in his home two months later, while hundreds of other people weren’t so lucky.

“Every day I pray to God, thankful for what I have,” Herrera said.

It’s been six months since catastrophic flooding tore through the Texas Hill Country, killing more than 130 people.

And while recovery across the region remains far from complete, daily life has largely resumed. Shops are open. Restaurants are busy. Traffic moves steadily along bridges that were once underwater.

The Guadalupe River is quiet now.

But closer to the riverbank, reminders of the disaster are harder to ignore: empty lots where homes once stood and fresh dirt where foundations were washed away.

“The beauty and the calmness of that river, to see the damage that it’s done, it’s really hard for people to understand,” said Louis Amestoy, editor and founder of the Kerr County Lead, a local news source. “That’s going to take years to get over.”

Amestoy has spent countless hours covering memorials, local meetings, and court hearings since the flood, documenting the disaster in the same community he calls home. He says the physical damage tells only part of the story in a close-knit community still grappling with loss.

“These are people who’ve lived here their entire lives,” he said. “It was very challenging.”

The flood struck in the early morning hours of July 4, after heavy rain poured onto the Guadalupe River. In a matter of hours, the water rose up to 37 feet, surging through summer camps and homes across the Hill Country. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in Texas history. At least two people, including an 8-year-old girl, remain missing.

As floodwaters receded, questions followed about whether people along the river were adequately warned by local officials — and whether the danger was fully understood before the storm.

Those questions have since moved beyond the riverbanks and into courtrooms and the state Capitol.

Legal action and legislative response

Four separate lawsuits are now moving through the courts, including legal action against Camp Mystic, a nearly 100-year-old Christian summer camp for girls where 25 campers and two counselors were killed during the flood. Owners of the camp recently announced plans to reopen later this year.

Kyle Findley, an attorney representing families suing Camp Mystic, said reopening the camp while some families are still searching for missing loved ones has been deeply painful.

“Instead of focus being on that, we’re talking about trying to open camp to gain additional revenue,” Findley said. “When you hear what these families have gone through, even after the fact, it’s horrifying. It’s every family’s nightmare.”

The camp’s attorney, Mikal Watts, has said Camp Mystic was overwhelmed by an unprecedented disaster. He argues that new investments made by Texas lawmakers, like new flood sirens along the Guadalupe River, will prevent another tragedy.

“There will never be a flood death in this river again, because we’ll have a warning system that we need,” Watts said.

That warning system was approved months after the flood as part of a $300 million legislative package aimed at tightening youth camp safety and strengthening flood preparedness statewide.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the state is acting on lessons learned from the disaster.

“Through these laws, we’re doing more than just changing campgrounds in Texas,” Abbott said in September. “We’re changing the future for our children and their families.”

Flood maps, emergency alerts and backlash

Much of the Hill Country, a popular tourist destination shaped by outdoor recreation and dozens of summer camps along its rivers, relies on flood maps produced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which guide where people build and whether flood insurance is required.

In Kerr County, where much of the damage occurred, the official flood map was most recently revised in 2011. But after the disaster, questions arose about the accuracy of that map and whether it reflected current conditions along the river.

Flood maps can be inaccurate if they’re outdated or fail to reflect changing conditions, such as heavier rainfall than usual — which is exactly what occurred on July 4. They can also change on a property-by-property basis: homeowners who elevate structures or cities that add new drainage can petition FEMA to revise flood designations for specific sites, without updating the map for the surrounding area.

That process was used at Camp Mystic. In the years leading up to the disaster, camp owners successfully petitioned FEMA to recategorize some buildings so they were no longer designated as being in a flood zone. The agency’s records don’t specify which buildings were removed from the map. Despite the adjustment, at least eight buildings — including four cabins that housed campers — sat within what FEMA defines as a floodway.

Months after the disaster, FEMA hasn’t released updated flood maps for the region.

Criticism of the federal response has extended to FEMA’s leadership. Then-acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson resigned in November after six months on the job following widespread scrutiny of the agency’s handling of the Texas floods.

Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer, faced questions from state and federal officials about FEMA’s response and whether it acted with sufficient urgency as the disaster unfolded.

He didn’t travel to the region for days, later telling members of Congress during a committee hearing that he stayed in Washington, D.C. to “kick down the doors of bureaucracy.”

And despite the scale of the disaster, many people have struggled to secure federal assistance.

A Texas Tribune analysis found that most Kerr County applications for FEMA disaster aid were either denied or never advanced beyond initial review. As of mid-October, only about 20% of reviewed applications were approved, leaving many families without federal help to rebuild or recover, and forcing local nonprofits to step in to fill the gaps.

FEMA didn’t respond to a request for comment this week.

Some residents have also said emergency alerts on their phones were inconsistent or never arrived at all as flood waters ravaged the Hill Country.

The people responsible for sending those alerts have also faced criticism. During a July 31 legislative hearing in Kerr County, state lawmakers questioned whether local emergency officials were present and prepared during the critical early hours of the flooding, pointing to delays in warnings and public notifications.

Kerr County’s emergency coordinator, Will Thomas, said he was ill and asleep as floodwaters began to rise and didn’t participate in early response calls on July 3. Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha also said he was asleep as the river rose, while Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, who oversees emergency management, said he was out of town.

“The three guys in Kerr County who were responsible for sounding the alarm were effectively unavailable,” said state Sen. Ann Johnson, a Democrat from Houston.

Now, six months later, the Guadalupe River flows within its banks again.

In the evenings, people walk its banks. Some cast fishing lines into the water. Cars pass over rebuilt and reopened bridges. But the volunteers who helped clear debris and rebuild have largely left. Donations have slowed. Attention has shifted elsewhere. Residents are now left to live with the aftermath of the flooding.

Amestoy with the Kerr County Lead says the weight of the disaster is beginning to settle in.

“I think that the community is still wrestling with the meaning of July 4th,” he said. “What it means and what our place is in that story.”

Uncertainty still hangs over the Hill Country. For survivors, it’s felt in the slow work of rebuilding. For grieving families, it’s carried in the continued push for accountability.

“The definitive final story has not been told yet,” Amestoy said. “We still have missing people. And I think it’s our community’s responsibility to ensure that they’re not forgotten, that we’re going to protect the river, we’re gonna protect their legacy and we’ll all be able to move forward together.”