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Days after the July 4 flash flood hit the Upper Guadalupe River, President Donald Trump arrived in Kerr County and praised the response efforts of FEMA.
“FEMA has deployed multiple emergency response units and FEMA has been headed by some very good people running FEMA. It’s about time,” Trump said at a press event.
Trump also claimed that this was the best disaster response in the history of FEMA.
But now months later, looking at the record, how well did FEMA do in Kerr County?
Some residents of Kerrville like Mike Richards, would disagree with Trump.
He has a low view of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“They need to be abolished,” he said.
Richards came to Kerrville’s Doyle Community Center for the Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid free legal clinic for people who were impacted by the July flood but had their cases rejected by FEMA.
“I lost a house. I lost welding trailers. I lost boat trailers. And man, they won't give me a penny,” he said.
Richards isn’t alone. He says many of his friends aren’t getting FEMA help either.
Data shows that only about 20% of applicants for federal disaster assistance from Kerr County have been deemed eligible to get financial help. That’s according to the nonprofit policy and advocacy group Texas Appleseed.
“What we're seeing is something really unusual,” said Maddie Sloan, Texas Appleseed’s director of the Disaster Recovery and Fair Housing Project.
She has been tracking FEMA approvals from the July flood and says many applications aren't being referred to for recovery assistance. Sloan said over half of FEMA applications were not even evaluated to figure out whether people were eligible for assistance.
“It sort of disappears into a black box,” she said. “What it means is that the family never gets a decision saying, 'you're eligible, you're ineligible.' You submit the application, and you never hear anything else.”
The July 4 flood was a disaster that claimed at least 117 fatalities in Kerr County alone. The Guadalupe River rose extremely quickly and surged above 35 feet. As for the impact on property, in Kerr County alone, more than 2,000 structures were damaged or destroyed.
Brittney Gomez is the Disaster Benefits Team Manager at Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. She said they are seeing a lot of FEMA denials.
“It could be a disaster survivor just needs to provide FEMA updated contact information, or it can be a more serious legal issue where they don't have clear title to their home, or maybe they bought their RV or manufactured home from a friend and title was never formally transferred,” Gomez said.
But Sloan at Texas Appleseed said the FEMA problems with the July flood go beyond typical red tape. That happens at every natural disaster. The high rate of rejections in Kerr County, she said, is very unusual.
“After Hurricane Beryl, well over 80% of applications were referred for individual assistance. Again, less than half of applications were referred for individual assistance in Kerr County,” she said.
Sloan said this is just one of the multiple FEMA disappointments in the July flood, including the lack of response at the FEMA call center in the days after the disaster.
“Between July 6 and July 10, FEMA only answered about 15,000 of the 55,000 calls that came in. And we don't know how many of those Texans, you know, never called back because those calls weren't answered,” she said.
It wasn't until July 10 that then acting FEMA head David Richardson, sent a memo to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem requesting approval for call center vendors—which was granted. Also, FEMA did not send out a disaster survivor assistance team to Kerr County.
“FEMA terminated that entire program in May. They are not going to send survivor assistance teams door-to-door in the future. FEMA said that it was wasteful and ineffective,” said Gomez.
FEMA’s performance in Kerr County did not go unnoticed. In late July, Richardson was questioned about it in a congressional hearing. Members of Congress from both parties sharply criticized the agency and him directly.
Richardson was unreachable for nearly 24 hours on July 4, the first day of the disaster. This delayed the deployment of search‐and‐rescue assets. Arizona’s Representative Greg Stanton (D) was particularly pointed in his remarks to Richardson.
“This wasn’t just incompetence. This wasn’t just indifference. It was both. And that deadly combination likely cost lives,” Stanton said.
Richardson described the agency’s response to the flood as a “model” for how disasters should be handled.
However, weeks after the deadly July 4 floods, Ken Pagurek, the head of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue branch, resigned, citing frustration with delays that slowed the agency’s response.
And this week, Richardson resigned from FEMA.
His departure followed widespread criticism of his performance with the July flood and general lack of experience in emergency management.
