Storm season preparedness: lessons from the experts

In our Storm Season Procurement: Plan, Respond, Recover webinar on Thursday 14 May, facilitated by TXShare, we heard from local government emergency preparedness practitioners, who shared how to address the procurement and operational challenges presented by storm season. Our panel featured folks with decades of experience implementing warning systems across the country: William Whitson, Long Term Recovery Senior Consultant, Kerr Together; James Logan, Water Sector Lead, AEM OneRain; Steve Malers, Founder and CEO at TriLynx Systems; and Brent Gambrel, VP/GM Systems at Federal Signal Corporation.

All the speakers emphasised a clear message: well-prepared emergency response begins with clear procurement pathways, regular equipment checks, comprehensive warning systems, and supplier relationships established ahead of time.

Play offense, not defense – the work done before the storm

Craigan Johnson, Chief Procurement Officer at North Central Texas Council of Governments, opened the session by framing cooperative purchasing as a core practical tool for emergency preparedness. During – or in response to – a disaster, agencies don’t have time to issue a fresh RFP and wait months for the contract to be completed.

As Johnson explained, the goal is to make compliant pathways available before they are urgently needed: “You do not want to be considering getting quotes, issuing bids X, Y and or Z during an emergency or immediately after an emergency event. Utilize a contract that's readily available, as well as regulatorily compliant to help you and your citizens out.”

“Your best work in the emergency is done before the emergency,” explained William Whitson, Long Term Recovery Senior Consultant, Kerr Together. “It’s hard to think of everything, but it’s much better in an emergency to play offense than defense…. think ahead, because it's too late when you get in the middle of the disaster.”

Kerr County: building warning capacity before the next camp season

Whitson brought the discussion into sharp focus through Kerr County’s experience following the July 4 2025 flash flood disaster in Central Texas.

At the time of the disaster, Kerr County had no flood warning system in place. In the months that followed, the county had to move quickly to build a layered warning capability ahead of the next camp season.

The county’s timeline to achieve this was unusually compressed. Whitson credited cooperative procurement with helping Kerr County move from no flood warning infrastructure toward an operating system in a matter of months. Gambrel, whose team at Federal Signal Corporation was chosen as the supplier for Kerr County’s warning system, said “If we had to go through a full traditional RFP process, I'm sure that we would not have been able to meet some of the deadlines that we have been able to.”

Whitson described how the county began standing up sirens, communications infrastructure, and data pathways designed to feed rainfall, streamflow, and weather information into a predictive model. He explained that they wanted to ensure they could gather and feed flood condition data quicker, faster and more accurately into a predictive model that can then notify the public. Their system now uses a mix of fiber, microwave, and long-term evolution (LTE) broadband to move rain gauge, stream gauge, and weather data into a predictive model, with sirens layered on top for alerting.

Ensure your storm warning is an integrated system

James Logan, Water Sector Lead, AEM OneRain, stressed that warning infrastructure is only as effective as the system connecting it. Agencies may have rain gauges, stream gauges, weather data and modelling tools, dashboards and public alerting channels in place, but those elements need to work reliably together when conditions change quickly.

“Most agencies struggle with integration. When you put things together, the kinds of problems that you can run into when you have things that are sort of spread across different vendors is you don't really know who's responsible for making it work,” Logan said.

Agencies should consider planning systems that can evolve over time, Steve Malers, Founder and CEO at TriLynx Systems added. Flood warning systems can also provide a communication backbone for collecting and sharing other environmental data. “The initial funding may not include implementation of desirable features, such as roadway flashers for low water crossings or cameras,” Malers said. “So it’s necessary to plan how those features might be added in the future.”

That planning is especially relevant as more federal and state funding becomes available. For example, the Texas Water Development Board’s Senate Bill 3 implementation work includes guidance for flash flood warning sirens, and related SB 5 funding appropriated $50 million to support agencies in establishing and implementing flood warning siren systems.

From a procurement perspective, explained Logan, TXShare’s cooperative contracts help to ensure that different suppliers’ offerings can be integrated from the purchasing stage: “TXShare makes that possible because they've already worked with all the vendors that you work through, all the contracting processes and everything else, so the procurement process is really easy and things can happen quickly without having to go through a lot of red tape.”

Build redundancy in, and test it

Redundancy is a core part of making sure warning systems, staff, and communications are ready to perform when communities need them most.

The panel encouraged agencies to identify single points of failure across their systems and review them regularly. That may include backup power, satellite communications, terrestrial radio, redundant servers, solar backup, or alternative data pathways.

Brent Gambrel, VP/GM Systems at Federal Signal Corporation, pointed to routine testing as one way to make those risks visible across agency teams. “We recommend two different layers of testing. The first is using a daily silent test. This is like checking the pulse of your system. These are automated and ensure that the analog radio signals or communication channels are active. The second step would be to do your full monthly functional test.”

For Logan, one of the clearest ways to build support for funding redundancy in your systems is to show what happens when it is missing: “When you can bring real examples of where failures actually had a bad impact and where redundancy would have solved the problem, or adding generators, or the different things you can do to add resiliency to your system, when you can give those real-world examples, then you ask them: do you want that happening to us?”

Whitson agreed. “You’ve got to show them the why. Do you want to be the person that tried to save 5% and then had your whole system go down when it was really the most urgent and lives were lost? I don’t think I want to be in that position.”

Prepare before the next storm

Storm season preparedness depends on decisions made well before conditions become urgent. That work can be complex, especially when funding windows, technical requirements, communications systems, and public safety timelines all intersect.

But as the speakers emphasised, preparedness is not a one-time purchase. It is an ongoing operational discipline, built through planning, testing, maintenance, and procurement strategies that allow systems to evolve as community needs change.

Civic Marketplace has pulled together key cooperative contracts for storm preparedness into one place, helping agencies quickly identify procurement pathways for warning systems, communications, emergency response equipment, generators, recovery support, and related services.