ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
As the search for Texas flood victims continues, state lawmakers are looking at whether they could have done more, or can do more now, to make Texas ready for floods. A bill that would've provided more money to counties for alert systems failed this spring. Now it's going to get another chance. The Texas Newsroom's Blaise Gainey reports from Austin.
BLAISE GAINEY, BYLINE: The information is still being pieced together about whether and how better communications and systems could've saved lives as floods swept across the Texas Hill Country early July 4, things like radio connections and sirens on the ground. Republican Governor Greg Abbott spoke at a press conference yesterday saying the state was going to find out what took place and make changes in a special legislative session soon.
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GREG ABBOTT: We're going to address every aspect of this storm to make sure that we're going to have in place the systems that are needed to prevent deadly flooding events like this in the future.
GAINEY: That special session begins July 21. It was already called for a different subject, but now the floods will be at the top of the agenda. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick joined Fox News on Monday and shared an idea he believes could help right away.
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DAN PATRICK: Had we had sirens along this area, up and down, the same type of sirens that they have in Israel when there's an attack coming that would've blown very loudly, it's possible that that would've saved some of these lives. And so if the city can't afford it, then the state will step up. And we need to have these in place by the next summer.
GAINEY: Some local officials in Kerr County, the scene of the most fatalities, have told NPR and other media they advocated for a flood warning system with sirens in 2016, but the county failed to get the grants it sought for it. And state lawmakers like Republican Representative Drew Darby, who's been in office since 2007, say there have been proposals in the past he believes would've helped.
DREW DARBY: I have known about this, worked on it. It's just that sometimes, and tragically so - sometimes you don't have the legislative will to see things through. I mean, sometimes it takes a disaster like this to focus everyone upon a goal, a common goal, and a will to get that goal across the finish line.
GAINEY: Texas is a Republican-led state where lawmakers hesitate to spend. But Darby doesn't know if that was the case on this issue as much as his colleagues just had other priorities. He expects the money to be there this time. Upmanu Lall is the director of the Columbia Water Center at Columbia University in New York, where he focuses on how to predict and manage floods. He notes that even with sirens, the flood could've been just as catastrophic.
UPMANU LALL: Let's say the sirens went off. Would these people have evacuated? We don't know. In Iowa, there are 300 or 400 flood warnings issued per week. I don't think most of these people are paying attention to those. And, you know, that's the problem.
GAINEY: But Lall says when it comes to emergency preparedness and response systems, Texas and the entire U.S. are far behind what's being done in other countries.
LALL: Given where we are today, the whole country, we run blind. China is installing sensors for rainfall, sensors for depth of water in the street, depth of water in the sewer system and in the rivers. And these are all communicating to central locations within a city so that you have an actual picture of what is going on and how it's evolving. And then you can activate rescue measures, information measures and so on.
GAINEY: Texas wouldn't be alone in improving systems after a catastrophic event. For example, after a deadly flood in Tennessee, lawmakers there set up a $5 million loan fund that local governments could use for hazard mitigation projects. In Texas, lawmakers will have the public watching in their special session to see what steps they take.
For NPR News, I'm Blaise Gainey in Austin. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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