After 1987 flood, Texas officials took little action on flood control

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KERR COUNTY — Lavonda Koons gripped the back of the driver’s seat, watching as the Guadalupe River rose quickly around her stalled school bus. Through the rearview mirror, she saw a van behind them sinking into the floodwaters.

She locked eyes with her husband who was driving the bus. It was still raining and the sky was dim with the early light of dawn. About five car lengths away, they could see dry land. They needed to get the kids to safety.

With water creeping higher, her husband told the children to go. The group stepped out of the bus into the cold, murky flood. They linked arms forming a human chain.

The roar of rushing water made it impossible to hear each other. The current swept past Koons’ chest.

“You couldn’t swim, that was just impossible…the water just took you where it wanted to,” Koons said.

It pulled them apart. The children scattered and some vanished under the churning rapids.

Koons saw a large tree ahead, its branches already crowded with kids. The current pulled her straight toward it. She grabbed one of the girls who was struggling to hold on to the tree.

“Then we looked over,” Koons said. “The bus had rolled over and was coming toward our tree.”

Afraid to get crushed, she let go of the girl.

Koons was 27, a counselor at the Pot O’Gold Ranch, a Christian youth camp in Kerr County, when the Guadalupe River flooded in 1987 killing 10 campers from North Texas. Their bus was near the back of the caravan evacuating the camp, after staff was alerted to flash flooding. The bus was later found a mile down the river, crushed and under debris.

Thirty eight years and two weeks later, about 25 miles west of the bus washout, the Guadalupe jumped its banks again during heavy rain. Just like in 1987, locals and visitors were caught off guard in the middle of the night by the rapidly rising river. And once again, young campers on summer break drowned in the raging flood.

This time, the water killed at least 135 people in Kerr County and other counties in Central Texas.

But despite the ample warnings that the Guadalupe would flood the region again and the decades of time to act, the Fourth of July flood this year revealed that little had been done to protect the community against future storms.

After the 1987 flood, river gauges were installed to provide real-time information to forecasters and emergency managers. But as the years passed, political will and funding for flood warning infrastructure diminished. An effort to get flood sirens never came to fruition; local governments were repeatedly passed over for grants by the state; and the county eliminated its own flood protection tax.

The wake of death and destruction left by the July 4, 2025 flood has brought a renewed sense of urgency to make such investments by state lawmakers promising funding for infrastructure.

But survivors of the 1987 flood say it’s unconscionable that history is repeating itself, with few apparent lessons learned.

“I almost lost my life. Ten of my friends lost their lives, and I feel like we didn’t learn anything from it,” said Kathryn McCay-Sylvester, who was a 15-year-old Pot O’Gold camper during the 1987 flood. “That’s a disrespect if we’re not learning from that and improving it so that it doesn’t happen again.”

Kerr County, the location of both camp flood tragedies, is one of the most flash flood-prone areas in the nation.

Over the past century, the Guadalupe River basin has experienced more than 42 major floods, many of them deadly. A massive flood in 1932 killed seven people. In 1978, a tropical storm stalled and dumped more than 48 inches in parts of the Hill Country, causing floods that killed 33.

On the evening of July 16, 1987, a line of storms repeatedly passing over the same areas caused widespread flooding along the Guadalupe River. At 1:01 a.m. the next day, the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning, urging people to move to higher ground and avoid driving through roads under water. Hundreds of people had to be evacuated.

In the days after the deadly flood, grief settled over Kerr County. The small-town flood was on the front page of the The New York Times: “Texas River Engulfs Bus.” Reporters and TV crews documented the devastation and the funerals, putting Hill Country’s flood dangers in the national spotlight.

The Texas Legislature convened just six days after the bus washout for an already planned special session, but lawmakers did not add a single item related to flooding.

At the time, flood control was considered a local issue, said Ken Kramer, a longtime water consultant at the Legislature. The state would offer loans to help with flood mitigation projects like basins and dams, but small counties like Kerr struggled to access them due to a lack of steady revenue to pay them back.

Absent state help, local leaders began discussions about upgrading camp evacuation plans and improving road infrastructure. The low-water crossing near where the church bus was swept was replaced with a bridge. A bronze memorial plaque commemorating the victims and survivors was placed near the river at the entrance to the Pot O’ Gold Ranch.

In 1989, the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which was primarily responsible for monitoring the river’s water quality, installed “the Hill Country’s first-ever flood alert system,” according to the Kerrville Daily Times. The $200,000 project consisted of 22 sensors placed along the Guadalupe River and its tributaries. These gauges transmitted real-time rainfall and river level data to a central office, where officials could monitor conditions and issue flood warnings.

To pay for it, the authority raised property taxes, its main funding source, by 44%. For the average homeowner, that meant paying an extra $6 annually. The tax hike lasted just five years.

“We’ll be able to help camps and anyone else up and down the river with enough information ahead of time so that they can get some of their valuables, as well as themselves, out of flood danger,” Kerrville Fire Chief Raymond Holloway, who also served as the city’s emergency operations center coordinator, told reporters at the time.

But one of the system’s major drawbacks was that it did not include public alerts or sirens, leaving residents without direct warning during future flood events.

As Kerrville moved forward, so did the survivors.

Lavonda and her husband Richard Koons, a youth pastor who was driving the bus met in college and married six years before the flood. Their summers with the kids were a special time for them. Richard said it was “indescribable” how close and how much fun the group had there. “You come back a different group than you left,” he said.

The couple said they were “like a mom and dad” to the teenagers. Richard had coached some of the kids who died in football and basketball. Lavonda made sure everyone obeyed curfew. In the immediate aftermath, they leaned heavily on each other for emotional support.

“It was just us and we spent a lot of nights crying ourselves to sleep,” Richard Koons said in an interview with his wife at their home in Mesquite.

The couple turned to their faith to begin healing. After the flood, they briefly moved to a small town in East Texas, where they were embraced by a new church community that, in Lavonda’s words, “loved them back to normality.”

Others’ mourning turned into anger. Several families sued the Pot O’ Gold Ranch, the church that ran the camp and two administrators for more than $11 million, accusing them of negligence in the children’s deaths.

“The whole reason for the trial is safety. Not the money,” one attorney, whose firm represented parents of three flood victims, told the press at the time. “But you don’t get safety in this society unless you have money sometimes.”

The parties reached a confidential settlement.

A wakeup call came in 2015 when a record flood on the Blanco River killed 13 people over Memorial Day weekend in Wimberley, another Hill Country tourist destination.

Some Hill Country communities responded by investing in warning systems. Comal and Bandera counties acted quickly to install high water detection systems and sirens.

Tom Moser, a Kerr County commissioner from 2012 to 2021, recalls this as a turning point in how he thought about flood risk.

The following year, the county, UGRA and city of Kerrville jointly funded an engineering study to research the idea of installing a flood warning system. The report recommended new gauges at low-water crossings, including by a girls summer camp called Camp Mystic. It said a siren system could be valuable, especially for tourists unaware of the region’s flood risk, and noted that campgrounds and RV parks are especially in need of real-time warnings.

But at an early presentation, Moser recalls, opposition for a siren warning system emerged.

“The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of night, I’m going to have to start drinking again to put up with y’all,” then-County Commissioner Buster Baldwin said at a 2016 meeting. Baldwin died in 2022.

Moser said the local governments decided to remove the sirens from the plan to keep the conversation going.

The county in 2016 applied for a $731,000 FEMA grant to pay for most of the $1 million county-wide flood warning system, which would include high- water sensors that relay information to an online dashboard for the public. The Texas Division of Emergency Management, which was in charge of disbursing the funds, denied the application, partly because the county lacked a current disaster plan. The county updated its plan and resubmitted its request, but the state gave priority to counties that had been damaged by Hurricane Harvey and again declined to fund it.

That storm, which in 2017 swamped hundreds of thousands of homes along the Texas coast, also spurred the Legislature to act. Lawmakers approved $3.3 billion in 2019 for water infrastructure across the state.

Kramer, the water consultant, said that shift was driven by repeated disasters, the rise of social media-driven outrage, and growing public awareness of flood risk.

But none of the 140 projects funded by the Legislature so far have been in Kerr County.

In hindsight, Moser acknowledges that neither the county, city nor river authority made it enough of a priority.

Tom Pollard, who was county judge from 2014 through 2018, also described the flood warning system as a missed opportunity, which he blamed on a failure to secure funding.

“In retrospect, looking back, it probably would have been a good idea,” Pollard said.

Since the 1987 flood, the county’s population has grown by 50% and its annual budget more than tripled. Yet the portion commissioners court spent on flood control never exceeded 1.5% between 2009 and the present, according to budget records published on the county website. It approved a small property tax for flood control improvements beginning in 1988, but abolished that levy a decade later.

The county has never attempted to pay for the flood warning system out of its own roughly $30 million budget. The river authority also opted not to tap its own funds for a system with sirens.

Meanwhile in Houston, the epicenter of Harvey’s damage, Harris County officials persuaded voters to pass a $2.5 billion bond for flood protection projects a year after the storm.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly suggested in a July 5 news conference that a reason that the flood warning system had not been built was because some local taxpayers objected to the price.

“The public reeled at the cost,” Kelly said.

Pollard, Kelly’s predecessor, said the county’s mostly conservative constituents are a tough sell on more public spending.

“The anti-tax people are pretty powerful in this county,” Pollard said. “I’m not sure I agree with them all the time; there are some things that are pretty important and you’ve got to do what’s right.”

Kelly and the four county commissioners declined to be interviewed or did not respond. UGRA General Manager Tara Bushnoe and her three predecessors did not respond.

Unwilling to spend local dollars, officials kept looking for funding elsewhere.

The UGRA asked for $1 million from the Legislature’s new appropriation, called the Flood Infrastructure Fund. But the river authority declined to proceed with the application after the state board administering the money said it would only pay for 5% of the flood warning system cost.

At a state committee hearing in late July investigating this year’s deadly floods, Bushnoe said river authority officials understood a state loan was another option to fund the project, but were hoping the grant would cover the cost.

In early 2023, the UGRA board added “flood warning” as a goal in its strategic plan. Board members increased the flood warning budget, but only by $5,000, despite an overall budget of more than $2 million a year.

It wasn’t until April the following year that the UGRA approved a nearly $73,000 contract to hire a software company to design a flood warning system dashboard.

Meanwhile, commissioners court listened to a presentation about the need for a flood warning system as recently as May 12, meeting minutes show.

But by then it was too late. Two months later, disaster struck.

Just as it had in 1987, the Guadalupe rose quickly in the early hours of July 4 during intense rains. More than 10 inches of rain fell near the South Fork, sending a wall of water downriver that swept away residents and vacationers before they could flee to higher ground.

Among the dead were 27 girls and staff from Camp Mystic and more than 30 visitors at adjacent RV parks in Ingram.

Longtime local residents were used to repeated floods. But they said the river on July 4 reached heights it hadn’t since the 1932 deluge.

Herbie Witt, 86, warned commissioners court at a 1999 meeting not to allow an RV park to be built near his home on Goat Creek, a tributary of the Guadalupe. He was concerned the vehicles would be trapped by fast-rising waters by frequent floods there and people could drown.

At a recent interview at the home, where Witt still lives, he said he was dismayed so many of the deaths from the July 4 flood occurred at two RV parks on the Guadalupe River, and disappointed they had been approved.

“[There] probably should have some requirement for a siren to go off to tell these people to find higher ground,” Witt said. “I don’t know whether they’ve got enough time; that’s the problem.”

Wayne O’Bryant’s riverfront family cabin between Ingram and Hunt survived six decades of floods before being torn from its foundation on July 4.

He agreed a flood warning system would be especially useful for tourists and visiting campers, who are often unaware of how dangerous the river can be when it rains. He hoped, however, that one could be installed without raising taxes for residents.

“I think the camps can afford the sirens themselves,” O’Bryant said.

State leaders have reacted with urgency this time. Gov. Greg Abbott added flood preparedness to his agenda for the special legislative session. His first priority: legislation for early warning systems and other infrastructure.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said sirens, had they been in place July 4, may have saved lives. He said they should be installed by next summer, and pledged the Legislature would pay for them if local governments couldn’t.

McCay-Sylvester, the 1987 flood survivor, said she’s skeptical that government leaders will keep their word.

“[Government officials] never learn. They just continue doing the same thing over and over and expect different results, and it never happens. It’s insanity to me,” she said.

The Koons are retiring on Friday from their church in Mesquite, preparing to begin a new chapter in Crandall. But it has taken time to get there.

For a long while, the flood was simply too painful to talk about. Richard still wrestles with the weight of survivor’s guilt, replaying choices and wondering what might have been. But even through the questions, he said his faith anchors him.

“[The flood] was an act of God… We were right where we’re supposed to be. The comfort is we’re going to see those kids again,” he said.

Together, Richard and Lavonda have shared their experience at church, even when it’s hard.

Last month, Lavonda said clips on TV of shredded clothes hanging from trees lining the riverbed, and sounds of helicopters flying overhead searching for survivors brought back memories from her own experience. More should have been done to protect young lives at camp, she said, like adding sirens and round-the-clock monitoring of the weather.

She’s hopeful officials will act and do what’s necessary to protect campers the next time the river inevitably rises.

“After these events, knowing what can happen, somebody needs to be awake during the hours of the night and watching the weather so [campers] can get out safely,” she said.

Ayden Runnels and Jessica Shuran Yu contributed reporting.

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