How a small East Texas town turned a devastating tornado into funding for sirens

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A small East Texas community is in the final stages of installing a state-of-the-art disaster warning system officials have been working toward for years.

Six new sirens will be placed strategically throughout the city of Crockett, about two hours north of Houston. City officials say they applied for a FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant in 2023 after a tornado tore through the county a year prior that caught many residents unprepared.

“We're in hurricane season. And while we're not right on the coast, depending on which side of the aisle you’re on, you get the occasional spin off tornadoes,” said Lee Standley, Crockett’s assistant city manager.

Crockett’s success in accessing federal hazard mitigation funds comes amid deafening public outcry about the role government inaction played in the lack of sirens in Kerr County and whether such a warning could have curbed the devastating July 4 flooding death toll. Rural communities notoriously struggle to access such federal funds because densely populated urban cores receive priority and rural governments don’t have the budget to pony up dollars required to match the federal share.

Experts say Crockett’s success is likely due to an uncommon mixture of timing, know-how and will power.

“It takes state and federal agencies working on the ground with the community to make sure they both understand the risk, and — very importantly — that they have the tools and resources they need to do something about it,” said Kristin Smith, a lead researcher for Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based nonprofit that helps communities with land management.

Crockett’s approach

After a pre-construction meeting on July 10, Crockett Construction began ordering sirens. They hope to beat a potential rush on this warning system following the devastating and deadly floods in Central Texas, company owner Chris Morris said.

Home to about 6,300 people, as of 2023, Crockett sits in the center of Houston County, which was one of 16 counties impacted by a tornado outbreak in mid-March of 2022.

A tornado that reached 125 mph was on the ground for 19 miles along Highway 21 around 10 p.m., damaging about 30 structures and displacing more than 70 people from their homes and injuring 10.

“We had no advance warning whatsoever,” Standley said. “When we learned we were eligible for the FEMA Hazard Mitigation grant, it just came right up to the top of our list.”

Once the sirens are installed, hopefully by the fall, Crockett will have a multi-layered disaster warning system. Residents can sign up to receive text messages through the Genasys notification system and check social media as well.

Every community knows it has to prepare for some type of natural disaster, but not every community has the tools to do so, Smith said.

Instead of preparing, communities often resort to reacting to disasters, which is costly. The National Institute of Building Sciences found that for every dollar spent by the federal government on mitigation, it saves taxpayers $6.

Crockett is unique in that it is led primarily by people who have a history in emergency response, Standley said. He was a fire marshal and police officer before taking on the role of assistant city administrator. The city manager, John Angerstein, was a fire chief.

The city council in 2023 knew sirens would have benefited many of their residents in 2022 and began working toward the federal grant. This required significant time, effort and financial planning.

FEMA is investing $500,000 in the siren system, with Crockett matching 10% – or $50,000. Crockett’s 2024-25 general fund budget was $6.6 million.

This is not something that every community in Texas is able to do.

“It's nothing more than being conservative in your budget, to hold a little bit back to be able to match the grant,” Standley said. “Sometimes cities just can't. There were years that we would not be able to. We were fortunate when this came available that we were able to make the match, and it all worked out.”

Dependability of federal funds

Matching funds are just one of the barriers communities must overcome to access federal support.

In 2024, more than 100 Texas counties had no hazard mitigation plans – which precluded them from federal disaster grants. In Kerr County, the hardest hit by the July 4 flood, a FEMA funding request for weather warning upgrades was denied because it didn’t have such a plan updated.

And even those who do have those plans don’t always have the staff or capacity to apply for and maintain a federal grant, Smith said.

It takes a lot of time, effort and patience to get through the process. Crockett applied for the FEMA grant a little over two years ago and is just now starting the physical work.

Furthermore, even communities who have the time, staff and resources to apply aren’t guaranteed to actually receive federal support.

“Communities want to do this proactive work, but it's very challenging to access the funding because it's so competitive,” Smith said.

The FEMA Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant, last year had over 1,200 communities requesting assistance. There were $5.6 billion dollars in requests but FEMA only had $1 billion available, Smith said. Many of those dollars went to populous counties, such as Harris County, rather than smaller, rural communities.

And the future of federal support is uncertain. The BRIC grant was shuttered in April and some applicants who had been approved for funding never saw a dollar.

Texas lawmakers will reconvene for a special legislative session on July 21 with a priority being disaster relief and recovery following the July 4 floods. Smith believes a more localized approach to disaster preparation could be better for Texans.

“State dollars can just be a little bit easier to access for rural and lower capacity communities than federal dollars,” Smith said.

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