More than 130 people died in Texas Hill Country floods in 2025. Newly installed warning sirens held the death toll during July 2026 flooding in the same region to three. Alice Hill, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, calls the outcome an example of Republican-led states adapting after disaster.
Texas: the before-and-after
Texas responded to the 2025 catastrophe by expanding flood-warning systems and floodplain buyouts. Houston had already tightened building codes following Hurricane Harvey. Hill, who served as a senior resilience policy official on President Obama's National Security Council, offered a direct summary: "Building to the last disaster is like preparing for the last war."
Mikhail Chester, director of the Metis Center for Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University, says the infrastructure industry has shifted its internal math. Climate hazards now cost more to ignore than to design for, a conclusion he says has solidified over the past decade. Hill frames it more broadly: almost all U.S. infrastructure was built for a climate that essentially no longer exists.
State infrastructure responses
Florida invested in backup power, stronger building codes and microgrids following Hurricane Ian. Louisiana utilities hardened substations and reinforced the grid after repeated hurricanes. California extended wildfire-resistant building standards and underground power lines, and added drought measures including water recycling and groundwater recharge. Los Angeles added cool roofs and urban forestry. Phoenix leads nationally in cooling centers and heat-adaptation programs.
Babcock Ranch in Florida provides a project-level case. The developer buried power lines, improved storm drainage and built to higher wind-resistance specifications. The community has since survived four hurricanes with little damage, according to Hill.
Insurers and the adaptation gap
Professional engineering organizations are publishing adaptation standards for state and local adoption. Chester says engineers increasingly integrate parks and wetlands alongside conventional concrete channels, pulling back from reliance solely on hard infrastructure.
Some communities are proceeding despite federal funding constraints and the Trump administration's push to remove climate-change references from government websites. Insurers are pricing climate risk into infrastructure decisions, Chester says, though Hill notes most carrier activity has concentrated on limiting exposure. Only a small number of programs reward resilience with lower premiums.
Hill's overall assessment: adaptation is advancing but running behind the scale of the challenge. The July 2026 Texas death toll, three versus more than 130 a year earlier, is the clearest available measure of what closing that gap produces.