The catastrophic flooding in Texas Hill Country has tragically taken over 120 lives, including 27 children at their summer camp. This horrific disaster exposed a horrifying truth: officials had multiple chances to prevent this and failed. In one instance, a firefighter begged dispatch to send a flood alert after spotting rising waters. But he was told to wait for approval. Some residents got alerts hours too late – if at all. It was already too late for dozens of people.
This wasn't a freak failure. It was negligence. Between 2017 and 2024, local officials requested funding for a flood warning system three separate times. Each time, the state said no – even as Texas received $1.9 billion in federal disaster-reduction funding over the past decade.
Sign the petition to demand Congress fund and mandate early warning systems in every flood-prone area across the United States and hold states accountable when they refuse to act.
The cost of those refusals is now unbearable: children swept away, families torn apart, and entire communities left searching for loved ones buried under mud and debris. Hundreds of communities were left defenseless, despite mounting risks and pleas for help.
Rescue efforts even had to halt due to more risk of flooding. And this kind of flooding is only getting worse with climate change.
We can't afford to let another community go unprotected. We owe it to the victims, their families, and every single person still living in harm's way. We need to fix this broken system before it claims even more lives.
Sign now to demand action that could save lives tomorrow.
