This thought seems so quaint today:
“The flood alert system is one governmental project that has proved necessary and beneficial to the people who pay for it,” the Kerrville Daily Times wrote in a 1991 editorial. “Whether that tax increase was necessary or whether funds could have been found elsewhere is merely an arguing point for curmudgeons.”
In the following few years, the quality of governance in Texas would suffer a severe slide downhill. I'd pin it on the q-nut conspiracists but that's probably too simplistic.
What Dick Eastland said in 1988 in advocating for a flood warning system, “If it saves one life down the road, it will be worth it,” makes me think about what he did/didn't do on the night of the floods, question why there wasn't decisive action, think about his decisions to get his property out of the FEMA flood zone, leave several of his cabins in the most precarious of positions while building new structures uphill, and wonder about the story his phone records on that night may or may not tell.