Reflecting on the Texas Hill Country Floods

“I hope what [Texas legislators will] do is set up a group of people, not a partisan group of people, but people that really want to solve this problem. Experts, people from that area that will study this over a longer period of time. … Look, there's going to be a jillion things going on in the special session. There's no way they're going to have time to go through and look at this in a very thoughtful way. I hope they'll set aside a group that will be meeting for the next year or so to study this problem out there and come up with what some real good solutions would be.”

— Bill King, Public Finance Fellow, Baker Institute 

About the Episode

As Harris County judge, Ed Emmett led the emergency response to weather disasters in the Houston region for nearly 12 years. Bill King is the former mayor of Kemah, Texas, and served on two Texas commissions studying the aftermath of deadly Hurricanes Rita and Ike. 

They draw on their experience in disaster mitigation and response and offer reflections on the devastating Texas Hill Country floods, the second deadliest flood event in state history, as a special legislative session begins in Austin and lawmakers put forth proposals for strengthening weather communications and warning systems.

This conversation was recorded on July 17, 2025. 

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Transcript

View the transcript for this episode. This transcript was AI-generated and has not been through editorial review.

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