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Investigates Investigates Money Diaries Daft.ie Property Magazine Allianz Home Magazine The 42 Sports Magazine TG4 Entertainment Magazine The Journal TV Climate Crisis Cost of Living Road Safety Newsletters Temperature Check Inside the Newsroom The Journal Investigates The Explainer A deep dive into one big news story Sport meets news, current affairs, society & pop culture have your say Or create a free account to join the discussion Advertisement More Stories Onlookers look down over the damage along the Guadalupe River caused by recent flooding, Sunday, July 6, 2025. Alamy Stock Photo flash floods Marion McKeone Texas is hurting after the floods, but it won't hurt Trump In the wake of this week’s devastating floods in Texas, the US correspondent considers the political fallout for Trump and others. 12.11am, 9 Jul 2025 Share options THE TEXAS HILL Country is a place of astonishing natural beauty, particularly in early summer when the thousands of acres of sloping hills, woodlands and banks of the multiple rivers and creeks that weave their way through its verdant pastures are covered in blankets of vividly coloured wildflowers. Throughout the summer, the banks of the Guadalupe River in particular double as a playground and a place of respite from the searing heat of the arid Texas plain and the oppressive humidity of Houston’s vast concrete sprawl. Its lush green banks are shaded by pecan and cypress trees which lends the river a vivid emerald colour for much of its 250-mile path. For most of the year, the rivers’ shallow waters drift at a sluggish pace. You can walk horses downstream and from bank to bank. Or hopscotch across the river’s rocks and boulders, barely getting a toe wet. For the millions of tourists from further afield, the breathtaking scenery is enhanced by the quaint western towns, where ancient wooden dancehalls still attract locals and visitors who two-step to the strains of local county bands. Extreme weather But extreme and unpredictable weather is a constant danger in this bucolic paradise. The first time I was in Kerr County back in 1999, locals were still talking about the 1987 flash flood, when the Guadalupe burst its banks with catastrophic consequences. July 7 Kerville, Texas. Kerr County, and other counties along the Guadalupe river, have been devastated by the 4th of July flooding.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo One old-timer, a fifth-generation rancher, painted an apocalyptic picture of a 30-foot-high wall of water, as solid and impregnable as concrete, tearing asunder everything in its path; of three-story houses ripped from their pilings and tossed upside down into the flood, cars careening wildly down the river with petrified occupants begging for help, and animal carcasses forming macabre dams at river bends. Back then an informal local warning system existed where ranchers would alert campers and communities that ‘a big one was coming’. Hundreds of children were safely evacuated from summer camps, but 10 teenagers drowned when a van and a bus used to evacuate campers were swept away. Still, the locals agreed it could have been an awful lot worse if the camp directors hadn’t heeded the warnings. In 2015, the two families perished when their holiday home was ripped from its foundations in a flash flood on the River Blanco. Search and rescue teams from Kerrville Fire Department look over the debris after flooding near the banks of the Guadalupe River.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Texas is a state that is grounded – some might say hidebound – by tradition. One of these is the tradition of Christian summer camps, where generations of mostly affluent white families send their children to the same summer camps they attended as children. There are at least two dozen children’s summer camps dotted along the Hill Country stretch of the Guadalupe River, along with scores of RV parks, campgrounds, dude ranches, hunting lodges and upscale river cabins. A Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper and Kerr County Sheriff's deputy assist a rescue diver out of the water at a search point.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo The 100-year-old Camp Mystic is typical of those camps. When Dick Eastland and his wife became third-generation owners and directors in 1974, it was already established as the go-to summer camp for the children of Texas’s most powerful and affluent families. Lyndon Johnson’s daughters went there, as did Texas Governor John Connolly’s. Former First Lady Laura Bush worked as a camp counsellor. It catered for its upscale charges by interspersing horse-riding, tennis, snorkelling and drama classes with Bible studies and a deeply conservative ethos. Devastation At the time of writing 104 people had been confirmed dead, including 27 children and counsellors from Camp Mystic. Thirteen eight and nine-year-old girls perished along with their two camp counsellors when a wall of water roared through their cabin, which was located close to the river bank. Another 10 children and a camp counsellor are still missing. In the Hill Country’s small, close-knit communities, everyone knows each other and the grapevine supplements, and often surpasses, information from social media and smartphones. Advertisement But the population doubles and triples during the summer season. And there are plenty of off-grid types drawn to the area who bed down in riverbank nooks that minimise the chance of an encounter with other campers and holidaymakers. For this reason, the precise number of people who are still unaccounted for is difficult to establish. One of the most urgent questions is how, in an era of smartphones that can deliver local alerts and federal ‘extreme weather event’ detection systems, the state and county managers were so ill-prepared for the July Fourth flash floods, which are on course to be the worst in Texas state history. People help during clean-up efforts at Guadalupe Keys Resort.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Dubbed ‘flash flood alley’ by locals and meteorologists, the area which encompasses a stretch from Dallas to San Antonio is no stranger to sudden and overwhelming flooding. Unlike the flat, broiling plains of West Texas, the Hill Country traps the moisture-soaked warm air that sweeps in from the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, rising when it hits the hills and pushing against the cool air above, a process that triggers ferocious thunderstorms and downpours. It’s one of the reasons the Hill Country is greener and cooler and such a magnet for nature lovers. The downpours gather pace as they stream down the limestone hillsides and overwhelm the spider’s web of creeks and smaller rivers that flow into the Guadalupe. Its limestone riverbed further accelerates the speed and ferocity of the currents. Changing climate and DOGE cuts 100 billion gallons of water fell in the early hours of Friday morning. In less than 90 minutes, the volume of water surged from 95 cubic feet per second to 166,700 cubic feet per second, creating a 34 feet wall of water. While fingers are being pointed at the National Weather Service and the NOAA, which has long been in Trump’s crosshairs, local mitigation efforts appear to have been non-existent. Kerr and Hunt Counties have no flood warning sirens in place; calls to install more flood gauges have gone unheeded for decades. 6 July... President Donald Trump pushed back on criticism that his administration's budget cuts to the nation's weather services had played a role in the deadly floods in Texas.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Texans, by and large, are sceptical about climate change, despite or because its beef and fossil fuel industries are so integral to the Lone Star State’s wealth and sense of identity. This is a low-tax state with a long history of rugged self-reliance. At a state and federal level, climate change sceptics have been rushing to undo Joe Biden’s green energy bill and dismantle regulations that would penalise industries with the biggest carbon footprints. In May five former National Weather Service directors published an open letter to Trump warning that swingeing DOGE cuts to the NOAA’s cash budget could cause ‘needless loss of life.’ The cuts won’t take effect until the next fiscal year which starts on 1 October, 2025, but almost 12 per cent of the National Weather Services, 4,796 employees were laid off or took voluntary redundancy as a result of DOGE firings. Following a court order in March, some of the NOAA employees who had been fired were rehired by many were placed on ‘paid, non-duty status’. Elon Musk and Trump in the Oval Office earlier this year, taking questions on DOGE cuts.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo On 21 April Paul Yura, the warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Austin/San Antonio office, which is responsible for providing warnings for the affected areas in South Central Texas, announced his early retirement as a result of DOGE cuts, expressing his sadness in an email to colleagues that his 32-year career with the office ‘is ending a few years earlier than I had planned.’ His position, which is responsible for ensuring ‘ample and timely warnings’ to the Hill Country about major weather events, remains unfilled along with other senior roles in the Austin/San Antonio office – those of chief meteorologist and meteorologist. Another role that focuses on severe weather events in the region – that of Science Operations Officer – is also vacant. In 2023 the fifth National Climate Assessment warned of more extreme rainfall events in East Texas. But the Trump administration has fired hundreds of experts who were charged with compiling the 2028 National Climate Assessment and gutted the National Weather Service. With a cavalier disregard for statistics that suggest otherwise, Texans tend to describe hurricanes, tornadoes and flash floods as once-in-a-lifetime events. As such, they don’t feel compelled to plan for or insure against the increasing likelihood of future devastation in the same way that, say, Floridians hurricane-proof their homes or Californians take costly measures to minimise the impact of wildfires and earthquakes. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly have each insisted they had no idea that the July Fourth Flood was even possible, notwithstanding repeated warnings of the impact of climate change on Texas. Related Reads Summer camp hit by Texas floods confirms 27 children and staff among the 91 dead Toll shows 21 children among 67 dead in Texas flooding as hunt for missing girls continues Search for girls missing from Texas camp after flash flooding as 27 people confirmed dead Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, centre, tours Camp Mystic after the flood this week.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Earlier this year, the Texas legislature killed legislation proposing a statewide emergency response system to provide early warnings and respond to natural disasters. Three days before Trump’s massive reconciliation bill became law, Texas Senator Ted Cruz inserted a further amendment that cut a $150 million fund that would have boosted a research and warning system to help alert the public to rapid onset extreme weather events. Against increasingly grim odds, Texas persists with its laissez-faire approach to climate-related public safety. Cruz, Abbott and climate-sceptic Republicans continue to cast climate disasters as ‘part of nature’ or ‘acts of God’, proffering a remedy of prayer over safety systems and nudging local media towards focusing on acts of heroism rather than funding cuts or ignored warnings. Texas Senator Ted Cruz took some heat for his holiday to Greece when the flooding happened.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Cruz who went on a family holiday to Greece after the July 3rd warnings had been issued by the National Weather Service, returned three days later, rushing to condemn critics he claimed were seeking to politicise the disaster. At a local level, towns and counties that voted 80 per cent for Trump in 2024 have repeatedly vetoed the imposition of advance warning systems and flood warning sirens as being too costly. The taxpayers won’t pay for it, Kelly said of a flood siren system that cost just $300,000 to implement in neighbouring Comal County. Political messaging Catastrophic events and the often-split-second reactions of political leaders can transform a political legacy. They are seared onto a traumatised public psyche, permanently altering the perception of their leader – for better or for worse. Bill Clinton’s response to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; his ability to authentically connect with ordinary Oklahomans in their grief and shock while providing resolute leadership to the rest of the nation added 10 points to his 46 per cent approval rating. George W Bush’s initial ‘deer in the headlights’ response to the 9/11 attacks was rehabilitated by his impromptu bullhorn address from the rubble of the Twin Towers where he stood with his arm around the shoulder of a fire chief. When a frustrated member of the crowd shouted, ‘We can’t hear you!” a metaphor of sorts for his subpar response to date, Bush shouted back: “I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon.” His unrehearsed display of resolution led to spontaneous cheers and chants of ‘ USA! USA!’. However, Bush’s inept and seemingly detached response to Hurricane Katrina sent his presidency on a downward trajectory from which it never recovered. An image can become an unintended metaphor for an administration and a press photo of Bush gazing with apparent nonchalance out the window of Air Force One at the devastation below became a metaphor for the incompetence of his response and his administration’s apparent indifference to the suffering of black Americans. Trump's predecessors handled similar tragedies in different ways.Alamy Barack Obama was arguably the most gifted orator of the modern presidency. His soaring eulogy following the mass shooting by white supremacist Dylan Roof pastor of the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal church was obscured by his decision to lead the stunned and grieving congregation with an a capella version of Amazing Grace, a moment that is regarded as one of the most poignant and uplifting of his presidency. Joe Biden, arguably the most empathic of presidents, was known as the Consoler-in-Chief for his heartfelt expressions of sympathy and his ability to use the personal tragedies in his own life to comfort those who had experienced sudden, devastating loss. Trump, who has wisely decided not to travel to Texas while further extreme weather threatens to hamper the search, rescue and recovery efforts, has had an altogether more chequered history with tragedies and disasters. His administration tends to deny, deflect and distract from any potential culpability. His heavily politicised response to the devastating California fires earlier this year, his false claims about the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene and his indifference to the desperation of Puerto Ricans following the devastating impact of Hurricane Maria during his first term was in stark contrast with his immediate decision to provide disaster aid to Texas within hours of the flash flood. But Texas is Trump country; he won about 80 per cent of the vote in the affected counties. There is little doubt he will receive anything less than a hero’s welcome. Talk of climate change denial or the impact of DOGE cuts is unlikely to cloud his visit. The will be plenty of flags and feel-good moments. Friendly media and an absence of protesters will work in his favour. Marion McKeone is an award-winning journalist, writer and documentary maker. Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... 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