In legislative hearings af- ter last year's July 4 floods, the state’s emergency management chief made some recommendations to state lawmakers. They included empowering the agency to vet volunteers who show up after disasters and establishing clearer guidelines for lo- cal officials to decide wheth er to do autopsies during mass casualty events.
There was another glaring problem that Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd told legislators about: Unlike paid firefighters and police officers, the state has no re quired training for all local emergency management coordinators, the people tasked with planning for and helping to lead the response to disasters.
“I do think it's time that we as a state decide there needs to be a baseline for people that get appointed into that position,” Kidd told lawmakers at a July 23 hear- ing focused on the floods.
Nine months later, in April, he told another state committee investigating the disaster: “To be an emergency management coordinator in the state of Texas, you need the signature of a mayor or judge. Period. That needs to change.”
Two bills meant to address that issue, and others Kidd highlighted, failed in the final special legislative session of 2025. And as the one-year anniversary of the disaster arrives, that lack of action means that leaders in Texas’ 254 counties, as well as all of its cities, can hire people with no formal train- ing in the field.
After the floods, which left more than 130 people dead, state lawmakers re- quired flood warning sirens to be installed in areas struck by the summer disaster that also have histories of flood ing. In Kerr County, where the vast majority of deaths happened, six of the first eight planned sirens are in place.
Legislators also passed two camp safety bills, championed by the parents of 27 girls who died at Camp Mystic, which include requirements for camps to have more robust emergency plans and move cabins from flood- prone spots by rivers. Nearly 300 camps have been licensed under the new regulations, according to state data.
Legislators’ next opportunity to address Kidd’s recommendations — if they choose to — happens in January when they return to the Capitol for their regular session.
“We have work to do next session,” state Sen. Charles Perry, a Republican from Lubbock who authored the failed bill to address licensing, said in the April hearing.
“We just don’t have to start from ground zero.”
