Turns out all those girls would have survived, but no one wanted to accept Biden's money for a flood detection system because the money came from a Democrat.

But wait, the real kicker is that they did spend the money they got for a warning system but instead spent it on useless shit for their local police instead.

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-kerr-county-commissioners-flooding-warning/

In the week after the tragic July 4 flooding in Kerr County, several officials have blamed taxpayer pressure as the reason flood warning sirens were never installed along the Guadalupe River.

“The public reeled at the cost,” Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly told reporters one day after the rain pushed Guadalupe River levels more than 32 feet, resulting in nearly 100 deaths in the county, as of Thursday.

A community that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024, Kerr County constructed an economic engine on the allure of the Guadalupe River. Government leaders acknowledged the need for more disaster mitigation, including a $1 million flood warning system that would better alert the public to emergencies, to sustain that growth, but they were hamstrung by a small and tightfisted tax base.

An examination of transcripts since 2016 from Kerr County’s governing body, the commissioners court, offers a peek into a small Texas county paralyzed by two competing interests: to make one of the country’s most dangerous region for flash flooding safer and to heed to near constant calls from constituents to reduce property taxes and government waste.

“This is a pretty conservative county,” said former Kerr County Judge Tom Pollard, 86. “Politically, of course, and financially as well.”

Cary Burgess, a local meteorologist whose weather reports can be found in the Kerrville Daily Times or heard on Hill Country radio stations, has noticed the construction all along the Guadalupe for the better part of the last decade.

”

More Texans and out-of-state residents have been discovering the river’s pristine waters lined with bald cypress trees, a long-time draw for camping, hiking and kayaking, and they have been coming in droves to build more homes and businesses along the water’s edge. If any of the newcomers were familiar with the last deadly flood in 1987 that killed 10 evacuating teenagers, they found the river’s threat easy to dismiss.

“They’ve been building up and building up and building up and doing more and more projects along the river that were getting dangerous,” Burgess recalls. “And people are building on this river, my gosh, they don't even know what this river's capable of.”

By the time the 1987 flood hit, the county had grown to about 35,000 people. Today, there are about 53,000 people living in Kerr County.

In 2016, Kerr County commissioners already knew they were getting outpaced by neighboring, rapidly growing counties on installing better flood warning systems and were looking for ways to pull ahead.

During a March 28 meeting that year, they said as much.

“Even though this is probably one of the highest flood-prone regions in the entire state where a lot of people are involved, their systems are state of the art,” Commissioner Tom Moser said then. He discussed how other counties like Comal had moved to sirens and more modern flood warning systems.

“And the current one that we have, it will give – all it does is flashing light,” explained W.B. “Dub” Thomas, the county’s emergency management coordinator. “I mean all – that's all you get at river crossings or wherever they're located at.”

Kerr County already had signed on with a company that allowed its residents to opt in and get a CodeRED alert about dangerous weather conditions. But Thomas urged the commissioners court to strive for something more. Cell service along the headwaters of the Guadalupe near Hunt was spotty in the western half of Kerr County, making a redundant system of alerts even more necessary.

“I think we need a system that can be operated or controlled by a centralized location where – whether it's the Sheriff's communication personnel, myself or whatever, and it's just a redundant system that will complement what we currently have,” Thomas said that year.

By the next year, officials had sent off its application for a $731,413 grant to FEMA to help bring $976,000 worth of flood warning upgrades, including 10 high water detection systems without flashers, 20 gauges, possible outdoor sirens, and more.

“The purpose of this project is to provide Kerr County with a flood warning system,” the county wrote in its application. “The System will be utilized for mass notification to citizens about high water levels and flooding conditions throughout Kerr County.”

But the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which oversees billions of FEMA dollars designed to prevent disasters, denied the application because they didn’t have a current hazard mitigation plan. They resubmitted it, news outlets reported, but by then, priority was given to counties that had suffered damage from Hurricane Harvey.

All that concern about warning systems seemed to fade over the next five years, as the political atmosphere throughout the county became more polarized and COVID fatigue frayed local residents’ nerves.

In 2021, Kerr County was awarded a $10.2 million windfall from the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, which Congress passed that same year to support local governments impacted by the pandemic. Cities and counties were given flexibility to use the money on a variety of expenses, including those related to storm-related infrastructure. Corpus Christi, for example, allocated $15 million of its ARPA funding to “rehabilitate and/or replace aging storm water infrastructure.” Waco’s McLennan County spent $868,000 on low water crossings.

Kerr County did not opt for ARPA to fund flood warning systems despite commissioners discussing such projects nearly two dozen times since 2016. In fact, a survey sent to residents about ARPA spending showed that 42% of the 180 responses wanted to reject the $10 million bonus altogether, largely on political grounds.

“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,” one resident told commissioners in April 2022, fearing strings were attached to the money.

“We don't want to be bought by the federal government, thank you very much,” another resident told commissioners. “We'd like the federal government to stay out of Kerr County and their money.”

Even Kelly, the Kerr County judge remarked that this “old law partner” – U.S. Sen. John Cornyn – had told him that if the county did not spend the money it would go back to blue states.

“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 … or California,” Kelly said. “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.”

When it was all said and done, the county approved $7 million in ARPA dollars on a public safety radio communications system for the sheriff’s department and county fire services to meet the community’s needs for the next 10 years, although earlier estimates put that contract at $5 million. Another $1 million went to sheriff’s employees in the form of stipends and raises, and just over $600,000 went towards additional county positions. A new walking path was also created with the ARPA money.

While much has been made of the ARPA spending, it’s not clear if residents or the commissioners understood at the time they could have applied the funds to a warning system. Kelly, the Kerr County judge, and Thomas have declined repeated requests for interviews. Moser, who is no longer a commissioner, did not immediately respond to a Texas Tribune interview request.

Many Kerr County residents, including those who don’t normally follow every cog-turn of government proceedings, have now been poring over the county commissioners meetings this week including Ingram City Council member Raymond Howard. They’ve been digging into ARPA spending and other ways that the county missed opportunities to procure $1 million to implement the warning system commissioners wanted almost 10 years ago, and to prevent the devastating death toll from this week.

A week ago, Howard spent the early morning hours of July 4 knocking on neighbors’ doors to alert them to the flooding after he himself ignored the first two phone alerts on his phone in the middle of the night.

In the week since, the more he’s learned about Kerr County’s county inaction on a flood warning system, the angrier he has become.

“Well, they were obviously thinking about it because they brought it up 20 times since 2016 and never did anything on it,” Howard said, adding that he never thought to ask the city to install sirens previously because he didn’t realize the need for it. “I’m pretty pissed about that.”

Harvey Hilderbran, the former Texas House representative for Kerr County, said what he is watching play out in the community this week is what he’s seen for years in Texas: A disaster hits. There’s a rush to find out who’s accountable. Then outrage pushes officials to shore up deficiencies.

It’s not that Kerr County was dead set against making the area safer, Hilderbran said. Finding a way to pay for it is always where better ideas run aground, especially with a taxbase and leadership as fiscally conservative as Kerr’s.

“Generally everybody’s for doing something until it gets down to the details paying for it,” Hilderbran said. “It’s not like people don’t think about it … I know it’s an issue on their minds and something needs to be done.”

Howard, the 62-year-old Ingram city council member, came to Kerr County years ago to care for an ailing mother. Although he has now been diagnosed with stage four cancer, he said he intends to devote his life to make sure that his small two-mile town north of Kerrville has a warning system and he already knows where he’s going to put it.

“We’re going to get one, put it up on top of the tower behind the volunteer fire department,” he said. “It’s the thing I could do even if it’s the last thing I do …to help secure safety for the future.

Warning sirens are retarded. Just do the text message alerts likenthe 500 (child custody related) amber alerts that get sent out daily.

>>1419696
Not everyone always has a working phone on them retard.

>>1419696
You're the type of person that murders innocent girls.
>Kerr County already had signed on with a company that allowed its residents to opt in and get a CodeRED alert about dangerous weather conditions. But Thomas urged the commissioners court to strive for something more. Cell service along the headwaters of the Guadalupe near Hunt was spotty in the western half of Kerr County, making a redundant system of alerts even more necessary.

>>1419709
I can literally sense you trying to hold back a water fountain of tears as you post behind your blue screen. Nobody gives a shit about some mentally retarded children or has regularly occuring thoughts about killing them, get a grip.

>>1419696
Protip: cellphone reception is dogshit next to rivers.

Democrats found to be soulless ghouls dancing on the graves of children over local people in a poor county believing their existing warning systems were good enough to covet a natural disaster so rare the last time it happened was thirty eight years ago.

>>1419735
There are no democrats involved in the story.

>>1419752
>Democrats are mean because they're telling us we should have accepted the money they gave us to build a warning system that would have prevented a bunch of kids from dying needless deaths!
Fuck them for offering the money in the first place, and fuck them again for not forcing us to take it! Why are they so irresponsible as to let kids die like that?

>>1419690 (OP)
the lord works in mysterious ways
have faith

>>1419690 (OP)
Imagine the spin they would have put on it at the time if the feds forced them to spend that money correctly, or worse stepped in and did it themselves.

>>1419788
>if the feds forced them to spend that money correctly
How?

>>1419722
Millions of people give a shit.

>>1419789
No idea, but the screeching about it would have been very funny. They'd probably go out there and dismantle their own early warning system.

>>1419735
>so rare the last time it happened was thirty eight years ago.
Oh well as long as it's only every few decades, who cares if we waste a ton of money and lives? Thank god those dead kids were so graciously willing to save the county some man-hours by dying horrible deaths.

>>1419798
The Texas State Government has a track record of suing multiple administrations and tying up cases in court for decades. They know how to skirt federal law better than just about any other state.

>>1419780
Either this or the feds are (at least attempting to) controlling the weather again. I guess it's anyone's guess now.

>>1419803
>>1419791
Why are you very upset?

>>1419826
You should apologize.

>>1419826
Why would people getting what they voted for make me upset?

>>1419826
He's upset because it's perfectly understandable why a poor county can't find room in it's budget to maintain a redundant alarm system that they're only going to use twice a century, and when he tries to paint that as bad he proves Democrats are evil monsters who will gleefully exploit every tragedy that occurs to falsely blame it on their political opponents.

>>1419841
>He's upset because it's perfectly understandable why a poor county can't find room in it's budget to maintain a redundant alarm system that they're only going to use twice a century
No, it's not. They were given the money. They turned it down because it was from the Biden administration, "the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House."

>>1419841
>He's upset because it's perfectly understandable why a poor county...
I know you're a retarded shill that compulsively lies, but
- Kerr county wanted the warning system
- Kerr county wanted it so bad they asked the state government for it twice
- Biden offered to pay for the warning system they wanted
- Kerr county was brainwashed by Republicunt bullshit so they refused
- Kerr county was so brainwashed they took the money anyway and spent it on other things

You're literally denying reality to try to spin your shill narrative. If Republicunts hadn't brainwashed their base those girls would be alive right now.

They're literally dead because of Republican retardation. Its official.

>>1419826
I'm from Texas and I'm sad that innocent people died because the government at almost all levels is captured by people who do not care about making the state a better place

>>1419844
Nah. It's cute that you pretend to believe that though.

>one decision made by several people 4 years ago combined with a freak flooding disaster leads to deaths
I'm still not voting democrat or apologizing for being a conservative voter, sorry!

"conservatism leads to deaths" yeah and liberalism leads to the rape and murder of millions a year at the hands of immigrants
How many rapists have liberal judges let off easy? How many blacks have gone on to murder more people?

>>1419849
you're still not american

>>1419849
>How many rapists have liberal judges let off easy?
Not enough, since you don't have a dick in your mouth.

>>1419848
>freak flood disaster
>that regularly happens in the area
>hence why it was a known flood zone

>>1419853
>Not enough, since you don't have a dick in your mouth.
You're going to be real embarrassed when they post the picture proving you're wrong

>>1419841
>it's budget to maintain a redundant alarm system that they're only going to use twice a century
How many times a century does your home need to use its smoke detectors?

>>1419848
It's an area that the local government themselves described as prone to flash flooding. You have a warning system in place and prepare for disasters that are rare precisely because it might be 10, 20, 30 years between major events, but it could be tomorrow and if you wait a decade you'll reap the consequences as happened here, unfortunately.

>>1419849
I'm sorry that the scary stories you've been told have warped your perception so much, but more people died in this single flooding event in a county of 50,000 than have been murdered in Los Angeles (a city of nearly 4 million, not to mention the other ~9 million or so in the metro area) this year.

>>1419859
but black people!

>>1419841
Alarms don't exist because they'll be used regularly. They exist because the cost of not having them when they are needed is higher than the cost of keeping them around.

Dipshits like you incapable of thinking more than 5 minutes ahead or caring about the consequences of your actions just don't understand that.

"Jim Eastland could be standing right in the middle of the worst Mississippi flood ever known, and he'd say the niggers caused it, helped out by the Communists"
LBJ describing the idiocy of white supremacists. things haven't changed much

>>1419859
that is such a skewed statistic you should feel bad, you slimy yid. Yes, in 6 months in 1 city there were less deaths by homicide alone (by 10) than an entire town getting hit by a biblical flood that happens every 30 years.

>>1419876
>biblical flood that happens every 30 years.
how are you this bad at lying

>>1419857
>>1419863

Redundant alarms. Learn what English words mean. They already had an alert system in place.

>>1419879
One that was predicted not to work and then didn’t.

>>1419877
The last bad flood was 1987, then 1921. So it's even less common than every 30 years. What is your argument here, exactly?

>>1419912
something that happens multiple times in the average person's lifetime isn't "biblical"

>>1419912
The camps were built in a prior riverbed. Without trying to score points, perhaps something like that should be stopped from ever happening again.

>>1419891
Nah. Second-guessing reasonable decisions with the benefit of hindsight is a common human tendency, often termed "Monday morning quarterbacking" or, more formally, hindsight bias. This cognitive bias, also known as the "knew-it-all-along" phenomenon, makes past events seem more predictable than they actually were at the time. Hindsight bias causes people to overestimate their ability to have predicted an outcome, making it seem more obvious than it was. This can result in unfair self-blame or criticizing others for not foreseeing something that was genuinely unpredictable. Like the fact that alerts were sent out 15 hours prior to the flooding, just not received by everyone.

>>1419841
The Guadalupe floods every couple of years though. Not catastrophically like this of course, but it gets pretty gnarly.

>>1419939
texas hill country was scarcely habitable until the 20th century, and only by people who had no idea what they were getting themselves into. if they weren't losing everything they had trying to start farms in plots with no topsoil they were being raided by bands of comanche horsemen

>>1419935
>The town discussed 20 times having a siren system because the text-based system was known to be unreliable
>It's just monday morning quarterbacking, the government did nothing wrong here!

>>1419945
Correct. You are a monday morning quarterback.

>Howard spent the early morning hours of July 4 knocking on neighbors’ doors to alert them to the flooding after HE HIMSELF IGNORED THE FIRST TWO phone alerts on his phone in the middle of the night.

Floods and FLASH Floods are two different thing. The Guadeloupe river is prone to one, not the other.

In almost all cases, "spotty" cell phone service would have been a non issue. Even if some residents still didn't get the message after sending repeated warnings, a neighbor who did get it would tell you.

At the time these assumptions were made, they would have been reasonable.

>>1419959
Sirens were able to be funded and would have saved lives, especially for those children at camp in an area prone to flash floods with poor cell service. Instead they gave the sheriff an extra million.
And if you're saying these weren't flash floods you're either an idiot or trolling.

>>1419964
>Sirens were able to be funded and would have saved lives, especially for those children at camp
Source?

>>1419974
The demonstrable effect of sirens elsewhere.

t. resident of tornado alley

>>1419690 (OP)
if only leftists didn't embezzle so much of federal aid then pretend they're giving it back when they hand back a fraction. TDS leftists at it again

>>1419979
Red states get more money from the federal government than they give.

>>1419915
Those lesser floods hardly count as a flood at all then and certainly isn't putting anyone's lives at risk

>>1419985
>Those lesser floods hardly count as a flood at all then and certainly isn't putting anyone's lives at risk
You're predicating your assumption on how dangerous flooding is by how often it happens and by your metric deadly flooding is incapable of happening more than once every 80 years?

You're a fucking idiot.

>>1419964
Thank you for admitting you are illiterate. The Guadeloupe River is not prone to flash floods. The siren system would have still had a cost in maintenance and upkeep. You have refused to acknowledge my point and thus failed utterly to do anything more than embarrass yourself. Congratulations, you lose.

>>1420021
so what's the price of a human life?

>>1420021
>The siren system would have still had a cost in maintenance and upkeep.
Pretty sure every single person living there, especially after this, would've rather paid that price than lose their kids. Better to have a system and not need it than need it and not have it.

>>1420021
>The siren system would have still had a cost in maintenance and upkeep. You have refused to acknowledge my point and thus failed utterly to do anything more than embarrass yourself. Congratulations, you lose.
See
>>1419863

>>1420029
>Pretty sure every single person living there, especially after this, would've rather paid that price than lose their kids.
I'm not. They're exactly the same sort of ghouls that voted against it before and if they didn't lose anyone personally are arguing now that that was the right move.

If you were right, there would be political consequences to this shit. After all, if you regret what you did before, you won't do it again. I promise you there won't be.

>>1420021
>Thank you for admitting you are illiterate. The Guadeloupe River is not prone to flash floods.
Why lie about well known and easily verifiable information.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-floods-deaths-no-warning-what-to-know/
>After a flood watch notice midday Thursday, the National Weather Service office issued an urgent warning around 4 a.m. that raised the potential of catastrophic damage and a severe threat to human life. By at least 5:20 a.m., some in the Kerrville City area said water levels were getting alarmingly high. The massive rain flowing down hills sent rushing water into the Guadalupe River, causing it to rise 26 feet in just 45 minutes.
https://theconversation.com/why-texas-hill-country-where-a-devastating-flood-killed-more-than-120-people-is-one-of-the-deadliest-places-in-the-us-for-flash-flooding-260555
>A river gauge at Hunt, Texas, near Camp Mystic, showed how quickly the river flooded: Around 3 a.m. on July 4, the Guadalupe River was rising about 1 foot every 5 minutes at the gauge, National Weather Service data shows. By 4:30 a.m., it had risen more than 20 feet. As the water moved downstream, it reached Kerrville, where the river rose even faster.
>Texas as a whole leads the nation in flood deaths, and by a wide margin. A colleague and I analyzed data from 1959 to 2019 and found 1,069 people had died in flooding in Texas over those six decades. The next highest total was in Louisiana, with 693.
>Many of those flood deaths have been in Hill County. It’s part of an area known as Flash Flood Alley, a crescent of land that curves from near Dallas down to San Antonio and then westward.

>>1420031
>After all, if you regret what you did before, you won't do it again.
That would require acknowledging a mistake, and republicans can't do that.

And there you have it, anon. This thread has conclusively and unarguably proven Democrats dance with ghoulish glee whenever a tragedy occurs they will do anything, say anything, to score political points.

To recap:OP asserted Conservativism caused the death and damage in Texas. This was proven false. Instead, it was a combination of failure of the existing warning apparatus and severe flash flooding the likes of which occurs twice a century.

The dems used hind sight to blame conservatives for not adding more alarms. It was solidly demonstrated that, at the time the decisions were made, it was not unreasonable to assume the current warning systems were sufficient. In response, the dems pretend they cannot read a thread, making points that have already been addressed while pretending they are wining and falsely claiming claiming the moral high ground.

There is no reasoning with democrats. Get you gun.

>>1420084
>get you gun
esl

>>1420084
You sure twisted yourself into knots lying that much.
Sorry you're such a retarded partisan shill.

>>1420084
>Anyone who recognizes that this was a foreseeable and preventable tragedy is a democrat, and thus is deserving of violence against them.
Are you honestly a paid shill or are you really just that directionbrained. Both are sad tbh.

>>1420095
neither, they think thats a form of trolling.
they're just seething because they can't shill as the article clearly reports that:
Kerr County desperately wanted an upgraded warning system
Republicunts denied the request multiple times
Biden offered all the money they needed
Kerr County went full retard directionbrain and accused Biden of trying to trick them or demand something in return for the money
Kerr County went fuller retard and took the money anyway but didn't spend it on an upgraded warning system

Its literally a perfect example of Republicans killing their children out of spite because they've been brainwashed by their party to view anything Democrats do as evil.

And now they're seething because people are pointing out that all they had to do was take the money they asked for and build the warning system they wanted and needed and none of this would have happened, and it only happened because they're too retardedly directionbrained to live

>>1420085
>>1420087
>>1420095
>>1420099
Thank you all for proving me right.

>>1420104
you're more than right anon, you're an extreme rightist

Conservatism didn't cause any natural events. In fact, libertarian-Republicans thrive on this. They believe in reaping the benefits of taxation without paying into the system. They realize that Trump will bail out red states and ignore blue states. You could even take that tactic down to the county level.

Trump is in the process of achieving libertarian perfection: blue areas pay all of the taxes and red areas receive all of the benefits. This is a process that is underway right now.

>>1419987
Not what I said at all. Floods can happen occasionally and not be powerful in the slightest. Work on your reading comprehension

>>1420087
>OP being this mad when partisan posting attracts more partisan posting

>>1420190
>Floods can happen occasionally and not be powerful in the slightest
So you're just being obtuse about the known flood risk in this particular area?

>>1419696
>>1419732
None of the campers had phones. They were all confiscated. Same for the teen councilors.