In response to failures and grieving parents, Texas lawmakers advance flood bills

Nearly seven weeks ago on July 4, the Guadalupe River raged out of its banks and killed more than 130 people, including two teenage counselors and 25 young girls at Camp Mystic who had been asleep in their cabins before waking up to disaster.

On Aug. 21, many of the girls’ parents held each other in the galleries of the Texas House and Senate, listening to their names being read aloud before lawmakers in both chambers voted on bills designed to meet the parents’ demands to make camps safer, so no other parents would have to live the same horror of losing a child.

“Make no mistake, House Bill 1 is fundamentally a bill about failure,” said Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, when he introduced it. “The camp failed these girls. The county failed them. The river authority failed them, and in a larger sense, their government. In some ways, I know I have failed them.”

Since the floods, lawmakers have heard testimony about the many ways Texas failed not only the girls but also the 111 other people who died, including grandparents swept away with grandchildren and parents with their own children.

On Aug. 20 and in meetings before, the Camp Mystic parents had described to senators personal torture and pain. They missed the daughter who poured Cheerios for her little brother so her parents could rest, the daughter who was supposed to be holding her little sister’s hand last week as she started first grade, the daughter who should be learning to shoot archery while wearing fake nails printed with miniature avocados.

And now legislators are inching closer toward changing laws to address at least pieces of the multitude of problems with flood prevention and disaster response that they’d heard about in recent weeks — many of which were not new problems at all.

“We’ve said it all morning long,” said Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, who chaired the House committee to look at disaster issues. “The locals can do better. We can do better. Being prepared and being ready to respond to a disaster is what we owe the citizens of Texas.”

Both chambers have been moving forward bills. They aim to make justices of the peace get trained on how to handle many bodies at once. To start fixing a broken system of radio communication among first responders who struggle to get on the same channel from place to place. To get a handle on a deluge of groups that solicit donations and the thousands of volunteers who comb private property after a disaster.

They faced the egregious…