HIDALGO COUNTY, Texas — Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez takes his role as the county’s emergency management director seriously.

“I’m in the business of helping people as county judge,” Cortez said.

Hidalgo County sits just above sea level, north of the Rio Grande and about 80 miles west of the Texas Coast.

“And as you well know geographically, the closer you get to the river, the more prone you are to flooding,” he said.

Historic flooding—most recently—in March of this year.

“We recently had a storm that flooded many of our areas,” Cortez said. “When you get 11-12 inches of water in a very short amount of time, there is no system to prepare you from flooding. It’s just too much water at once.”

Cortez received a prestigious award for his hurricane preparedness—but he stays realistic.

“You never get to 100% when it comes to emergency preparedness,” Cortez said.

Cortez was awarded the Lew Fincher Award in April. He was chosen for his outstanding leadership in hurricane preparedness and communication.

Longtime Rio Grande Valley meteorologist Tim Smith presented Cortez with the award.

Smith is the coordinator for the National Tropical Weather Conference—the organization behind the award.  

“He’s really big on preparedness and learning from what’s happened in the past to help us be ready for the future,” Smith said.

One goal Cortez has achieved is to be more inclusive with emergency communication, saying everyone deserves access to life-saving information.

 “Many of our people that we have in our county are vulnerable people. They are elderly, some of them have disabilities,” said Cortez.

So he formed the Disability Advisory Committee.

“When I took office, it was evident to me that we still needed to do some work,” Cortez said.

It led to adding a “Recite Me” accessibility toolbar on the county’s website that allows access for people with learning difficulties and visual impairments. It also translates into several languages.

Cortez also created programs that educate elementary students about weather and developed a power outage cooking program.

“We prepared basically a cookbook,” he said. “A resource guide for cooking without power.”

Another initiative called “Weathering the Storm” addresses the emotional toll of hurricanes and offers stress management tools.

Despite all his efforts to stay prepared and his recent recognition, he still questions whether he has done enough.

“Are we totally prepared?” Cortez said. “The answer is, no.”