The bills deal with installing early warning sirens, volunteer management and local emergency management credentials.
AUSTIN, Texas — Even though the Texas House is at a standstill, Texas Republicans are advancing legislation related to last month’s deadly flooding.
On Friday, both the House and Senate Committees on Disaster Preparedness advanced bills that were filed in response to the deadly July floods.
Democrats argue that the legislature should focus on responding to the floods, rather than redistricting. The floods killed more than 130 people and caused billions of dollars in damage across Texas.
House and Senate lawmakers are looking to improve early warning systems, expand emergency management licensing and training and streamline volunteer response.
Several bills on those topics have advanced out of committee, including Senate Bill 1, which makes sweeping changes to the state’s emergency management framework.
Senate Committee on Disaster Preparedness Chairman State Sen. Charles Perry (R-Lubbock) said local first responders and leaders should have been doing certain things already, but did not. So, in some cases, state lawmakers want to make those things a requirement.
“You should have already been doing this, and it should require very little additional resources,” Perry said. “The state will be open and accommodating if and when it makes sense to do it, but this is not new stuff. Because you haven’t done it, it doesn’t mean you can’t do it if it costs a little money to do it, because you should have been budgeting for this for the last 30 years.”
Senate Bill 1 addresses multiple problems found after the catastrophic July Fourth flooding.
It makes sweeping changes to how state agencies, campgrounds and volunteers will need to prepare and respond to flooding.
“We found gaps in our emergency responses on the local levels, both in the way of coordination, leadership, and training,” Perry said.
In Kerr County, as the floodwaters were rising in the early morning hours of July 4, the emergency management coordinator was unavailable, sick, and asleep in his bed. Local leaders said they were unsure who would cover his role until he arrived at the command center around 6 a.m.
The bill establishes clear “lines of succession” in the event the EMC is unavailable, beginning with the county sheriff and then proceeding to the county commissioner with the longest continuous service.
Another part of the bill requires the credentialing and training of emergency managers at the local level. There are no minimum qualifications to be an emergency management coordinator in the state of Texas. EMCs would need to obtain a license and undergo annual training from the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM).
There are also new requirements for local emergency management officials and first responders to participate in an annual disaster training drill, ensuring they are better prepared to respond to a disaster.
“Not a tabletop conversation, not a hypothetical on paper, but you will drill in these areas with a TDEM representative on site for critique,” Perry said. “You don’t get to have a plan and say, ‘We have a plan and we never actually tested the plan.’”
Counties with 68,750 or fewer residents would need to have a united city and county incident command post during a disaster. In the early hours after the flood, the City of Kerrville and Kerr County had two different emergency command centers. When TDEM resources showed up, it created some confusion, but a unified command center was eventually established after TDEM suggested they set one up.
“It will be one unit, so that when TDEM and other resources come into your being, they have one place, one team, and one person to coordinate with,” Perry said. “So that there’s not this confusion over who’s on first and what’s on third.”
Perry didn’t mince words when rebuking the shortcomings of how local leaders responded to the flooding.
“It was a lack of leadership for different reasons,” Perry said. “I’m not saying some of them weren’t legitimate reasons, but even had those people been there, truthfully listening to them, nobody knew what they were supposed to be doing.”
The bill also includes additional rules for youth camps located in a 100-year floodplain. If those camps learn that a flash flood warning has been issued for the camp, operators are required to move campers to higher ground immediately. Camp operators would need to have emergency plans and give them to their county. Any cabin located in the 100-year floodplain will need to have a ladder, either internally or externally, so campers can access the roof.
Perry said SB 1 will address some of the issues highlighted by the recent floods and will force local leaders to respond more decisively to flood warnings.
“All those warning systems are great, and we had some warning systems in place, but what we didn’t have is leadership willing to do an evacuation call at the right time,” Perry said. “So now it’s not optional.”
SB 1 would develop a volunteer registration system and require some level of background checks for volunteers.
Nim Kidd, the Chief of the TDEM, has told lawmakers that thousands of volunteers showed up to help in the days following the flooding – most of them “good-hearted Texans” that wanted to help in any way for “no thanks and no pay.”
Kidd said the state’s Incident Support Task Force enables the establishment, within the first 12 hours of an incident, of a volunteer reception center where volunteers can check in and share their capabilities.
However, Kidd also noted that people often arrive in hard-hit areas so quickly that sometimes the TDEM can’t control them or even keep track of who they are.
Kidd noted that when volunteers check in at a reception center, they share their phone number with TDEM, making communication easier if, for instance, the department has to evacuate a river due to ongoing flooding.
“This is no intent to dissuade or discourage volunteers from participating in disaster preparedness response or recovery,” Kidd said. “This is also about safety, safety of the volunteers, safety of the citizens, and safety of the responders. It is about keeping a disaster organized from the beginning as early as possible.”
Kidd said the background checks would be no different than if those when purchasing a gun. The forms wouldn’t be retained.
State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R-Brenham) expressed concern that it could discourage good Samaritans from helping after a disaster.
“I want to make sure that we don’t become the police state and say no government does everything because Texas and Texans do incredible work,” Kolkhorst said.
Perry also said his intention is not to dissuade folks from helping.
“I don’t want an authoritarian walking by and asking, ‘Show me your badge,’” Perry said.
Vince Luciano, the Central Texas regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, stated that the bill’s volunteer requirements would be impossible to implement, as only law enforcement can conduct background checks, which would need to be processed through a dispatch center.
“When we have thousands of people show up, the number of checks that are going to have to be run through a dispatch center,” Luciano said. “Dispatch centers were overloaded during all these events, so you’re not going to have the ability to do that.”
The Senate panel also advanced Senate Bill 2, by State Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston), which calls for the installation of outdoor warning sirens in flood-prone areas. The Texas Water Development Board would be responsible for identifying those areas and determining where the sirens should be installed. The Governor’s office would be able to give funding to local government to install them.
Many people may silence weather alerts on their phones or even not receive them if they’re in remote areas, but outdoor sirens provide warnings that can’t be missed and can save lives. It’s notoriously spotty in Hunt, where several summer camps, including Camp Mystic, sit along the Guadalupe River.
Bettencourt said his planned legislation will combine old-tech sirens with new-tech cellphones to disseminate emergency messaging. He said it’s all about layering emergency alerts, especially those that cannot be silenced or missed due to reception.
The panel also advanced Senate Bill 13, which provides credits for cities and counties to make flood prevention fixes, and Senate Bill 43, which allows the TCEQ to issue permits for dam and reservoir repairs.
The bills now head to the full Senate for consideration, but they will likely die in the Texas House, which has stalled. More than 50 House Democrats fled the state on Sunday to stop consideration of a proposed congressional redistricting map. At least 100 House members must be present for a quorum to be established, allowing the House to conduct regular business.
On Friday, a House panel advanced bills of its own dealing with disaster preparedness, relief, and warning systems related to the July floods.
Republicans claim that Democrats are blocking critical flood bills by not being present at the Capitol, but Democrats argue that Governor Abbott could act and allocate state funds towards these issues without lawmakers’ approval.
“We have an arrest warrant for us to go back to Texas for one bill only,” State Rep. Ann Johnson (D-Houston) said. “They don’t want us to come back for flooding. They are using those families as a distraction.”
Gov. Abbott has said he will call multiple special sessions if that is what it takes to pass redistricting and the other bills on the agenda for this legislative session. Several state lawmakers have announced their intention to continue addressing flood-related issues in future sessions of the Texas Legislature.