Texas flooding update press conference： Greg Abbott, state & Uvalde officials address severe weather

I had the opportunity on my way in to Uvalde to view the entire region by air and get to see the rivers that had been overflowed, the fields and neighborhoods that had been flooded, the pockets of devastation that you were able to witness from the air. But I'll be honest with you, driving around in Uvalde, the damage looks far worse on the ground than it does in the air. The fact of the matter is Uvalde was hit very, very hard, but the community and the people of this community are strong and resilient. As one official in the room behind me put it in the briefing, he said that we are rougher than Mother Nature. The fact is that rivers continue to pose challenges to this area. This area of Uvalde shares about four rivers. We've got the Nueces River, the Sabineau River, the Frio River, Leona River. I would say as of right now, of those four, the one river that remains the greatest danger to this community is the Nueces River. Along those lines, listen, the worst of the rain is behind us. But, and very importantly, even though the worst of the rain is gonna be behind us for a while, as in for days, the rivers are gonna continue to rise. Even if rain is not falling, because of the flow of water downstream, residents and leaders need to understand the rivers will still rise and still pose life-threatening danger to anybody near those rivers. I wanna thank all of the local leaders, first responders, volunteers, and federal Texans for their swift and effective response, their preparation in advance. The way they handled this issue in response to it literally saved lives. I also wanna thank the state first responders, including the Texas Military Department, the Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Task Force One, Texas Department of Transportation, all of the state emergency first responders, as well as the Texas Emergency Task Force. As waters begin to recede in the coming days, cleanup is going to begin. The state is gonna work with local officials to expedite things like debris removal and to accelerate the rebuilding process. The Texas Department of Transportation has already been heavily involved in making sure that especially the city and county of Uvalde, which almost became an island, because of what happened with the rivers around it. TxDOT has been working around the clock to clear roads, to maintain roads, to rebuild roads, repair roads as rapidly as possible, so that people would be able to access where they need to go, as well as ensure that suppliers are gonna be able to come into the Uvalde area. To support these efforts to the fullest, I am right now going to be issuing a major disaster declaration. I'm gonna hold it up for you. I will tell you, it's about 20 pages long. What it does is it will open the door to federal relief to assist in the rebuilding of this region. And it's dated today, the 17th, and as of right now, it is signed, and as soon as I leave, will be on its way to President Trump. This major disaster declaration includes 28 counties. It's the counties that have been hardest hit by these devastating floodwaters. More counties can and will be added as needed. In addition to Uvalde, the other areas that remain under greatest threat are Zavala, Dimit, Real counties, as well as Sutton and Crockett counties. And as I mentioned earlier, the river that remains the greatest ongoing threat is the Nueces River. Texas will continue to provide all of these counties, as well as every county affected by these storms, ongoing support and assistance. These counties will remain the primary focus until all dangers subside. Altogether, the state has already provided more than 2,700 personnel, more than 1,500 vehicles, more than 90 boats, more than 20 aircraft, as well as many other assets and resources. The state has rescued more than 270 people. In the briefing earlier, just in the Uvalde and Zavala regions by local officials in these regions, they have rescued more than 300 people. As of right now, there remain about 125 people in shelters here in the Uvalde area. And as of right now, across the entire state, there remain two lives that have been lost. Our paramount goal is to make sure nobody else loses their life. We're almost through this rain event. We want local officials and residents to remain vigilant and aware by individuals and officials maintaining that awareness about the dangers of water, whether because of rising rivers or because of water on a roadway that they may think they can drive through until it's too late after they get stuck and swept away. We want everyone just for the next 24 to 48 hours to be fully aware of the danger that water can provide to your life right now. Texans, I'm missing the placard here. I'll have you repeat it. So Texans and Americans, listen, they want to help out. We are people who are very generous. Whenever tragedy likes its strikes, the generosity comes pouring out. The state has a 501c3 charitable organization established by the state of Texas to provide donors with a single location where they will be able to know that their support will reach those who are in need. It's called Texas One. Chief Nimkid is gonna give you the website address. It's rebuildtx.org, rebuildtx.org. We've also, we as in all of us, have also received support from our fellow states. I want to thank the states and the governors of Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Nebraska, Alabama, Missouri, Colorado, Arizona, and Florida for stepping up and helping out their fellow Americans here in the state of Texas. We in the state have maintained constant contact with local officials in all of the affected regions. At this moment in time, there are no unmet needs. That said, we are still doing rescue operations in some counties as we speak right now. And once again, although the rain may subside, rivers will continue to rise. So take matters into your own hands to be as safe as possible. Now I am going to pass it to your local state representative, Don McLaughlin. Governor, thank you and thank you for coming here. One of the first things I'd like to say is you have, we have an amazing organization in TETM. TETM put all these men together. All these men behind me have been since Tuesday, 24 hours a day at that center. And I had the privilege of seeing them in action numerous times. And it's amazing what TETM is able to do and all these men from whether it be DPS, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Border Patrol, Sheriffs, Police Department, they all work together in unison. And I hate to use this frame, but it could have been a lot worse this time. I mean, with, but the way they are organizing that. And we realize in the district right now, we have a lot of people hurting, a lot of people lost their homes and so forth. And the governor has told the city and county officials that they will be here till we're done and we will. And for that, governor, I thank you. Sure. Yes. Thank you, sir. Thank you, governor. Appreciate you coming out here. Thank you. We appreciate your support. Thank you, Mr. Representative. You've been, you've been great. Been down at the EOC together and all I can do is echo the same remarks, the local and the state has been local agencies, state, TDEM, federal agency, border patrol have been fantastic. And it's been a very efficient working relationship and everything's working very well. We've gone through a terrible rain event and it wasn't just a 24 hour rain event. This rain event lasted three or four days and we just continued and everybody stayed down there. I'd like to add, as you, we talked in the briefing about local Uvalde area flood donations. And we have some set up. So those wanting to assist can make deposits at any First State Bank of Uvalde location with checks payable to the community foundation of the Texas Hill Country, or you can go online to the Texas Bankers Association website. And they have a, the Texas Bankers website has a foundation, has a flood relief fund. Those funds will be designated for Uvalde County and the surrounding area. And so it's been a rough couple of days, but I said, we're going to get through it. And so thank y'all. Thank you for your support, your continued support. You got it. And now the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, MCIT. Thank you, governor. Thank you all for being here with us to get this message out. Life safety remains our number one priority and we really need your help in getting these messages out. Property protection and conservation is our second priority. As the rains in this area may have slowed down, the danger has not left us. Rains that fell further north or upriver that worked its way through here, continuing to push their way downstream. I want to talk about roads and barricades for a second. While it may look like a road is passable, if there is a barricade there, please do not move that barricade because the road may not be there around the corner. So please do not move any barricades. First responders and TxDOT and local officials have set those up and they will remove them. Still a very dynamic situation where we had days of 10 or 15 inches of rain. Another day of one to two inches of rain could produce equally catastrophic impacts. So we are not out of this fight yet. We are continuing at the state level to move assets and resources around the state to be with our local partners in their time of need and adding additional assets and resources still coming into the state to support our ongoing response efforts. We will be conducting response and recovery at the same time, sometimes in the same place in the state. And that brings us to cleanup. As we get ready to do our cleanup operations, our volunteer organizations are ready to support all of our citizens that are out there. We will work with the communities to have a volunteer reception location, and you've heard about the donations receptions. The volunteers that are coming in to clean and help are gonna be a huge impact to get us through the road, down the road. If you have flood insurance, the first thing that you need to do is contact your insurance company. And then we will work with our local officials to announce their volunteer and donations places. Finally, I can't go on without thanking all of the local responders that are out there, men and women from this community, your neighbors that have risked their property as well to go out and save you and yours. If you get a chance to thank a local first responder, please do so. Thank you, and I'll open up for questions. However, let me say this first. I believe one reason why some lives have been saved is because the media got so much information out to the public in advance about the magnitude of the rain that was gonna come, the magnitude of the flooding that was gonna come, and people recognized they need to take this serious and get away from where floodwaters would be. So first, thank you for that. But also, as I pointed out, we're not done with this yet. The more you can continue to share information with the public about the ongoing dangers that exist, the more and better chance we have to ensure nobody else is gonna lose their life. We'll take a few questions. So I'm gonna have Chief Kidd provide a more detailed answer. However, there are multiple first steps, one of which is that Texas One Fund that already has resources in it. And we will, what that fund does typically is coordinate with people at the local level to make sure that money is gonna be as available as quickly as possible. That said, there are different financial resources available from different pockets that Chief Kidd can tell you all about. And thank you for the question. Let's expand on that a little bit. The first thing is we have a state website, and we will get that website out to you where they need to report their damages. We share those reports with our local officials. The local officials will be the ones to help us organize support going into those homes to do the mud out and muck out and the cleanup of that. So we'll get that website out to you. That damage at tdem.texas.gov, I believe, is the address that we want you to use. The volunteers that come in to help will also be bringing, some of them bring in their own checkbooks, and they start writing checks and donations to families to help get money back going. But we really wanna organize this at the local level. So each community that's impacted will have its own team. Our team is there with them now, the Incident Support Task Force. You see some of them wearing the uniforms around here. And they are ready as soon as it's safe to do so, which it is becoming that way right now, to get out into the community and work directly with the citizens to help them on the road to recovery. So, listen, one thing that I have observed through multiple events, whether it be the floods of last year, Hurricane Harvey, or other events, there are many organizations, many of them are faith-based organizations. And they show up sometimes within hours, definitely within days, to very quickly come in and do the muck-out process, which is one of the very first steps. When the muck-out process takes place, that leads to a lot of debris being put on the ground in front of the house or whatever. And the state and local officials will be involved in that debris removal, which we know will be a top priority. But bottom line, you will see a lot of organizations coming in ready to immediately begin that muck-out process. Go ahead. So we have someone from TxDOT here. Let me have them answer that question. Yeah, so FM 481 right now, we're currently assessing the bridge damage that was caused by the Nueces River. So we're in the process of evaluating. As the water's received, we'll continue to do that evaluation so we can see what we can do to speed up the process of getting that back operational. So at this time, we don't have a specific timetable, but we are actively looking at what we need to do to get that operational. And then one other question, because there was a dam over there that- Yeah. It didn't. Go ahead. I can speak to that. So that was a flood-control dam, and it was flown and looked at, and it did not fail. I've been in contact with the landowner, with the ranch owner where the dam is located, and he's also confirmed. But we put eyes on that dam, and it did not fail. What did happen is it worked just as designed, and the spillway, the water came over the spillway in a way that it had never done. And so while it may have looked like from the air that the dam breached, it did not. It was going around the spillway in a measured amount, but we just had tremendous rain. And so the dam is good, and it's still holding back lots of water. All right, so for one, you can't prevent rain. But what you can do is to be prepared and responsive to it, as well as to prepare communities to reduce flooding. If you look at some of the measures that were taken at the flooding last year, especially in the Kerr County area, there were some homes and some other property that was removed from the floodplain. And so for one, making sure that communities honor the floodplain and try to not have housing in the way. Second, I'll tell you this. One thing I heard today, but also I heard in other briefings that I've been involved in, as well as I've heard from people in communities ranging from Kerr County to other counties affected, and that is because of everything that was learned and experienced in the flood last year, everybody in Texas has been far more prepared to deal with what has happened this year. There again is one reason why lives have been saved. Property, to the extent that it's been movable, has been saved. Real property, which would be like houses, apartments, commercial businesses, things like that, you can't move them, but sometimes they can relocate and things like that. And that process began in the aftermath of the flood last year. But again, lessons learned from last year were applied to make sure the response this year was far superior to what we were able to achieve last year. And again, we were talking before coming out here, local officials and state officials. We've learned more in the past 48 to 72 hours than we knew last year. And we continue to process this to make sure that the state is more responsive and more prepared every single year. I made a similar declaration in the flooding that took place last year. And the response took about one or two days. And so it was very rapid. My hope is it will be equally swift this time. I don't have that, yeah. I think what we have seen from the state asset perspective, most of the rescues that were done were for motorists or stranded motorists, but really we can ask the locals about what their local perspective was on rescue versus evacuation. And that said, to be clear, I've heard reports from here as well as elsewhere in the state about operations conducted, whether it be by the National Guard, by the Department of Public Safety, game wardens or others, of hoist rescues into helicopters and other airlift out of trees or other places like that. So heroic missions have been conducted to save lives across the state. Sure, we need to subdivide this into two categories. There are state buoys and then there are federal buoys. The state buoys remain intact where they were located initially and have not moved. They're being reinforced as we speak to make sure they're not moved. The federal buoys, I'm gonna tell you what I know. And I'm telling you in advance that I don't have all the information so I could be wrong about what I'm about to tell you. But it's my understanding that the federal buoys were moved because of the flooding event were actually not in the river, but the waters pulled them into the river and they went downstream. Bottom line, however, for the federal buoys, the federal officials are the ones involved in removing those buoys. And my understanding is they're working rapidly to make sure they get them removed and put into a safe place so they are not interfering with the waterways at all. Thank you all.