National

FEMA maps underestimated risk in catastrophic Texas flood, data shows

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(NEW YORK) — The risk of the catastrophic flooding that struck Texas Hill Country as people slept on July 4 and left at least 120 dead was potentially underestimated by federal authorities, according to an ABC News analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency data, satellite imagery and risk modeling.

Some of the youth camps and recreational areas most devastated by the extreme weather were established on land designated by the FEMA as “special flood hazard areas” or in the river’s floodway, making them especially vulnerable to the July 4 flash floods that exceeded some federal estimates for a worst-case scenario.

At some points, water extended for hundreds of feet outside the Guadalupe River’s banks and beyond FEMA estimates, according to satellite data. First Street, a risk modeling company, told ABC News that the company believes that more than double the 8 million homes nationwide that are designated by FEMA to be in flood zones are actually at risk, finding that government models are outdated and fail to consider extreme weather events.
Devastated camp ‘predominantly in a flood zone’

Along the river banks in Kerr County, the all-girls Camp Mystic was overrun by flood waters, which claimed the lives of 27 campers and counselors and swept multiple buildings from their foundations. According to FEMA maps, more than a dozen of the 36 cabins were located within areas designated as high risk for potential flooding on the river and nearby Cypress Creek.

“We knew this camp was predominantly in a flood zone, and even the areas that we showed that were outside were right on the edge of a flood zone,” said Jeremy Porter, the head of climate implications research at First Street, which provides climate data for companies like Zillow and Redfin.

Multiple buildings at Camp Mystic, including four cabins, were built within the Guadalupe River’s “regulatory floodway,” where most new construction is severely limited due to flood risk and to “protect human life and health,” according to Kerr County’s Flood Damage Prevention Order from 2020. The document noted that the stretch of land where Camp Mystic is situated is “an extremely hazardous area due to the velocity of flood waters which carry debris, potential projectiles and erosion potential.”

An additional 12 cabins at Camp Mystic were built on land designated as “special flood hazard areas,” where residents face a 1% chance of flooding annually and are normally required to have flood insurance.

“These should guide where you should or should not construct, whether you should have mitigation processes in place, like putting homes on elevated beds,” said Jonathan Sury, a senior staff associate at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University in Manhattan.

But some of those structures at the nearly 100-year-old camp were built decades before FEMA began issuing its flood maps in the 1960s and were likely permitted to remain despite modern construction regulations, Porter noted.

A row of cabins at Camp Mystic sat directly behind the “special flood hazard area” and was deemed a lower risk for typical flooding. However, the extreme flash-flooding over Independence Day weekend inundated even the area thought to be at lower risk for flooding, satellite and radar analysis show.

‘Outdated’ maps

At its maximum point, the floodwaters were recorded to be more than 500 feet from the Guadalupe River banks, and more than 200 feet from the edge of the FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area, according to the satellite data. The satellite data was collected and provided to ABC News by ICEYE, a company operating synthetic aperture radar satellites, which can obtain real-time data worldwide by using radar pulses to generate data. The data collected measures the depth of the water in a given location.

Other areas along the Guadalupe River were not only vulnerable to flooding but also saw a higher-than-expected water level, exceeding the area marked for a 0.2% annual chance of inundation. Experts told ABC News that Texas practices “very little oversight” over youth camps, and state officials last week approved Camp Mystic’s emergency plans.

At the Heart O’ the Hills Camp for Girls – where 1 person was killed – at least seven structures were built in the Special Flood Hazard Area. The data shows that the floodwater reached up to 220 feet from the riverbed.

Floodwaters devastated RV parks north of the other camps on the Guadalupe River. More than 60 RV spots had been situated in the FEMA-designated Special Flood Hazard Area. Satellite data shows the area was covered in floodwater spanning the entire RV park.

Lorena Guillen, the owner of the Blue Oak RV Park, told ABC News that she was familiar with where her business fell on the FEMA flood map and never considered that the floodwaters could reach as far as they did last week.

“It’s always come up…but there was nothing that would give us an indication that the flood was going to get all the way up 35, 40 feet high in 40 minutes,” she said. “Everything is gone. And there is so much debris, so much cleanup to do that it is going to take, it’s going to take months and months.”

Requests for comment to the camps and FEMA were not immediately answered.

“Our City of Kerrville and Kerr County leadership are committed to a transparent and full review of processes and protocols,” the Kerr County Joint Information Center said in an email. “The special session [of the state legislature] will be a starting point in which we will begin this work, but our entire focus since day one has been rescue and reunification.”

According to Porter, the extent of the flooding at Camp Mystic and other areas is representative of a broader problem with FEMA’s modeling, which places 8 million properties across the country at risk of a 100-year flood.

FEMA’s flood maps are generally used by the government to determine what insurance requirements are needed for homeowners, according to Lidia Cano Pecharroman, a researcher at MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.”When planning for flooding we cannot be over-reliant on these maps,” she said. “They are a useful tool but they are based on limited modeling and data.”

FEMA’s model considers factors like coastal storm surge and risks of flooding along river channels, but does not take into account heavy precipitation, such as the extreme rains that swept across Texas last week, Porter said.

“They’re outdated in the sense that they’re not climate corrected,” Porter said. “As those intensities increase of those rainfall events, we’re getting more rainfall happening all at once. It’s filling the waterways, and we’re seeing rapid increases in the river levels.”

First Street estimates that there are more than 2.2 times the number of properties at risk of hundred-year floods than FEMA’s model suggests.

“It’s a devastating event that occurred, but people should look at it and say, you know, if we know our risk, we should retrofit our buildings,” said Porter. “We should make sure that they’re designed to a standard that can withstand the risk that exists in an area right outside of that flood zone.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Politics

Schools brace for wave of parents seeking opt-outs after Supreme Court ruling

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(WASHINGTON) — When public school teachers return to classrooms this fall, they will confront a new legal landscape that has given parents expanded veto power over certain aspects of a child’s education.

A sweeping constitutional interpretation issued last month from the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes a fundamental right under the First Amendment to opt-out from classroom lessons that may pose what it called a “very real threat of undermining” sincerely held religious beliefs.

It has school districts and their attorneys nationwide scrambling to review curriculum for possible conflicts and fine tune protocols for when and how students can be excused from certain material.

“It marks a significant challenge for public education nationwide,” the Montgomery County, Maryland, Board of Education, which lost the case, said in a statement on the decision.

The board had been sued by a group of Muslim, Jewish and Christian parents after it refused to permit families to opt-out their children from exposure to storybooks with LGBTQ themes.

“The right of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children would be an empty promise if it did not follow those children into the public school classroom,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion.

The ruling effectively requires schools to notify parents in advance of any classroom concepts that might be contrary to a particular religion and to accommodate requests to provide alternative instruction.

Sarah Parshall Perry, a former U.S. Department of Education attorney and current vice president of the conservative advocacy group Defending Education, called it a clear “directive” to districts.

“In making the decision, the high court expanded an earlier religious liberty in schools case, Wisconsin v. Yoder,” Perry wrote in a blog post. “In that 1972 decision, the court held that Amish families could opt their children out of compulsory education past eighth grade because continuing in school longer would be a violation of their religious beliefs.”

While religious rights advocates hailed the ruling as common sense, some civil rights groups, educators, and parents fear it now undermines the very foundation of public education.

“This decision could have a chilling effect,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest union of public school teachers, “and could lead to more educators self-censoring, shelving books and lessons, and preventing some already marginalized students from being seen and acknowledged.”

Some school officials have privately worried about a “Pandora’s box” of administrative burdens that sweeping opt-out rights now present, and said they may consider preemptively removing content from the curriculum entirely in order to avoid confrontations with parents.

“I’m sure there will be more parents that are going to exercise this right,” said Jim Walsh, a Texas lawyer who represents school boards and is a member of the National School Attorneys Association.

Federal courts have already fielded numerous disputes in recent years over religious objections to classroom lessons, including faith-based opposition to teaching women’s empowerment, the theory of evolution, coed physical education, and celebration of Halloween.

“There are religions that oppose medical science, surgery, psychiatry, interracial marriage, monogamy, woman’s suffrage, the right of gay people to marry, and so on,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., an attorney and law professor. “All of them will now be able to flood the courts with claims that particular curricular teachings and books offend their sincere values and their children should not be exposed to the offensive doctrines.”

To evaluate the claims, frontline educators could be put in a tough spot.

“School administrators will have to become experts in a wide range of religious doctrines in order to predict, in advance, whether a parent may object to a particular text, lesson plan, or school activity as contrary to their religious beliefs,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent in the case. “The result will be chaos.”

Walsh offered a more sanguine appraisal based on the experience of Texas, which has had an expansive statewide opt-out available to parents for 30 years.

“Parents can opt out of anything they have a religious or moral objection to and the school has to accommodate that. It has not caused significant problems,” Walsh said.
One reason the impact has been muted, he said, is that “kids are frequently embarrassed when their parents do this.”
As for concerns that schools might self-censor material so as to avoid conflicts with parents, Walsh said it’s a likely possibility.

“Sotomayor predicts a lot of litigation. I think she’s probably right about that, but I think if districts adopt a policy and transparency — and allow opt-out with some limitations on that — I think that’s going to go a long way for reducing that.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

National

FBI offers $50,000 reward for info on person who ‘appeared to fire a gun at law enforcement’ during California ICE clashes

KABC

(CAMARILLO, Calif.) — The FBI offered a $50,000 reward for a person who appeared to point and fire a weapon at federal law enforcement officers in Southern California on Thursday.

The alleged shooting occurred in Camarillo, in Ventura County, where protesters and federal agents were clashing over immigration raids. It allegedly happened just before 2:30 p.m. on Laguna Road, U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement.

“FBI has issued a $50,000 award for information leading to the conviction of an Unknown Subject who appeared to fire a pistol at Federal Law Enforcement Officers near Camarillo,” Essayli said on social media.

Essayli, who heads the Central District of California office, added a photo of the suspect. He also shared a video of the incident that was shot by ABC News’ Los Angeles station KABC. The person in the photo and video appeared to be wearing a black T-shirt and a white medical mask.

“Make no mistake: anyone who targets our agents will face the full force of federal prosecution,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement posted on social media.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Entertainment

In brief: ‘Outlander: Blood of My Blood’ trailer and more

The trailer for Outlander: Blood of my Blood has arrived. STARZ has released the trailer for the upcoming prequel series, which premieres on Aug. 8. New episodes of the series will stream Fridays on the STARZ app, and all STARZ streaming and on-demand platforms. The show is a romance that takes place across time, going from the battlefields of World War I to the Highlands of 18th century Scotland …

Murderbot has been renewed for season 2 on Apple TV+. The show’s renewal comes ahead of the season 1 finale, which premieres on Friday. Alexander Skarsgård stars in and executive produces the series, which was created by and showrun by Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz …

Hailee Steinfeld has joined the upcoming Olympic romance film Winter Games. Deadline reports that the Sinners star has joined Miles Teller in the film, which follows an overlooked skier and a self-sabotaging hockey legend who connect in the Olympic Village …

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Sports

Scoreboard roundup — 7/10/25

(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Thursday’s sports events:

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
Mets 1, Orioles 3 (Doubleheader, game 1)
Cubs 8, Twins 1
Mets 3, Orioles 7 (Doubleheader, game 2)
Marlins 0, Reds 6
Mariners 5, Yankees 6
Rays 3, Red Sox 4
Nationals 1, Cardinals 8
Braves 4, Athletics 5
Rangers 11, Angels 4
Diamondbacks 3, Padres 4
Guardians, White Sox (POSTPONED)

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Entertainment

Michael C. Hall on how Dexter Morgan has changed in ‘Dexter: Resurrection’

Zach Dilgard/Paramount+ Premium

Dexter Morgan lives!

The titular serial killer is back in the new series Dexter: Resurrection, which is a continuation of the series Dexter: New Blood, which in turn is a sequel to the beloved series Dexter.

This new series picks up weeks after Dexter took a bullet to the chest at the hands of his own son, Harrison Morgan, at the end of Dexter: New Blood. After he wakes up from a coma, Dexter sets out for New York City to find Harrison and make things right.

Michael C. Hall reprises his role as Dexter for the new show. He talked to ABC Audio about how the character has changed over the years.

“I think Dexter, when we first meet him, has a very firm line that he’s drawn between the life he simulates—the seemingly normal human life—and who he imagines himself to truly be,” Hall said. “I think, at this point, the lines are completely interweaving and intersecting and, as far as his humanity goes, I think the one thing that’s undeniable is his very human connection to his son.”

While Hall says Dexter’s relationship with Harrison “was backed into a pretty gnarly corner at the end of New Blood,” the bullet did not end up killing him, so he now has “a second chance at life and a chance to reclaim his identity.”

Hall believes New York City is exactly where Dexter feels he is supposed to be.

“Obviously he wasn’t supposed to die and he’s suppose to be here,” Hall said. “As often happens with Dexter, he attracts pretty unsavory people and he is definitely doing that at a level that’s so beyond anything we’ve seen before.” 

Dexter: Resurrection debuts its first two episodes Friday on Paramount+. 

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