The July 4th Texas Deadly Flood Wasn’t Just a Tragedy. It was a Policy Failure.
In the early morning hours of July 4, floodwaters tore through Texas Hill Country, submerging cabins, sweeping away bridges, and killing over 120 people, including 27 girls at a summer camp in Kerr County.
The Guadalupe River surged nearly 30 feet in under an hour, sweeping vehicles off roadways, toppling power lines, and turning summer camps into disaster zones. Entire neighborhoods in small towns like Hunt and Ingram were inundated, and dozens of families had to be rescued from rooftops by boat and helicopter. It was one of the deadliest flash floods in modern Texas history.
But the flood’s devastation wasn’t inevitable, and this wasn’t just a weather disaster.
The chaos, confusion, and tragic loss of life we saw in Texas on July 4th was a brutal indictment of an economic policy strategy called "devolution," the transfer of responsibility from federal and state governments to local ones without providing the resources or capacity to do the job.
Cutting federal budgets and shifting responsibility to local government often sounds good in theory. It promises local control and responsiveness. But in practice—especially in rural America—it too often amounts to abandonment. Federal and state governments retreat, leaving communities to navigate disaster with duct tape, volunteer crews, and of course, prayer.
Hill Country communities were abandoned. When the rain came, they didn’t stand a chance.
In Texas Hill Country on July 4th, the federal abdication to rural communities became painfully evident.
A $1 million siren system proposed in 2016 was never installed due to cost concerns and local political infighting. Federal grant applications were turned down or never completed. Even when $10.2 million in federal ARPA funds became available, local leaders debated returning it because they weren’t fans of the Biden Administration, rather than using it for urgent infrastructure upgrades. Ultimately, the City of Kerrville’s ARPA funding was spent on upgrading the communications system at the public safety access point (PSAP) housed at the police department.
These systemic failures and recent MAGA cuts left residents—especially children, asleep at summer camps—without warning or means of escape.
On the morning of July 4th, the warnings to residents and campers didn’t arrive fast enough—or reach far enough. Yes, the National Weather Service issued watches and flash flood warnings on July 3 and into early July 4. A flash flood emergency was declared hours before the water rose.
But that didn’t help much in Kerr County, where there were no flood sirens, and many residents didn’t receive phone alerts in time to seek higher ground because Paul Yura, the long-serving meteorologist in charge of “warning coordination,” had recently taken an unplanned early retirement amid cuts pushed by MAGA Republicans.
911 dispatchers waited over 90 minutes to issue emergency alerts after urgent requests, while the Guadalupe River was already rising. Local officials, lacking a real-time communication infrastructure and overwhelmed by cascading emergencies, failed to act swiftly.
National reporters visiting Kerr County after the storm described the flood zone as devastated: roads washed out, trees uprooted, and debris covering the riverbanks. Search crews and volunteers worked around the clock to find missing people and recover bodies. Officials warn the death toll will likely rise as recovery continues.
Too often, those of us in rural and low-income communities are left behind, and with extreme weather events increasing, our communities are left exposed.
Many of the deaths in the Texas flood would have been preventable if the same storm hadn't hit such rural, remote areas. Wealthier, more populated regions typically have well-developed emergency systems—sirens, real-time alerts, staffed emergency management departments, and first responders trained in water rescue. But those of us in rural areas and lower-income urban communities are being left behind at a critical moment in our country’s history.
Scientists agree that climate change is intensifying extreme weather events as warming temperatures trap more moisture in the atmosphere, fueling torrential downpours. The science is settled. The infrastructure in rural America, on the other hand, isn’t ready for what’s ahead.
Kerr County, like many rural areas, has a small tax base and minimal emergency infrastructure. It had been identified for years as part of “Flash Flood Alley,” one of the most flood-prone zones in the U.S. Yet federal recommendations—for sirens, updated evacuation plans, and modernized floodplain maps—remained largely unfunded.
This terrible flood should be a wake-up call. It’s not enough to push responsibility down the chain. We need a national strategy that pairs local flexibility with meaningful federal support.
That means long-term investments in infrastructure across rural America and low-income urban communities, fully staffed forecasting offices, modern alert systems, and minimum preparedness standards for high-risk regions. It also includes restoring and expanding FEMA mitigation programs like BRIC, which have helped communities nationwide reduce flood risks before disaster strikes.
These steps are not optional—they are the foundation of a government that values every life, no matter the ZIP code.
As long as politicians support tax cuts for billionaires over emergency preparedness for Rural America, our communities will continue to be exposed.
Our politics today are fundamentally broken. Our current election system allows for unlimited money to legally bribe our politicians. That’s why too many of our current elected officials are more concerned with tax breaks for billionaires than flood sirens for summer camps.
The national climate emergency response system America needs will not be possible during the Trump administration. We need to hold our local state officials accountable while also electing policymakers who invest in our communities. Rural Americans can't sit on the sidelines and expect politicians, even politicians from their own party, to deliver for their communities. We have to show up and do the work because in rural areas, every voice matters.
Local civic engagement could have helped prioritize safety over politics. Before the flood, there were town hall meetings, budget hearings, and infrastructure planning sessions where critical warning systems were debated and ultimately shelved. In one instance, concerns about sirens making noise at night stalled a lifesaving system. Texas teaches us how needed federal funds combined with smart local government ,could save lives.
Disaster preparedness is one of the clearest tests of a functioning government. It requires staffing, infrastructure, and planning—all of which cost money and often go unnoticed until they’re needed. But in an era of anti-government showmanship, these life-saving systems are being dismantled,
The MAGA movement’s war on public institutions is costing lives—especially in the communities they claim to defend. If we don’t rebuild the capacity of our federal government to serve and protect all people, these tragedies won’t just continue.
They will multiply.