When Hurricane Harvey hit Houston in 2017, Doris Brown didn’t get a warning.
No sirens. No city alerts. Just rising water and silence.
“I got flooded out for the first time and lost my home,” said Brown, who lived in the Houston scenic woods neighborhood. “And no one came. We’ve been on our own ever since.”
Brown is Co-Director of Community Research, Organizing and Development for West Street Recovery, a grassroots disaster response group serving historically neglected Black and brown neighborhoods. Her group now operates “hub houses,” local homes equipped with solar batteries, kayaks, CPR kits and food for emergencies.
“We’re the first responders,” she said. “Because the official ones don’t come fast enough. If at all.”
Brown sends a blunt warning to her community as hurricane season ramps up.
“If it starts flooding, don’t wait. Get out. Have your plan ready,” she said. “FEMA isn’t coming to rescue you, your neighbors are.”
A system under strain
Brown’s story is part of a larger story playing out across Texas. This year’s flash flooding in the Hill Country, where the Guadalupe River surged 26 feet in under an hour and killed over 90 people. The tragedy exposed both the unpredictability of modern storms and the slow response from higher levels of government.
“We do not have a working warning system for our neighborhoods,” Brown said. “If it rains hard, I’m a prisoner in my home. Our drainage system is so outdated, it doesn’t take a hurricane to trap people.”
Federal support systems have eroded. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has lost 2,000 full-time staff since Donald Trump’s January presidency, a significant loss due to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Service cuts, raising concerns among emergency management scholars about capacity reduction and experienced staff “brain drain,” and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which issues severe weather warnings, has seen steep staffing cuts. These gaps have left cities like Houston scrambling to do more with less.
Brian Mason, Director of the City of Houston’s Office of Emergency Management, says the city has learned from Harvey, Winter Storm Uri and other crises. But he’s realistic about what residents should expect.
“All responses or incidents start with the local government and end with the local government. They’re not going to be there in the first 12 to 36 to maybe 40 hours. They’re coming, but it just takes them a while to get spun up,” Mason said. “They pre-stage resources and they do things to be able to support, but we’re gonna do everything we possibly can to be prepared over prepared, over communicate to our residents on their preparedness and on our end too, for us to be as resilient and self-sufficient as we can for probably the first two to three days.”
The city has invested in high-water rescue assets, emergency shelters, training exercises and coordination systems that allow it to act quickly without waiting for outside help.
“We look at 911 and 311 call data in real time, use community intel and deploy resources to where the need is greatest,” Mason said. “We’re getting skilled reports from folks so we’re able to quickly identify this side of town was probably impacted worse than that side of town. So that’s how we usually tend to prioritize our initial response efforts.”
He described the city’s emergency response priorities using the acronym LIPS:
- Life safety: This is the paramount concern in any emergency situation. It prioritizes the safety of individuals, including responders, occupants and bystanders. Rescuing individuals, evacuating endangered areas and providing immediate medical attention fall under this category.
- Incident stability: Once life safety is addressed, the focus shifts to bringing the incident under control and preventing it from escalating further. This might involve activities like containing a hazardous material spill, suppressing a fire, or securing a collapsed structure.
- Property protection: After ensuring life safety and stabilizing the incident, the goal is to minimize damage to property and the environment.
- Societal recovery: Refers to the social and community-level factors that contribute to or hinder an individual’s recovery process.
“When FEMA comes, it’s usually later,” he said. “They bring long-term resources, shelter reimbursements, rebuilding funds, but those first critical days? That’s on us. That’s on the city, and often, that’s on communities helping each other.”
And while Mason emphasized that Houston is better prepared than it was during Harvey, he also acknowledged limitations.
“Even if just 10% of the population isn’t prepared, that’s 250,000 people needing help,” Mason said. “The truth is, we can’t reach everyone immediately. That’s why personal and neighborhood preparedness is absolutely essential.”
He also highlighted the city’s outreach efforts, especially in underserved areas. Materials are now available in six languages and the city partners with faith-based groups and community organizations to spread preparedness information.
Brown says those limitations are lived realities in communities like hers.
“We’re still seeing drainage issues that haven’t been fixed for decades,” she said. “The city and county don’t always coordinate and equity just isn’t built into the system the way it should be.”
Still, she and her team continue training residents in flood safety, passing out supplies, setting up a mutual aid network, and pushing for accountability in city budgets.
“The city has made some improvements over the years,” Brown said. “But we have a lot more work to do so that emergency preparedness is more efficient.”
