In TX Flood Zone, Residents Would Like Bodies Removed From Oily Reservoir; Overall State Response Slim To None

Communities hit by the deadly Independence Day floods face a desperate and confused recovery bereft of state and federal aid, survivors told a field hearing of the Texas Legislature in Kerrville on Thursday. With no resources to drain Lake Ingram, it “has become a toxic pit,” resident Ann Carr told the legislators. “We’ve talked to divers that have been out there. They have found vehicles. We have asked them direct questions, ‘Are there bodies in the water?’ Their answers are yes,” Carr said.

Now, the city of Kerrville is refusing to drain the lake, which bubbles with oil from submerged automobiles, Carr said. With $28 billion in the state rainy day fund, she added, “I think the state of Texas can help us clean our lake out.” Others pointed to the consequences of the catastrophic flood damages, which hit a region where about 99 percent of residents didn’t have flood insurance. With as much as $25 billion in uninsured losses, “many landowners are at high risk of losing their land,” said Terri Hall, a Kerrville resident who runs an anti-property tax group. Hall said landowners lost outbuildings that neither insurance nor the Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay for, leaving them as easy pickings for private equity. The affected areas, she said, “have a high vulnerability to having big corporations like BlackRock swoop in and buy up our beautiful riverfront and turn Kerr County into something that we won’t recognize.”

EDIT

In addition to the need for state and federal aid, residents and survivors coalesced around a few consistent themes, including a muddled and chaotic official disaster response, which survivors testified sometimes featured state resources showing up too late or not at all — or sometimes being sent away by locals. “We had an entire pallet of chainsaws that were donated to disappear overnight,” one Austin-area volunteer told the panel. Another said that officials had stopped giving out aid to those whose houses had been swept away because a truck from beloved state grocery store HEB had showed up. “Well, HEB, at that point, was giving out small little bags of groceries to people — just enough for an evening,” they said.

In Travis County, the state was almost entirely absent, said Timothy Mabry, who said he took trailers from the disaster site in Kerrville to Leander, just north of Austin, where local churches were running out of food, water and formula. In that region, Mabry said, “It was not the state doing the cleanup. It was not the government helping. It was the citizens. It was Texans helping Texans who are doing the work, and they’re still doing the majority of the work. It was only after many cries and pleas for help and coordination with myself and many others of why resources in the state finally acknowledged what was going on there.” “Nobody came,” Leander resident Aubrey Gallagher told the committee. “There were no resources.

EDIT

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5430821-texas-flood-survivors-aid-special-session-fema/