America's Talking - Gov. Abbott Revises Special Session Agenda to Include Emergency Preparedness

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

(The Center Square) – Gov. Greg Abbott announced a new agenda for a special legislative session to begin July 21. After the regular legislative session concluded in May, Abbott vetoed 26 bills and called a special session to address six legislative priorities, The Center Square reported. After the historic July 4 flooding and catastrophic loss of life, he announced a revised session agenda that prioritizes emergency preparedness and many other issues. The session will convene at noon July 21 and last for 30 days with the possibility of being extended by another 30 days.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: Gov. Abbott revises special session agenda to include emergency preparednessTexas Hill Country death toll reaches 119, with 173 missing statewideMeteorologists debunk 'cloud seeding conspiracy theorists'  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone. Welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Sarah Roderick Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square. Devastating flooding in Texas, this Hill County has led to more than 120 deaths and several still missing and including dozens of children attending a camp there. And torrential downpours dumped more than 12 inches of rain in central Texas on Independence Day, causing massive flooding along the Guadalupe River, causing it to rise 26 feet in a matter of 45 minutes and just cutting utter devastation.

Search and rescue operations continue with President Trump visiting the site on Friday. Joining me to discuss this is Franklin News Foundation's chief. Content Officer, Dan McAelope. Morning. Morning, Sarah. Thanks for having me. Yes, this certainly is tragic. As of Friday morning, July 11th, when we're recording this, there are more than 120 deaths, including dozens of children, as you said. Justice heartbreaking, at least 170 remain missing. Given that we're now a full week into the search and rescue operations, the chances of any more of those missing people being found alive is sadly bleak. You always hold.

out hope more survivors will be found, but given the amount of time that's passed, it just seems unlikely. That means somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 people could have perished in this tragedy. And the dozens of young children who were killed makes it that much worse. It's all heartbreaking. And then you have the story of Camp Mystic, where hundreds of girls were camping just off the river, the agony of the parents whose daughters were attending the camp, not knowing for hours or even days if they were okay and the unimaginable experience of having to identify your daughter when her body was found. I'm sorry, but it's hard not to get emotional when you think about all this and talk about it. Even when as journalists, you know, we cover these stories far too often.

Anyway, in addition to all of the tragic deaths, homes and other properties were destroyed, families' lives were turned upside down, and even those who survived will live with this tragedy for the rest of their lives. search and rescue operations remain ongoing, and we are thankful for these first responders. Yes, and so as more stuff is coming out, there's a lot of questions rising about sort of what was happening beforehand. The warnings that went out. I know there's been several back and forth on whether or not the National Weather Center there was properly, if it was manned properly and all that. And there seems to be a lot of questions. Do you know what the latest on that is?

Well, these are questions that are going to be asked and need to be answered probably for weeks or even months. We do know that the National Weather Service did increase staffing in the days ahead of the torrential downpouring flooding. And the state of Texas also served resources to the area both on the Wednesday and Thursday. before the flooding. The biggest questions now is why was there not an emergency evacuation noticed? One of the issues was the area, this is in rural central Texas, is it cell phone service is either poor or non-existent in some areas. It was the girls at the camp, for example, where the camp is located, cell phone service

there is very, very poor. But the question remains, why didn't local emergency response officials, local police, you know, go down near the river and start telling people, hey, we've got dangerous floods coming. It's time to get out. And those are questions that are going to be, need to be answered at some point. Right now, they're still in search and rescue mode. But there is some accountability that has to happen here because not just these girls at this camp, but the Guadalupe River is a popular camping site during the summer for all kinds of Texans and folks from elsewhere. And they really got, most of them really got no to little warning that this was going to happen and be this devastating. Is this fairly common for this area to flood? Is this not something that's

out of the norm? Is this sort of happened? and maybe not to this scale before, but is this prone, is this area prone to flooding events? It is. There have been some historic floods there in the past. Not to this extent, not in modern history anyway, but yeah, it's a flood zone. It's an area that is prone to this kind of flooding when you get torrential downpours like what happened, you know, overnight, Thursday night, into Friday morning, into Independence Day morning. You know, there are conspiracy theorists out there that say that it was manmade. There was some man-made manipulation going on with cloud seeding.

I'm by no means a meteorologist and no expert on this topic, but meteorologists in Texas and from around the country have debunked that theory. And Texas, Governor Greg Abbott has made emergency preparedness. his priority. Obviously, they have dealt with a lot of hurricanes. I know the massive freeze down there, Texas, tornadoes and whatnot. So he's done that this session. What does the governor sort of hope to accomplish? Yeah, prior to this event, this tragic event happening, Governor Greg Abbott, Texas is governor, called a special session to take care of some other issues. But since this event happened, he's made this a top priority. Among the things he wants to address is, is this the communication? Why was it not communicated? He wants to address the emergency response to the flash flooding, and if anything could be improved, whether it be by changing state laws, by putting in, by

by allocating money and resources to improve the communications in the area. But the legislative session, the special session is going to start later this month, and this is going to be their priority. Thank you for joining us today, Dan. Listeners can keep up with this at thecentersquare.com.