In Flood Disasters, Community Matters More Than Ever.

‘Help’s Not Coming from the Government.’

This piece by Cara Kelly has been excerpted from our friends at The Barbed Wire. To support their work or read more from this phenomenal local publication, please visit them at: https://thebarbedwire.com/

Thanks to climate change, harsher flood events will require more rescue operations, resources, and rebuilding. But the current system “offloads everything to the volunteer,” says Chris Boyer, the executive director at the National Association for Search and Rescue. “The feds say ‘it’s not our problem.’”

“I’m about to lose her,” yelled a volunteer firefighter in Wall, Texas on July 4.

Chief John Manera’s team of unpaid men without swiftwater rescue training were stopping the current from dragging a woman to near-certain death.

In a video capturing the operation, two men are submerged up to their necks, their orange flotation devices keeping their heads just above the waterline. One holds tight to the woman, lying on her back as the deluge of water tears off one of her shoes. The other reaches for a rope. A small line of volunteers — homeowners, farmers, and ranchers who showed up to help — hold the other end.

The Good Samaritans seemingly appeared on their own, Manera said.

“We needed assistance, to tend to the ropes we were using to get this lady to safety,” he said. “I don’t know who might have put the word out but … we were very thankful to the community for helping.”

In 46 years as a firefighter, this was Manera’s first-ever water rescue, he told me afterward.

Courtesy of Sally Warren

There are no rivers in the unincorporated community in Tom Green County two hours north of Kerrville, where the worst of the flash floods hit. There are no lakes. No swiftwater rescue team. And few that could reach them in time.

Manera called neighboring Dove Creek Volunteer Fire Department, whose members are more familiar with the intricacies of water rescue, the Tom Green County Sheriff’s Office, the San Angelo Fire Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the Texas Game Warden.

Unfortunately, most routes to the stranded woman were inundated with 9-plus inches of rain that fell quickly on Independence Day morning. Everyone had to find alternate approaches to the scene, including a boat from Texas Parks and Wildlife, and Manera.

By the time Manera arrived, one thing was clear: They couldn’t wait for a boat if they were going to get her out of the water alive.

As one rescuer fought to keep his grip on her, another plunged into the water. Three men finally attached the rope to a flotation device they’d helped her put on. The line of volunteers on the other end started heaving. A harrowing 60 seconds later, the woman was carried out of the water.

By the time the rescue boat from Texas Parks and Wildlife arrived, she was already receiving medical care.

‘Help’s Not Coming from the Government’

“Search and rescue in the United States is 99% volunteer,” Chris Boyer, the executive director at the National Association for Search and Rescue, told me in an interview in the days after the floods.

Apparently, that’s been the case since famous historic missions like the search for the Donner Party in the 1840s. I’ve covered my fair share of natural disasters as a reporter. Is it weird I didn’t know that? Boyer explained that people often assume search and rescue falls under law enforcement, but it doesn’t.

Volunteer in this case doesn’t mean novice. They’re often highly-trained individuals who work with nonprofit and other organizations to donate their time and expertise. There are simply “very, very few” paid search and rescue positions “outside of the National Park Service,” Boyer said. “There are rangers that have rescue responsibility, but it's usually ancillary to other duties.”

In Texas, he said, there’s no state law requiring sheriff’s departments or other municipal agencies to “have a search and rescue team, or any standards or training or anything.” So what we’re left with is a bunch of overlapping teams in highly populated areas like Houston but far fewer in areas with fewer residents, like Kerrville.

“They’re an underserved population,” Boyer said.

Last week, well before anyone in Kerrville — and the rest of Central Texas — got a chance to grill hotdogs or wave along parade routes, the remnants of Tropical Storm Berry collided with a stalled frontal boundary over the Hill Country. Moisture from the Gulf of Mexico morphed into downpours as kids on summer break clutched stuffies in Airbnbs along the Guadalupe River. Swimsuits and sunscreen were still tucked in campers’ trunks as the water exploded over its banks. Surviving campers told reporters they shoved their retainers into their pajama pockets as they swam out of their cabins.

By the time most saw the muddy water it was too late to call for help.

As of Thursday, at least 121 people were dead and 160 remained missing.

There’s no question that first responders saved countless lives. But for every Scott Ruskan — the U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmer who helped save 165 people at Camp Mystic in the hours after the river rose 26 feet in 45 minutes — there were many more civilians who, out of heroism or necessity, stepped into the fray. Counselors at neighboring Camp La Junta were hailed for getting all 400 boys there to safety. As were bus drivers and coaches from Kerrville Independent School District for driving those hundreds of campers out of the flood zone. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum applauded two young women working at Camp Mystic as part of an international exchange program for keeping child survivors there safe and calm.

Public officials from the local to federal level have called the floods “unprecedented,” saying they had “no reason to believe” the flooding would be so severe. In press conferences, officials have largely rebuffed questions about preparedness, alert systems, and why so many have died. Instead, they’ve touted the numbers of first responders and state agencies on scene.

Wednesday, Gov. Greg Abbott said the state had deployed over 2,200 personnel and more than 1,200 vehicles and equipment assets, with more than 20 state agencies responding to flooding threats.

Yet, much of the search and rescue efforts have been carried out by volunteers like John Manera’s firefighters in Wall.

It was volunteer firefighters who asked that dispatchers issue a “CodeRED” alert to Hunt residents at 4:22 a.m. on July 4, KUT reported. (Some residents told The Texas Standard they didn’t receive any alerts until after 10 a.m., despite that request.)

MARK9 is a Dallas-based SAR team that uses cadaver dogs to perform search and rescue operations at the request of government agencies. About 10 handlers and four dogs were in the field on Thursday, MARK9 team leader Zephrin Allen told The Barbed Wire. Allen himself had been on the ground in Kerrville and said he’d seen between 50 and 75 volunteers.

Alpha SAR, based in the Houston area, also deployed nine personnel and two K-9 dogs. Operation Outreach America said they had 11 volunteers in the field, including two helicopters, four pilots, and four cadaver dogs. The San Antonio-based Alamo Area SAR said they have between 18 to 20 team members, and between six to nine K-9 teams, working at any given time. Team Rubicon, a national humanitarian organization, has more than 60 volunteers aiding flood relief efforts — and expects “easily over” 100 in the next two weeks, a spokesperson told The Barbed Wire.

Meanwhile, faith-based aid group Samaritan’s Purse sent out 95 volunteers for “muck and gut” work, cleaning up flood damage in homes.

Civilian volunteers are the “tip of the spear,” Brian Trascher, vice president of the volunteer-based aid group United Cajun Navy, told The Barbed Wire. The Louisiana-based organization popped up to assist with search and rescue operations in the devastation from Hurricane Katrina, and since has become a staple of natural disasters.

Still, some have vented frustration that more first responders weren’t deployed in advance. Members of the Austin Firefighters Association said they were given an order not to heed calls for pre-deployment along the Guadalupe River. They’ve now called for a vote of no confidence in Austin’s fire chief.

For years, experts have warned of the likelihood of harsher flood events due to climate change, which will require more rescue operations, boots on the ground, and rebuilding missions.

“The extreme rainfall events are getting more intense and frequent because there's more water vapor in the air,” meteorologist Jeff Masters, who blogs about extreme weather and climate change for Yale Climate Connections, told me in an interview on Tuesday.

One early study of the July 4 floods by ClimaMeter at the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris, France, found that conditions like those leading up to the flash floods are up to 7% wetter than in the past. Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who researches extreme weather in a changing climate, posted on Bluesky that the flooding was “undoubtedly made worse because of climate change.”

“I would estimate that there was 7-20% more rainfall” than there would have been without human interference in the climate, he said.

Courtesy of Sally Warren

Masters told me that’s a significant amount when you’re talking about whether flood waters reach the top of structures like summer camp cabins.

“We’re not used to seeing death tolls like that in the U.S. in freshwater flooding events,” Masters said, “but I think we’re going to have to start getting used to these death tolls.”

On top of that, the Independence Day floods mark the largest-scale natural disaster since President Donald Trump announced in June that he wanted to “wean off” the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Trump activated FEMA on Sunday, but sources in the agency told Marisa Kabas with The Handbasket that, as of Monday, “barely any staff” had been deployed to Kerr County, and the Acting Administrator David Richardson “is nowhere to be found.”

One current FEMA employee told The Handbasket they’d typically have already had hundreds of people on the scene, including search and rescue.

As CNN reported, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently enacted a rule requiring her personal sign-off for every grant over $100,000. (Weather disasters now routinely exceed $1 billion in damage.) FEMA officials needed Noem’s approval before sending regionally-stationed Urban Search and Rescue crews to Texas — a previously standard practice. Noem didn’t authorize the deployment until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, sources told CNN.

FEMA, Boyer realizes, has gotten a bad wrap. But since 1979, it has been the great equalizer for poorer and less populated parts of the country, like Kerrville. For example, Texas Task Force One sent out the call for aid to the Austin Fire Department and to other agencies — they’re a statewide urban search and rescue team under direction of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which also coordinates the state’s swiftwater rescue program and the helicopter search and rescue team. The group has a $7 million cache of supplies thanks to FEMA.

Take that away, and you’re putting more strain on volunteers, just as deadlier weather events are happening more frequently.

“It offloads everything to the volunteer,” Boyer said. “The feds say ‘it's not our problem.’ The states won't be capable, and so the volunteers are still going to pick up the slack for everything.”

That volunteers will bear the brunt of deadlier, costlier weather disasters is just another part of our new, political and climate changed reality, Masters agreed.

“Everyone needs to understand that this is a whole new world that we’re on the doorstep of, life is going to change for everybody,” Masters said. “You really need to find a local situation and community that is strong and will support each other because help’s not coming from the government.”

For more coverage, please go to: https://thebarbedwire.com/2025/07/12/texas-flood-volunteers-fema-climate-change/