Children Died to Own the Libs

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Children died to own the libs.

Or children died because something-something-taxes-property-freedom.

Perhaps both – it could depend on your interpretation of the decisions made in Kerr County, Texas leading up to the inarguable, preventable deaths of children due to flash flooding last week.

Never tell me the GOP is the party of life because they refuse to govern in a way that protects life.

They would rather kill children to make a point that liberalism and democracy aren’t acceptable to them.

Others have expressed rage about Kerr County’s child sacrifices far more eloquently; Charlotte Clymer tells the thoughts-and-prayers crowd Do Not Put This On God because none of this was God’s plan.

Journalists in major news outlets have reported on the flash flood in Kerr County without being blunt about the immoral choices national, state, and local GOP elected or aligned government personnel made leading to child deaths. No one will be held accountable based on the wide swags they’ve made as to fault.

What really galls me is the public relations campaign slowly mounting to put down the complaints born of anger, grief, and frustration, using these deaths as yet another sacrifice on the altar of fascism.

Charlie Kirk takes a note out of Chris Rufo’s playbook blaming an Austin TX fire chief for fire and emergency response leading to mass child death, claiming the chief was a DEI hire.

Oh no, honey, no. Don’t go looking to blame DEI for the deaths, because the root cause was much earlier and DEI wasn’t the problem.

There are receipts.

Snapshot of top post at https://mstdn.social/@[email protected]/114812383563824176

The replies beneath the post above share the 2016 engineering report on the installation of a flood warning system in Kerr County.

But further in replies utterly damning bits are shared. They were laid out in a Reddit post which I’ll share here (thanks to Reddit contributor timubce in r/Texas).

Commissioners’ Court Regular Session 06/27/16

COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You know we had a baby flood a couple weeks ago, a month or so, whatever it was. And I keep hearing these reports of the old, old system, and I know we’re not going to deal with that though. Expect that to be gone where the Jones call the Smiths, and the Smiths call Camp Rio Vista, and Rio Vista blah, blah, blah, along down the line. But it’s still there and it still works. The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of night, I’m going to have to start drinking again to put up with y’all.

COMMISSIONER MOSER: I think — I think this and that’s what the committee is going to look at and how to do it. I think the going in position is that we don’t need to change anything, and is there a need to improve what we have. And if there’s a need to improve how much is improved. And what the options for doing that and what it would cost. And I think the first thing to do is say why change anything. It worked this long and maybe we don’t need to do a thing. And then it gets into the thing we talk about earlier today, and that’s risk mitigation. And you know there’s still people drowned and you know —
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: And I hope you ask the question like who are we notifying, or who are we trying to get the message to? Are they these crazy people from Houston that build homes right down on the water?
COMMISSIONER MOSER: Well, I think the thing is you say it’s for the general public and the crazy people from wherever they are, from Houston, okay, and then the camps, and then how do you get the message out to those, that’s all part of it, so it’s a pretty complex project.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I’m sure it is.
COMMISSIONER MOSER: And the question is do we need to do anything. And what do we want to do and what can we afford.
MRS. STEBBINS: Commissioner Moser, will you put it on the next agenda for discussion after you have this meeting on Thursday?
COMMISSIONER MOSER: Oh, absolutely, right.
MRS. STEBBINS: Okay, thank you.
JUDGE POLLARD: I would comment that we don’t hardly have any crazy people that live here. The few that we do have we handle them through CSU.
COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: Or they serve on this board.
JUDGE POLLARD: I’m just trying to keep us out of trouble here, okay. The media’s still here. All right. Any other reports?

************ /end edit

In 2016 Kerr County contracted for an engineering study on their current warning system and were told it was antiquated and inadequate.

Commissioners’ Court Regular Session 8/22/16

COMMISSIONER MOSER: We had at our steering committee meeting we invited also TxDOT to participate in that. So the original engineer, and both of them as a matter of fact showed up at that meeting. Their assessment was what existed today, and the Sheriff may want to comment on it, is antiquated and it’s not reliable. So we said okay with that, you know, not just that, but we thought that there was a pretty ill-defined system that we have. So the engineering study we thought would be appropriate. If the result of the engineering study says that — recommends that we enhance the system, okay, buying additional sensors, kind of like Comal County did. Comal County spent a little over three hundred thousand dollars, where they had add 8 locations to monitor the rate of rise of the river and streams.

COMMISSIONER REEVES: And while I agree with Commissioner Letz, that if we have a system that’s not working, we need to certainly look at that, technology is great, but still one of the best things, and you may disagree with me is the people up river calling. Because you’re probably going to get a call. I’ve received just this year from calls before it’s even had time for a warning to go off, I’m getting texts from Divide Fire Chief, and I think — where’d the Sheriff go? I sent you a text the other night, you may have got it too from him, but we’re knowing probably before, and I know with one flood that we had earlier in the year, by the time you got the warnings going off, it had been too late. Because it was coming out of just some draws that took too long to get downstream.

COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: I have one. I’m going to vote no because of numerous reasons. I think this whole thing is a little extravagant for Kerr County, and I see the word sirens and all that stuff in here. And of course, you say that these are steps that will be taken through the years. But that’s where you’re headed, there’s no question in my mind that’s where you’re headed. And you’re determined to do that. But step one of taking these funds out of special projects, out of Road and Bridge, that ticks me off a little bit.

Commissioners’ Court Regular Session 10/24/16

Mr. Hewitt: Sirens did not seem to get very much support. The thought was that sirens are better for tourists than local residents. The sirens would only be beneficial for someone that’s not familiar with the area, and wouldn’t know what to do.

The second part of the study contained recommendations for updating the system and sirens were purposely left out even though other areas had implemented them.

Regular Commissioners’ Court Agenda 01/09/17

Comal County has implemented a river guage and siren system that includes New Braunfels, Guadalupe County and the Water-Oriented Recreation District (WORD) as funding partners. When gauge heights reach a certain level, emergency management personnel are notified and the siren is automatically activated. Emergency personnel can also activiate the sirens remotely if they know flood water is headed downstream. The data from each gauge, including river height and rainfall, is avaiable online for anyone, including residents, to access.
The filed for federal assistance via a Hazard Mitigation Grant for 976k.

Commissioners’ Court Regular Session 01/09/17 Discussing the recommended warning system

COMMISSIONER MOSER: The cost of that whole thing is going to be like 976 thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money. All of it, and the reason we’re here today and moving so quickly is that there is a FEMA grant that’s available until as long as we apply by January the 20th.
JUDGE POLLARD: Which is when President Obama goes out of office.
(Laughter.)
JUDGE POLLARD: Well, the reason I mention that is because he authorized this particular thing, and it’s going to —
MS. KIRBY: It’s a coincidence.
COMMISSIONER MOSER: Going on the record with that it’s a coincidence. And so there has to be a presidential declaration of disaster to be able to have these kinds of funds available. So it goes away just so happens to be when he leaves office.
COMMISSIONER MOSER: So we’ve talked about, you know one of the things we said sirens and we said we don’t want sirens, too many many people said they did not want sirens when they had these — when we had these gatherings. Code Red, and I don’t know if Dub wants to chime in on this, but Code Red is the same that’s going to get information to a lot of people; not to everybody, okay. One of the things that we’ll do is identify a point of contact in all of the camps, we won’t communicate with everybody in the camp, but we have a point of contact at the camp so that they can disseminate people within — to people within the camp, like during the summer when kids are there, or to RV parks. Now, if the RV parks want to have a siren themself when something goes up that’s up to them. That’s not part of our thing. So getting the information to the public is the end item of this whole thing. The first thing is sense a flood, then communicate that information to the local authorities, to the right authorities, and then for them to have a system by with which to disseminate the information to the public.

SHERIFF HIERHOLZER: The only thing I have to remind people, unfortunately, I guess I’m one of the ones that – Harley maybe has been around here to see some very devastating floods and quite a bit of loss of life. No matter what we do it’s going to be up to the public, okay. The notification is great. I think the — just the markers, the posts at the crossing is one thing, but it actually oughta state that at that level that your car may wash off, get people’s attention at that crossing. The only other thing is, and as Bob can attest to, most of the time it has been informal where we call people. Unfortunately, the time we had the most devastating one down on the east end of the County down at the camps, I was working that night, spent 72 hours pulling kids out of fences. But we call people, we called camps, they made the decision that they thought they could beat that ride, and then that no matter what we do and no matter what we install there’s going to be loss of life. It’s educating people.

COMMISSIONER REEVES: And I will say and, Sheriff, you can correct me if I’m off base on this, the camps have had a very good system of letting down river if there’s a rise, they’re phoning their competitors or colleagues down river and letting them know what happened. It’s informal as you said, but it’s been a very good system to let them know over time.
SHERIFF HIERHOLZER: Right. The camps and they do, they notify each other, we notify them, they notify — there’s a lot of informal things that really do work real well. It’s not totally those unless they try to get them out too quick in trying to beat it. Because this river can come up in a instant, we all know that with the drainage. But it will go down just as quick if they just hold tight with what they’ve got. But the whole key is just getting people that are traveling up here from somewhere —
COMMISSIONER REEVES: That’s my concern is ones that don’t live here.
COMMISSIONER MOSER: That’s everybody’s concern.
JUDGE POLLARD: So this is kind of an offer, or to see if it’s accepted by and also agreed to by UGRA and the City.
COMMISSIONER MOSER: Correct.
JUDGE POLLARD: And if they don’t then where are we with this?
COMMISSIONER MOSER: If they don’t then we just forget the whole project.
JUDGE POLLARD: Just dead in the water.
COMMISSIONER MOSER: Dead in the water, right. It’s dead in the water.
COMMISSIONER REEVES: Question —
COMMISSIONER MOSER: Or the pun for the Flood Warning System.
JUDGE POLLARD: Dead in the water.
After failing to secure a grant, they continued to kick the can down the road.
2021 rolls around and they have over 5 mil in ARPA funds in their bank and wind up with a grand total of over 10 mil.

Commissioners’ Court Regular Session 10/25/21 discussion of communication systems

COMMISSIONER LETZ: Well, I think that’s good. I just think that — you know, I’d like to get an idea of what the Sheriff’s radar systems are going to cost. I mean I just don’t want to send — go out and get public input on something and then us just not be able to follow up because we have a priority that’s different and we have additional information.
JUDGE KELLY: Well, but let me just explain. What all of these are intentioned to do is to initiate the education system. We need to get the Court educated. We need to get the public educated. Everybody knows that we have over $5 million sitting in our bank account that the Federal Government sent us for these ARPA funds. And they’re not really grants, they’re funds.

MRS. LAVENDER: And as the Judge said, there’s a huge category. There’s a bunch of things that you can spend the money or — or secure the money to spend. And when we use the term grant, grant is not really what this is. It’s just funding that’s been made available through this American Rescue Plan Act. It doesn’t require a match. It doesn’t require, you know, that kind of structure. But it does have strings attached. It’s not free money.

COMMISSIONER LETZ: And that’s my concern, Judge. My concern is that from my understanding what the — well, I won’t say LCRA because I know what their number is. The number from the Sheriff’s Department, the number from internal communications, we’re already over 5 million dollars, so I don’t want to go out to the public requesting — we have no money to do it.
COMMISSIONER BELEW: Well, at least we make the determination that that’s the first —
COMMISSIONER LETZ: Right. But —
COMMISSIONER BELEW: Then it’s done. But we haven’t made that determination.
COMMISSIONER LETZ: That’s why I think we need to get discuss that phase. We need to get those numbers — I mean, my opinion is law enforcement and the internal communications are the number one and two. I’m not sure which order. Probably law enforcement first. And — and I haven’t heard the rest of the Court say what their top two priorities are but —
COMMISSIONER HARRIS: Well, that’s mine. Because not only does it cover that, it — the Sheriff’s office, communications, getting it up to speed, and also the Volunteer Fire Departments and making sure that we can communicate with other counties. As we saw last winter, I mean, communications is one of our biggest weaknesses and there’s the Sheriff up. I’m sure he’ll back me up on that. Communications was a problem. Go ahead, Sheriff.
SHERIFF LEITHA: Yeah, I kind of agree with Jonathan, if you go that direction. Now, we had a meeting, did attend with LCRA, a very good meeting, just preliminary. Preliminary, I’m looking at $3 million for just me. That’s just us and — the Sheriff’s Office. That’s not including we have the constables, we have Animal Control, we have the fire department. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be checked into. Are we going to provide radios or not. But I can tell you, I mean, it kind of shocked me. But that was three million right off the bat. And — and that’s not even going into all the other agencies. Are we going to supply those radios, they’re very expensive, to all the fire departments or not. So this is something we really need to look into, if we want to go that direction with the new infrastructure. Also, visiting with the Chief on a daily basis, you know, that’s kind of the direction they’re going. I’ve requested to be on the same radio system they are. Only because the fire department dispatch is out of the County. But the radio system will be very expensive.

COMMISSIONER BELEW: And — but if we upgrade, we will also be able to communicate with the surrounding counties.
SHERIFF LEITHA: Yes. We will be. And it’s a very big project. You know, something that’s going to take some time. Very costly. And there’s a lot of questions, you know. We’re opening a can of worms, you know. We discussed we really need the volunteer fire department input. We’ve already gotten some kickback –I mean some — some — you know, and that’s why I didn’t open this can of worms. It’s going to be a long, drawn out process, you know, to do this. It can be done. But like I said, it’s very costly. Something I can say like Don asked me, I mean, in the long run in the five year we can save money. We pay over $300,000 a year in tower leases. So there is going to be some savings down the line, just to let you know.
And they still don’t update their flood warning system.

The people also didn’t want to spend any of the ARPA money because it was tied to the Biden administration. Even the Judge suggests just holding on to the money so that it can’t be sent to states that don’t share their same values. And now we have 10s of people who have died and many might have lived if the county had updated their flood warning system and installed flood sirens along the river like the multiple counties/towns around them did.

Commissioners’ Court Regular Session 11/08/21

Resident: Are you accountable to anyone for how you spend it? Or is it a, kind of, a reward and shows your support for this particular program? It’s not free money. Being present as we talk. How do we know this? Immediately. Unless you want it on the COVID lies and vaccination pressure, you have to send it back. Those are heavy strings. And those are strings. The deep state harangue and vilified President Trump for calling COVID for what it was and then suggest responses that were non-draconian, and then when Biden took office, the leftist government took its gloves off. It has lied and lied more about this COVID — about COVID.
The temptation is great, you’re accountable, and we would like to know where your allegiance is.
Resident 2: And I’m here to ask this Court today to send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House. And Kerr County should not be accepting anything from these people. They’re currently facilitating an invasion of our border, and we’re going to support these people? So that’s what I have to say. Thank you.
Resident: I happen to know that there is no such thing as free money. It’s never government-funded; it’s tax-payer funded. So they’re taking our money and they’re putting strings attached to it and then they’re giving it back to us. And they’re going to get their foot in the door in this county. We don’t want their money. I feel like the people have spoken and I stand with the people. Thank you for your time.
COMMISSIONER BELEW: We have money in the bank, $5.1 million, that was sent to Kerr County.
JUDGE KELLY: We didn’t ask for it. They sent it.
COMMISSIONER BELEW: They sent it.
MS. DEWELL: Exactly.
COMMISSIONER BELEW: The money is in the bank right now. Hasn’t been spent. In the event that you don’t spend it, you send it back. That’s part of the Treasury’s rules on it. If you do spend it, whatever percentage, there would be no expense to the taxpayers in Kerr County. It would all come out of that account, no matter what you do with it.
JUDGE KELLY: And GrantWorks has been very helpful in — in getting us focused on what colors between the lines and what doesn’t. As of last Thursday, when I got a call from Bonnie White telling me about this — the problem that y’all were going to present at the meeting, I went and got on the telephone to their Senior Vice President from GrantWorks. And there — there are discussions that they want to have with us and so we want to sit down and listen to them. And we want — we want you to hear them, too. Because you’re the public. But we — we need to know and get very comfortable with where we are with this grant before we start taking that money. And the claw back was the first thing. As far as where that money sits for the next year or two, my old law partner John Cornyn tells me that if we send it back it’s going to New Jersey or it’s going to New York or it’s going to —
MRS. LAVENDER: Or California.
JUDGE KELLY: — or California. And so I don’t know if I’d rather be the custodian of the money until we decide what we have to do with it rather than giving it back to the government to spend it on values that we in Kerr County don’t agree with. So —
COMMISSIONER BELEW: And any spending of it would have to be done in Commissioners’ Court so you’ll be able to see it and know it.
They eventually signed a 7.5 mil contract with Motorola in 2022 for a county emergency communications system. The system would provide 95% radio coverage to firefighters, EMS and law enforcement.
But hey at least the UGRA has had developing a flood warning system on their Strategic Plan doc since 2022 which they kept rolling to the next year plan.

UGRA Strategic Plan 2025

B-2. Work with local partners to develop Kerr County flood warning system
• In January 2017, UGRA partnered with Kerr County in a FEMA flood warning implementation grant request for $980,000. The project was not selected for funding and most of the funds went to communities impacted by Hurricane Harvey.
• In FY18 the USGS installed a high intensity precipitation gauge at the streamflow site on the Guadalupe in Hunt included in the agreement with UGRA.
• During the previous reporting period, a pre application for a county wide flood warning system was submitted to the Texas Water Development Board Flood Infrastructure Fund. The project was invited to submit a complete application, but UGRA declined due to the low (5%) match offered through the grant.
• UGRA participated in the update to the Kerr County Hazard Mitigation Action Plan which addresses hazards including flooding. The final plan was submitted to FEMA in April 2025.
• During this reporting period, UGRA requested bids for a flood warning dashboard that combines multiple sources of data into one tool. The project will also recommend future improvements to monitoring equipment related to flood warning. Information from this dashboard will be used by UGRA staff and local emergency coordinators and decision makers. A contractor for this project was selected in April 2025.

Breathtaking.

They didn’t want to be inconvenienced by alarms going off in the middle of the night.

They didn’t want to spend the money available because it came from Democratic administrations.

They willfully chose to put children in harm’s way because it was convenient and didn’t cost them local tax dollars, in a wealthy county in Texas.

They willfully chose to kill children by outright neglect to own the libs.

They can’t blame a lack of local funding when the county has been home to so many wealthy individuals:

Another retirement destination, Kerrville turns out to have a similar concentration of the comfortably well off, ranking second in Texas for millionaires per capita, with 1,244 among its 20,749 residents, or 6 percent.

Source: San Antonio Express-News

Kerrville is the county seat and likely where all the meeting minutes above were recorded.

And there is not a lick of DEI involved here as far as I can tell. When FEMA created and published flood maps including Kerr County, they hadn’t yet been under attack by DOGE and Trump’s anti-DEI initiatives. The maps clearly showed a risk the county commissioners didn’t want to address.

Kerr County’s demographics also make it highly unlikely any brown people were involved in critical decision making – according to the 2024 census the county is 92.9% white – but I’ll leave that to journalists to vet because it’s nauseating me on the face of it without additional digging.

Imagine public officials joking on the record in a public meeting that a flood alert system is “dead in the water.”

But sure, Charlie Kirk, attack Austin’s Black fire chief in Travis County, holding him to a higher level of responsibility than the nice, wealthy, nearly all white people in Kerr County who chose not to be inconvenienced. Blame the Black man and DEI for children’s deaths in Kerr County while that fire chief’s core duties are two counties away, responsible for fire and emergency response to over 1.3 million people in Austin.

Children’s deaths caused by nice white people who refused to protect the public because it was more important not to be inconvenienced by alarms, not to pay more local taxes, and not to take Democratic administrations’ funding to own the libs.

~ ~ ~

EDIT — 5:46 PM ET —

The Tennessee Holler @[email protected]
WATCH: “More could’ve been done.”

KERR COUNTY folks didn’t want to take money from “The Biden Regime” that could’ve been used for a flood warning system 👇🏽

Jul 11, 2025, 05:08 PM

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93 replies
  1. Rayne says:

    tl;dr — a reply from the thread linked in the post:

    AI6YR Ben @[email protected]

    @0xF21D @VE7WYC

    So, they are fully aware of the dangers there. They just chose to ignore it and put a girl’s summer camp in the path of the river.

    “Kerr County is located within the area known as Flash Flood Alley because of the area’s steep terrain, shallow soil and unusually high rainfall rates. Heavy rains can quickly result.in high walls of fast-moving water with great destructive potential. In response to the flash flooding and numerous, flood related fatalities, several communities in the area have started implementing Flood Warning Systems (FWS) and High Water Detection Systems (HWDS) to help alert and warn residents of dangerous conditions at low water crossings. ”

    #Kerrville #disasters #texas
    Jul 08, 2025, 10:03 AM

    • pH unbalanced says:

      I mean, they didn’t *just* put these camps there. The camp I went to in the hill country in the 70s and 80s had been there for generations, and Camp Mystic is 100 years old. And the location isn’t accidental — they are on the river because they use the river for water activities. So you can’t really criticize their original existence without missing the point.

      The problem is that they have their head in the sand over climate change and changing conditions. They can’t say this was unforeseeable because there have been plenty of warnings (and tragedies, like in ’87). You have to put in safeguards for the current level of danger, not the level that was there 50 years ago.

      • Rayne says:

        The point that anyone is missing is on the end of my shit-kicking boots.

        They are on the river for water activities? Great — they don’t have to be in the fucking flood plain to do water sports.

        I know of a camp for disabled kids located next to Lake Superior because they want access for water activities, next to a point in the lake where the lake bottom drops off steeply. It’s located roughly 75 feet above the beach, about 200 years away from the beach, fenced all the way around the camp — and it’s been that way since the 1930s, haven’t lost a camper yet. I guess the sun and heat in Texas fries adults’ ability to reason.

        Read the commissioners’, sheriff’s, and judge’s comments again. They never mentioned climate change in those key remarks but they did mention past floods. They knew it was bad already. Fuck them.

        • Savage Librarian says:

          “I guess the sun and heat in Texas fries adults’ ability to reason.”

          Yeah, I’ve often thought that about Florida as well.

        • Xboxershorts says:

          “I guess the sun and heat in Texas fries adults’ ability to reason.”

          And Fox News, Newsmax, OANN and every other bastard offspring of Fox Fucking news.

          These people’s minds have been poisoned. And it’s only going to get worse.

    • Ginevra diBenci says:

      They couldn’t possibly take advantage of the actual “funds” they had back in 2016, because those meant something something something Obama administration. Which they *very* cleverly figured out based on the date they had to file by.

      At least they got a big laugh out of sticking it to Obama!

  2. P J Evans says:

    My parents had a weather alarm in their house in west Texas. Not for flash floods, but for tornadoes and thunderstorms with hail. It’s not that expensive to buy one – at the time, you could go to Radio Shack and get one – and yes, it WILL wake you up in the middle of the night, if something is going on. You can turn it off…if you don’t care about your house being destroyed.

    • Rayne says:

      I don’t know if the weather alert device you’re describing is the same as the flood alert system Kerr County blew off.

      All I know is that this asshat didn’t want to hear alarms.

      COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You know we had a baby flood a couple weeks ago, a month or so, whatever it was. And I keep hearing these reports of the old, old system, and I know we’re not going to deal with that though. Expect that to be gone where the Jones call the Smiths, and the Smiths call Camp Rio Vista, and Rio Vista blah, blah, blah, along down the line. But it’s still there and it still works. The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of night, I’m going to have to start drinking again to put up with y’all.

      Kids are dead because this commissioner didn’t want to be inconvenienced.

      • Rayne says:

        Compare and contrast the records from Kerr County above to Texas Tribune’s reporting (via Texas Observer).

        Excerpt:

        Nearly 1.3 million Texas homes are similarly situated in parts of the state susceptible to dangerous floodwaters, according to a state estimate. A quarter of the state’s land carries some degree of severe flood risk, leaving an estimated 5 million Texans in possible jeopardy.

        Yet, local governments—especially counties—have limited policy tools to regulate building in areas most prone to flooding. The state’s explosive growth, a yearning for inexpensive land, and a state far behind in planning for extreme weather compound the problem, experts said.

        While cities can largely decide what is built within their limits, counties have no jurisdiction to implement comprehensive building codes or zoning that could limit people from living close to the water’s edge.

        Poppycock. This is an excuse. Kerr County had an option outside of building codes in the form of an alert system, but dead kids are a reasonable cost to avoid such an inconvenience.

      • P J Evans says:

        Probably not – weather alarms are an individual thing, picking up NWS warnings. (And in their part of TX, the TV stations would broadcast them – they were an overlay on the screen, so you couldn’t miss them.)

        And TX is notorious for lack of building codes. You’re really on your own in many places. (Houston, for example, has a lot of -places in its metro area prone to flooding. And no way to fix that, because $$$$.)
        I liked TX in the mid-90s, but I wouldn’t want to live there now. Too many people have bought into the GOP lies.

      • Memory hole says:

        Well, to be fair to Commissioner Baldwin, he was trying to fight his personal battle with the devil water.

        Death cult on so many levels.

        • Rayne says:

          Oh yes, we wouldn’t want protecting children camping in flood plains to drive them back to drinking, God forbid.

    • Raven Eye says:

      — The Emergency Alert System (EAS), officially replaced the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) in 1997. [It is not uncommon for some people, including the media, to use the term generically.] This is a nation-wide system and is jointly managed by FEMA, the FCC, and NOAA. At the individual/household level, you can buy a weather radio that activates in response to those grinding squeal tones. The 122 local NWS Weather Forecast Offices can direct those alerts to their entire service areas, or to more specific locations via Specific Area Message Encoding (SAMES), using the existing VHF NOAA Weather radio transmitters. Local and state emergency management agencies can develop protocols that allow non-weather emergency alerts to be broadcast on EAS – including evacuations. Across the nation, a number of broadcast stations are designated as Primary Entry Point (PEP) stations. Something overlooked (ignorance or malice – you decide) by DOGE and Project 2025 is that NPR is one of three nationwide PEPs. (Here in southern Oregon, Jefferson Public Radio uses around 60 transmitters and translators to cover 60,000 square miles of Oregon and northern California with three separate services. https://www.ijpr.org/jpr-stations )

      — Local agencies can develop their own systems, the most common being commercial products which push alerts and warnings to the cellular phones of subscribers. The most effective of these systems identify evacuation zones developed by local authorities. Typically, you’ll find zones within cities, and zones that cover unincorporated areas of a county or parish, as well as census designated places.

      • P J Evans says:

        See, for example, fire evacuation notices – they have orders and warnings. (Last year there was a warning that stopped half a mile north of where I live. I worked with people who had evacuated at least once.)

      • Artemesia says:

        In Chicago I get one of those blaring phone alarms every time there is severe weather in the suburbs. They DID NOT activate those alarms as the water rose dangerously in Kerr County. While not perfect, probably many of those families who died as their RVs were swept away would have heard them earlier and evacuated.

        And apparently at Camp Mystic they were still yelling at teen counselors to stay in their cabins as death approached.

        • Raven Eye says:

          Are you talking about EAS, or some other alert and warning system(s)? Who is the “They” that did not activate alarms?

  3. Ms. Dalloway says:

    If you’re pretending climate change doesn’t exist, as all good Texas Republicans must do to maintain their power and influence, then spending tax dollars to mitigate ever-more severe climate disasters is, shall we say, politically incorrect. To me, it mirrors their insane stance on gun safety — they must protect their right to own unlimited weapons of mass murder, or be ostracized from their precious tribe. The Second Amendment is not worth the life of one child, never mind the thousands who’ve been murdered in its name — and if you think it is, I invite you to sacrifice your child.

    • Rayne says:

      That. I couldn’t help think of Uvalde and all the children dead because it’s inconvenient to regulate our militia.

      • Peterr says:

        I, too, thought of Uvalde, but more in the sense of overlapping jurisdictions, poor coordination of various agencies, and a general unwillingness to do what needs to be done for fear of pissing off some other agency/official.

        • Artemesia says:

          And pompous doofuses in cowboy hats strutting around all manly but too cowardly to risk themselves for children but teen girls risk themselves and die to try to save the little kids in their care.

  4. Matt Foley says:

    On the bright side, Trump says it’s great time to buy all this newly created waterfront property. Because global warming floods create MORE land, he says. Didn’t know that, did ya?

  5. ToldainDarkwater says:

    It’s not as though any of those kids at camps were the children of the taxpaying citizens of Kerr County after all. Why should said taxpayers give a fig about some “Houston people” who were “building too close to the water”?

  6. Willis Warren says:

    They don’t give a fuck. They’d shoot themselves before admitting they’re wrong.

  7. Old Rapier says:

    Everybody dies. Spending all the money in the world won’t change that. A few hundred lives saved now to live decades longer here at the camp, or a few thousand there to live a few years longer with vaccines, isn’t going to change things much. So really, why bother? That’s the predictable train of thought and it can be a honest question but remember. They always choose death. The way of Lucifer.

    • posaune says:

      They are so completely bent on forcing women to give birth, and they don’t care if any children die afterwards! Some culture!

    • Rugger_9 says:

      It seems that the contracts for the emergency call centers also expired and were not renewed, so the 2% missed call rate on Day 1 ballooned to 65% and over 70% before Noem got around to calling out FEMA support. It traces back to Noem’s well-enforced policy of personal approval of any expenditure over 100 K$.

      It is supported by Noem as a successful cost cutting measure.

      • Rugger_9 says:

        LGM and Digby both posted on this, their prose is much more elegant. I would observe that Jackboot Barbie seems to be unaffected by the disaster (blaming Biden, of course) but what else would be expected for someone who killed a puppy for being inconvenient?

    • Xboxershorts says:

      “The Way of Lucifer”

      Had they really been following Lucifer they wouldn’t be so closed minded and hate filled towards their fellow “D” branded Americans.

      From Merriam Webster:
      Latin for Lucifer = “the morning star, bearer of light”

  8. Molly Pitcher says:

    There was extensive discussion about this on MSNBC. There have been major deadly floods in the area for years.

    From Google:
    1932 Flood:
    .
    This flood is the highest on record for the Guadalupe River at Kerrville, according to the National Water Prediction Service. The river crested at 39.00 feet, according to the National Water Prediction Service.

    1987 Flood:
    .
    This flood, which occurred in July, was particularly devastating, with a massive flood wave traveling down the Guadalupe River. A bus and van attempting to cross the river were struck by floodwaters, resulting in the deaths of 10 teenagers. The Guadalupe River at Comfort crested at 31.50 feet. This one flooded the Mystic Camp, too.

    2002 Flood:
    .
    This flood was a major event, impacting much of the western part of South Central Texas, including Kerrville. The city of Kerrville responded by assessing conditions, implementing emergency measures, and utilizing both city and federal funds for recovery.

    On Jen Psaki’s show last night, she said that the Sheriffs office took the majority of the millions from the Recovery fund. They bought the new Motorola radio system, paid someone $100,000 to oversee the purchase and integration of the system and all of the sheriffs got raises. I guess it just didn’t occur to anyone to suggest moving the camps out of the flood plain ?

    Too busy talking on their new radios.

  9. BreslauTX says:

    Even though former Commissioner Moser might be the sharpest one of the various officials mentioned, he is still hardcore Texas GOP.

    **********
    https://www.heritagesociety.org/calendar/2024/7/1/2fulykotdcispe2fxix3t1pxpxxi2m

    Tom Moser was born and raised in Houston. He began his career 50 plus year career in the aerospace industry at NASA, where he participated in every U.S. human space flight program from Mercury to the Space Station. He served as the Chief Engineer at the Johnson Space Center and as senior manager in the Apollo, Space Shuttle and Space Station Programs in Houston and Washington, D.C. When he retired to Kerrville in 1997, he immediately failed retirement when he became the Executive Director of the Texas Aerospace Commission for Governor George W. Bush. He established commercial Spaceports in Texas. Space-X is operating at the south Texas Spaceport. He failed retirement again, when he was elected Kerr County Commissioner for three terms. He has been interested in the Truth regarding “Global Warming” and CO2 for over 30 years. As such he founded the “Right Climate Stuff” 12 years ago. An organization of retired NASA colleagues and other scientists with the objective of disseminating the Truth regarding Climate Change. Tom has multiple engineering degrees and studies from the University of Texas, University of Pennsylvania and Rice University. He is a distinguished graduate of the UT College of Engineering and a Fellow of National and International Aerospace organizations.
    **********

    He gave a speech at a Climate Conference that had Rep Boebert and Sen Ron Johnson as some of the Speakers.

    https://climateconference.heartland.org/speakers/

    His speech
    https://youtu.be/uITiv8r-BSQ

  10. Memory hole says:

    Many news outlets have reported that FEMA personnel were prepared as trained to respond. Unfortunately, they were forced to wait three days due to complete incompetence of the Trump administration, especially Kristi Noem’s ridiculous policy that she needs to sign off on anything costing over $100,000.

    Being a holiday weekend, she spent time asking her instagram followers which portrait of her on horseback to hang in the S.Dakota state capital. Meanwhile, people were desperately searching for their missing daughters and other family members. And FEMA waited to respond.

    I would like to see the Times, Post, CBS, etc ask people of the area what they think of Kristi and Trump’s delay. I think we would find many MAGA members irate enough to start to peel the scales from their eyes.

    • Rayne says:

      Any chance you could snag some screenshots of Noem’s Instagram posts? O_o

      ADDER: Got it, but I don’t have the date stamp (I don’t Instagram or any other Meta product). I’d like the exact time for a timeline.

      What a useless, unfit wretch.

      • Matt___B says:

        You’re permanently out of luck if you want to get an exact time from an IG post. The way IG handles date stamps is that if it’s a post from today, it will show “X minutes ago” if it’s a fresh post less than an hour old, “X hours ago” if it’s been longer than an hour but less than 1 day since it was posted, “X days ago” if it’s less than a week old, and finally it will show month/day if the post is 1 week old or older.

        • Rayne says:

          Thanks. I’ll have to hope somebody was smart enough to note the time she posted that narcissistic crap so it can be matched against other events — especially if there are hearings in the future about this disaster.

      • Memory hole says:

        I’m sorry, I have nothing. I have and do no social media at all, other than sometimes commenting here.

        I just heard on Pod Save America about the instagram posting as people washed away. A quick search led to some stories that seemed to verify it happened in the time that FEMA was forced to delay helping.

        I wonder if that is her “untrainable” dog hunting portrait.

      • Ginevra diBenci says:

        If only Kristi Noem *were* useless–then the nation would be spared her theatrical narcissism and outright psychopathy. In fact, she has uses galore, serving most centrally as Stephen Miller’s cloaking device for executing the vilest and most blatantly illegal DHS actions.

        As such, she puts Trump at thirdhand remove from the nastiness he should be blamed for. I predict that her consummate use will be filling the role of scapegoat. Maybe for Miller first, but ultimately, inevitably, for Trump.

        This naughty pup is going to get sent to farm upstate by one of the two guys holding her leash–which is at least a better fate than what she would have dished out.

        • Rayne says:

          Thanks for this info. Anybody reading this have insights on the time zone? Might narrow it down if we can say it was published before/after 12:00 pm ET.

        • Matt___B says:

          Interesting…wasn’t aware of this IG “alternative”. When I view it from the Pacific time zone here in LA it shows up as 7/6/25 at 7:31 pm which is 9 hours ahead of your timezone in Europe. So apparently stealthgram translates IG’s “hidden” timestamp info into the time zone being viewed from. So…by that logic, depends on where Kristi was when she created the post. Washington DC? Then that would have been 10:31 pm on 7/6/25.

  11. shredgar says:

    P J Evans is right. This isn’t rocket science. A national weather service (NWS) weather radio is less than $10 online. Still have the one I carried for years while camping with friends and family in southern Utah Canyon country to keep us away from incipient floods.

    Why didn’t every camp and sentient adult camper have a weather radio?

    • Artemesia says:

      Yes the local politicians and national administration failed. But the camp owner (who died trying to save kids, he wasn’t a Uvalde style Texan coward) should have had someone monitoring the river given the warnings and evacuated kids near the river early. Adult leaders were still telling people to stay in the cabins as they water rose to the windowsills. Luckily brave teens saved most of their little campers — and alas some brave teens died doing their best. Trump failed them. Noem failed them (and was posting her glamour shots while kids died: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/global-trends/us-news-kristi-noem-trolled-brutally-for-asking-fans-to-choose-her-official-portrait-while-texas-kids-drown-in-flood/articleshow/122344438.cms?from=mdr ). Kerr county executives failed. And the people charged directly with protecting these kids were complacent and kids died.

    • Raven Eye says:

      The effectiveness of NOAA Weather Radio EAS alerts and warnings depends on a couple of things.

      First, somebody at the local (city or county, typically) has to constantly push getting them into homes and offices. Local retailers need to have them in stock, and in the past, some retailers sold them at a discount. My desktop Midland* plugs into my router’s UPS, and also has backup batteries (expect to pay between $35 and $50) . Access to EAS requires an MOA for locally originated warnings and alerts because the federal government “owns” the system.

      Second, I’ve seen a trend away from EAS by many local authorities. Many have set up Facebook accounts, ignoring the fact that (1) many people (often the most vulnerable) don’t have access to Facebook and (2) there’s a mess o’ people out there that want nothing to do with Facebook. Even with telephone alert subscriptions available in some localities, you really need to use a variety of systems/methods to get the word out.

      *Tariff Alert: The radio was manufactured in China.

      • P J Evans says:

        You can get radios with small solar panels and a hand-crank generator. They’re effective, if not what most people need.

        • Raven Eye says:

          Those are intended for use after an initiating event — and for preppers (and disaster cosplayers).

          For EAS to be effective, dual-powered (mains power with battery backup) radios need to be turned on 24/7 in homes and workplaces. And for non-weather emergencies, agreements and protocols with state and/or local agencies need to be in place.

  12. Alan Charbonneau says:

    I’m 95 miles from the flooding. A friend of a friend lost a daughter in the flood and the death toll continues to rise. Neither the state nor the county wanted to pay for a warning system, but now that kids are dead, Abbott says the state will pay. I fucking hate these clowns.

    James Talarico represents cities a few miles away from me and he is the kind of politician we need in this state. The unholy trinity of Abbott, Patrick, and Paxton is a cancer on the residents.

  13. wa_rickf says:

    Many news outlets have reported that the Texas State Legislature has denied emergency siren funds for the past 10 years, citing cost. Many county residence where the majority of flood death occurred didn’t want the sirens in the event of false alarms and the annoyance oft false alarm sirens blaring was too much for the many of the residence to handle.

    My view that being cheap and chnitzy is one of the hallmarks of conservatism. Conservatives funds things at the bare minimum, and for things like infastructure, reserve no money for reapirs and upkieep. Build and let it fall apart is their go to move.

    • Rayne says:

      They only build something if they can take a cut off the top — like the sheriffs getting a new comms system AND pay raises.

    • P J Evans says:

      I can understand not having sirens/alarm systems in rural areas, but cities and towns NEED them.

      • Ginevra diBenci says:

        Really, PJ? It seems like rural areas need alarms/sirens the *most*! Cities (and most towns) have wireless coverage for cell and TV alarms, as well as geographically closer neighbors just in case.

        Gaps in cell access are a recurring detail in coverage of the Texas floods–meaning places like the summer camp included locations where neither phone alarms *nor* those magic phone calls the officials in Rayne’s post kept using as an excuse to not invest in warning systems would reach anyone. Thus they seem like the exact places that do, in fact, need such systems most. And damn the officials who knew it and did nothing.

        • P J Evans says:

          Sirens require that you be close enough to hear them. In rural areas, the next house may be a quarter-mile away. They’d need a siren at each house. This is why weather alarms.

    • harpie says:

      And you know what, you fvcking assholes?
      That money CAME from New Jersey, New York and California to begin with.
      We send it TO YOU Every. Fvckin. Year, so that YOU can
      “spend it on [YOUR crazy ass] values that WE don’t agree with ABHOR”
      …like blaming GOD for your assholery.

    • Rayne says:

      I’ve been stewing on this crap since I first saw that post on Mastodon showing exactly where the lost camp buildings were in the flood plain, knowing that FEMA had published the flood plain locations years ago.

      I thought I would barf when I read them joking about the system being “dead in the water.” There aren’t strong enough expletives and pejoratives.

      • Ginevra diBenci says:

        Back in the 1970s I worked for the Deleuw Cather Corporation as part of a grant project from the US Geological Survey. The grant was for flood-mapping nationwide. My floor (“the Girls”) received packages including naked maps accompanied by lists of street (and river and landmark) names; we girls were tasked with slicing the names from the list–often letter by letter–using an X-Acto knife and then using a guide to apply them where they belonged in white spaces on the map.

        We could not encroach on the flood zones. Not even when barely enough space existed to contain all the letters just crammed in, without regard to making words, let alone labeling roads or towns…YOU try mapping western Pennsylvania. I can’t read an atlas anymore without smiling at the effort almost no one sees.

        The point: the flood zones were supposed to stand out, sacrosanct, for all the purposes the federal government of fifty years ago envisioned. Many of the zones have changed since, but the primary goal remains: life. Because another thing those Texas officials display is contempt for the science that might have kept their families, or their friends’ families, whole.

        • Rayne says:

          I’ve had to map utility rights-of-way — that’s as much of PITA as I would have liked, I’ll pass on flood zones. Nope, nope, nope.

        • P J Evans says:

          Rayne says:
          July 12, 2025 at 8:55 pm

          I worked in “Geographic Services” at a gas utility company. So many maps! All of our pipe, tract maps records of survey, USGS maps…and photos. Streetview was a great help: “oh, that’s where it is!” and also “Oh, *that’s* what it looks like!”. Rights of way and easements, yeah. And the last several years, working on the high-pressure pipeline database, which is GIS amd as accurate as we could get it to be – they used GPS (to 8 decimal places) for a lot of the critical points, because if there’s a fire or something at night, you want to know *exactly* where the valves are to shut off the gas.

      • Raven Eye says:

        And…Many flood maps are out of date either because of changes in local conditions, or they haven’t been updated to take into consideration best practices and lessons-learned.

        And the likelihood of anyone at FEMA pushing to get better maps across the country?

  14. depressed chris says:

    Those Commissioners’ Court Regular Sessions were stomach-churning. In a just world, this flood would create a Federal requirement for flood zone waning systems in any state, “States Rights” be damned.

    When I was a kid, every Friday at noon my local EMS system for nukular war with the Roooskies would be tested for a minute. The Feds put them in lots of places, notwithstanding local objections. I think that they still have them for tornado warnings in some states. It’s tragic that the Feds didn’t do the same for flood zones.

  15. MsJennyMD says:

    Thank you Rayne. Power video. Hateful beliefs hurt people. Hateful beliefs kill people.
    Kerr County had the opportunity and money to put in a flood warning system for the safety of the ALL residents. They did not because they didn’t want money from the Biden Administration, the communists, the anti-Americans, the devil. “This is Texas and Texans take care of Texans.” They are their own worst enemy.

    • P J Evans says:

      Between the freeze and the hurricanes and this (and the fcking laws restricting medical care for women), it’s really clear that Texans DO NOT take care of Texans – unless they’re rich white conservative male Xtianists.
      They’re so proud of their early history – which is about slavery and ignoring the laws of the country they were in – that they’ve lost sight of the fact that they’re part of a much larger country and not all of one.

  16. BreslauTX says:

    Since the area has been known to have Flash Floods and some of the Camps – Businesses have been there for years, did Insurance Agents- Underwriters ask questions when evaluating and writing policies? I haven’t seen anything about Insurance policies, but I can’t imagine so many being uninsured.

    ___________

    The Kerrville City Manager was up early, but either didn’t comprehend what a Flash Flood was about or wasn’t checking for the latest updates from the NWS.

    https://www.npr.org/2025/07/05/nx-s1-5457759/texas-floods-timeline

    Friday, July 4th:

    At 12:26 a.m., the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center said “flash flooding likely overnight with significant impacts possible.” This message was posted on X a minute later.

    The National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio followed up its warning from 11:41 p.m. Thursday with another flash flood warning at 1:14 a.m. Friday. Another 14 flash flood warnings, which are posted on the NWS website and elsewhere, would come between then and 10:46 a.m.

    At 3:06 a.m. the National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio posted on X: “A very dangerous flash flooding event is ongoing.” It ended: “Turn Around, Don’t Drown!”

    Around 3:30 a.m. the Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said he was out for an early morning jog along the Guadalupe River and saw “not a drop of rain,” according to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who recounted his conversation with the city manager. Rice added that he left around 4 a.m. when “there was very light rain…We did not see any signs of the river rising at that time.”

    ___________

    Hunt Texas is upstream from Kerrville and a nearby Camp had their key people awake overnight monitoring the situation with the river.

    https://apnews.com/article/texas-floods-summer-camp-evacuation-a1cbf5cfa768b0869e5e299b8f7dfccf

    It was about 1 a.m. on the Fourth of July when the facilities manager at a central Texas summer camp saw water from the Guadalupe River steadily rising amid a deluge of rain.

    Aroldo Barrera notified his boss, who had been monitoring reports of the storms approaching Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly, a recreation destination where an intercultural youth conference had been called off early just hours earlier.

    Despite an absence of warning by local authorities, camp officials acted quickly on their own, relocating about 70 children and adults staying overnight in a building near the river. With the kids safe, camp leaders including President and CEO Tim Huchton were able to avoid the catastrophe that hit at least one other camp near Hunt, where the 500-acre Mo-Ranch is located.

    “They helped them pack up,” Lisa Winters, communications director for Mo-Ranch, told The Associated Press on Sunday. “They got them up, they got them out, put them up on higher ground.”

    ___________

    It appears the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office didn’t have a key person (supervisor) readily available when the first calls started coming in and quick decisions needed to be made.

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/kerr-county-officials-waited-90-minutes-send-emergency/story?id=123631023

    At 4:22 a.m. on Friday, as Texas’ Hill Country began to flood, a firefighter in Ingram – just upstream from Kerrville – asked the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office to alert nearby residents, according to audio obtained by ABC affiliate KSAT. But Kerr County officials took nearly six hours to heed this call.

    “The Guadalupe Schumacher sign is underwater on State Highway 39,” the firefighter said in the dispatch audio. “Is there any way we can send a CodeRED out to our Hunt residents, asking them to find higher ground or stay home?”

    “Stand by, we have to get that approved with our supervisor,” a Kerr County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher replied.

    • Rayne says:

      Thanks for that tick-tock. Jeebus, “we have to get that approved” — the entire sheriff’s office needs a boot in the ass out the door.

    • earofhuntingdon says:

      Pretty damning description of the negligence of those in charge, given how obvious it is that once-a-century weather events now happen annually.

    • Artemesia says:

      ‘Didn’t see rain’. proving he is an idiot. The water from a flashflood is often from rain miles away. As a scout at camp we were tent camping on a spit between a river and stream. You could see storm clouds in the hills and my ten year old self and two friends refused to camps on the beach — we hauled our sleeping bags up to the hill above. At 2 am or so we were awakened by the screams of our fellows who were splashing around in a foot of water as the river rose from that rain in the mountains far away and flooded the campsite. Only a foot or so; no one drowned but everyone but the 3 of us were soaked and panicked in the dark and the wet.

      They have flash floods in Texas how could they not understand how flash floods work?

      • P J Evans says:

        Some people are dim enough to think that if it hasn’t happened in mumblety years, it isn’t likely.
        Some may thing that a “hundred-year event” means it will be a hundred years between them.
        And some people expect their deity to protect them.

        The South Plains, in west Texas, has a lot of low spots, locally called playas, that collect water when it rains. Some are 25 or 20 feet deep and hundreds of feet across. There are also intersections on roads that are posted for flooding when it rains, with markers at the side of the road. You pay attention…or you can get stuck, maybe even die.

  17. xyxyxyxy says:

    According to https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/11/us/camp-mystic-owner-warnings-texas-flooding-invs , the owners have known for a century that the camp is in a high risk location.
    “At Camp Mystic, meanwhile, several of the cabins that were hit hardest in the flooding were in an area identified by the federal government as the highest-risk location for inundations from the Guadalupe. Even as the camp built new cabins in a less-risky flood zone elsewhere on its property, nothing was done to relocate the buildings in the most danger….Camp Mystic has a long history with flooding, going back to just a few years after it was established 99 years ago.”

    • xyxyxyxy says:

      FEMA has in the past granted exemptions to the camp, “But Syracuse University associate professor Sarah Pralle, who has extensively studied FEMA’s flood map determinations, said it was “particularly disturbing” that a camp in charge of the safety of so many young people would receive exemptions from basic flood regulation.”
      https://apnews.com/article/texas-flood-camp-mystic-map-records-investigation-e12bee8d5f88301363861ca12c19b929
      “Experts say Camp Mystic’s requests to amend the FEMA map could have been an attempt to avoid the requirement to carry flood insurance, to lower the camp’s insurance premiums or to pave the way for renovating or adding new structures under less costly regulations.”

    • Artemesia says:

      So naturally you put the littlest kids who would have the most difficult escaping in a flood in the cabins near the water. If tweens had been in those cabins, it is possible they could have fought their way uphill in the flood — the 8 year olds didn’t have a chance.

  18. Stella_12JUL2025_1339h says:

    The Mrs. Lavender concerned with “strings attached” and money going “back to California” in the above transcript must be Rosa Lavender.
    She was hired in 2021 by the Kerr County Commissioners’ Court to serve as a ‘grant administrator’
    Mrs Lavender also writes for the local paper. Here’s her July 2024 article reporting on where the money actually went.
    Including anonymously quoting herself as one of the “many!”

    “Three years ago, many in the local conservative community warned against keeping the ARPA funding because of possible “strings attached” and repeatedly urged county leaders to return the money to the federal government.

    Almost $7 million of the $10.2 million has been spent on the county’s new radio system which, as of last week, is about 50 percent complete, according to Sheriff Larry Leitha.

    “Without the ARPA money we would have never been able to get the new radio system. The ‘strings attached’ concern about the ARPA money has not materialized,” Leitha said.

    https://www.hccommunityjournal.com/article_fd3f3e9c-3eb8-11ef-9bb2-b32dd8fc6b3d.html

    [Welcome to emptywheel. Please choose and use a unique username with a minimum of 8 letters. We adopted this minimum standard to support community security. Because your username is too short, your username will be temporarily changed to match the date/time of your first known comment until you have a new compliant username. /~Rayne]

    • P J Evans says:

      She sounds so much like the local newspaper columnist who ran for office and lost (TWICE). She’s against everything that might improve lives for people who aren’t “like her”, including things like the required smog checks on cars (alternate years!) that have improved air quality so much.

    • Rayne says:

      No conflict of interest there at all, reporting on one’s self about one’s elected role. *eye roll*

      Wonder how reporting in the local paper looked with regard to the flood warning system before January 2025.

    • Raven Eye says:

      Jeepers! What’s wrong with some these Texas local officials?

      The elected and appointed officials in the county I worked for were always sniffing for grants. Who is offering it? What exactly is it about? Where is it posted? How can we leverage it so we can satisfy the grant requirements and also get some things done that we need? Is it competitive? What is the local share? Can the state pick up part of the local share? When do we need to apply? How soon can we get this on the Supervisors’ calendar.

      Trust me…They didn’t worry about the feds “owning” them.

  19. expat catdad says:

    I’ve been sharing this posting a lot on Bluesky because I feel this tragedy so well encapsulates all that is wrong with the GOP — with documentation! Exposing the sordid lead-up to the horrible destruction and death which it brought might therefore be a powerful means of bringing to light the lies and rot at the heart of GOP ideology in general, and ultimately help bring it all tumbling down.

    After sharing this and seeing the snowballing commotion that it has created (and I suspect a decent amount of traffic to this site) and also thinking about how utterly damning these transcripts are, I got the idea suddenly while driving back from shopping today of how the statements and their gross ignorance and malevolence could be instrumentalized against those who spoke them and the community which went along with it.

    I’m thinking: BILLBOARDS! Right in Kerr County along major roadways going in!

    Imagine driving through the Hill Country and seeing a large billboard showing any of the all-too-many images of the devastation (e.g. a Camp Mystic t-shirt hanging from a tree) but with an excerpt from the transcripts plastered on top of it, like:

    COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: “The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of night, I’m going to have to start drinking again to put up with y’all.” (Or any of the many other ridiculous statements)

    What does everyone think? Surely it would be doable with a bit of organization and some crowdfunding.

    Maybe I’m a little emotional about this, but these asshats should not be allowed to forget!

    I’m certainly curious what other opinions there might be about this, whether positive or negative, or if anyone has other suggestions.

    Thanks for your time. BTW, I was MindGame on Kevin Drum’s Jabberwocking blog. Is anyone else here from back there?

    • Rayne says:

      We sure need some way to hold these jokers accountable for their failure to serve their community without bias. What they did is the opposite of DEI and it cost lives.

  20. AndreLgreco says:

    Thank you for publishing these past meeting transcripts showing a not untypical display of some small-minded, big-talking public ‘servants’ discussing a subject that has become a preamble of this horrifying tragedy. Having some past experience with several bad Gulf Coast storms, I’ve come to realize that next to loss-of-life, the only thing that wakes stubborn people up to the realities of climate change is when the insurance companies jack up their rates astronomically or leave town altogether.

    • BreslauTX says:

      In Galveston (Texas Coast), the Insurance Rates have been getting pushed higher.

      With the huge tragedy in the Texas Hill Country, I would expect Insurance companies to reexamine everything that they do in that part of the state which means rates will be going up there as well. Perhaps some situations will be deemed a huge risk and insurance will be either unavailable or at rates that will really open the eyes of people.

      • Raven Eye says:

        Too many of the dunces in state and local government don’t see the relationship between prepared and resilient communities and the costs of living. Or, in some cases, the commercial sectors ending up with lower rates of productivity in unprepared and/or damaged communities.

        (Are you BOI or IBC? I was IBO years ago.)

  21. RealAlexi says:

    Thank you Rayne.

    The people who elect these idiots/evil scum never ever learn until somebody’s dead. And it damn well better be somebody that matters.

    • P J Evans says:

      They have fires, too – there have been several bad ones in the last couple of decades.

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