People who lost everything describe leaving homes and express anger at poor preparedness and officials who seemed to shirk responsibility
As Texas marshals a formidable response to the flash floods that have already killed dozens, questions are now being posed about warnings that were given on Thursday and early Friday about the severity of the approaching storm and the co-ordination between local officials and the National Weather Service.
New flood alerts were issued for Texas “hill country” on Sunday, prompting rescue services to suspend the search for missing people, including at least 11 from Camp Mystic, the summer camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River hard hit by Friday’s flash flood.
At an early evening press briefing, Kerr county authorities said they were suspending the search and evacuating first responders from the river valley. They confirmed that 68 had died there, including 28 children. Not all have been identified, with officials still examining the bodies of 18 adults and 10 children.
No warning at all, eh? Well, the NWS did their jobs but if you have to count on podunk county officials to alert you, then I suggest you invest in a NOAA weather radio. They’re not expensive and could save your life.
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Thursday, June 3. A Flood Watch for Central Texas was issued by the local National Weather Service Office in Austin/San Antonio. The watch was in effect through Friday morning and warned of the chance for rainfall totals upwards of 5 to 7 inches, which would lead to excessive runoff and flooding along rivers, creeks, and streams.
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Later Thursday evening, the Weather Prediction Center highlighted the same region with an increasing threat for slow-moving thunderstorms that could dump rainfall rates of 3 inches an hour.
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It was around midnight on Friday, June 4, when the first few thunderstorms began dumping heavy rainfall in central Texas. About an hour later, the first Flash Flood Warning was issued by the National Weather Service at around 1:14 a.m. This warning also included the “considerable” tag, which should have triggered wireless emergency alerts to go out to cell phones and NOAA Weather Radios.
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Then at 3:35 a.m., the original warning was upgraded and included the verbiage, “Move to higher ground now. Act quickly to protect your life.” Less than 30 minutes later, the warning was upgraded again to a Flash Flood Emergency and would have triggered the wireless emergency alerts once again.
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Finally, at 5:34 a.m., a Flash Flood Warning for the Guadalupe River mentioned the “large and deadly flood wave” that was observed and moving down the river. Dozens of weather alerts were issued thereafter as the flood event unfolded across central Texas.
There was plenty of warning but the incompetent emergency managers in these communities dropped the ball. Every emergency vehicle in the flood area should have been running with lights and sirens ahead of he flood and giving warning over loudspeakers. They could have woke up everyone and given them a chance to flee to high ground. Instead, the managers mostly just counted on the cell phone alert system which works very poorly in the area because there are few cell towers.
Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said that it was unclear whether there was any communication between law enforcement and Camp Mystic after the initial flood watch alert went out but that the lack of proper cell service and limited communications towers in the Hill Country remain “very challenging.”
Oh, and the kids at Camp Mystic were not allowed to have cell phones.
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And this is when the government is just starting to strip out everything it used to do for the benefit of the people.
SO MANY people are going to die needlessly in the coming years.
Texas keeps being surprised by weather.
Have the death you voted for.
Remember when there was a natural disaster on the East Coast and when there were fires in California and Texans said it was God’s judgment?
I do.
Every time the dumbass Texans get fucked by their representatives the question their leadership for about a month from what I’ve seen 😂 then back to business as usual. they love the free market so much I’ll bet they still haven’t winterized their infrastructure after that cold snap that destroyed a bunch of people’s houses. They probably don’t even think about it anymore, guess we will find out the next time that it happens
the leaderships usually flee the state, and only come back after the damage is done or it become severe.
This is what happens when vital weather data is kept from forecasters and the weather service gets its funding shredded
Yes but NO ONE could have PREDICTED that
You could say a lack of funds wasn’t in the… forecast.
No, warnings were sent out by forecasters. It was hours before officials passed the word along.
The officials who let people die are saying it’s because funding was cut. Trump cut funding, so that’s why they waited 4 hours before posting the warnings to Facebook? Ok.
Harumph. That was because something something Biden and “old technology”, obvs.
Team Taco is only trying to make things more “efficient” and get rid of the (repeat after me, in a mindless drone), “waste, fraud, and abuse”! Team Taco is only trying to clean up the mess of the Biden administration who was letting this go on for far too long and was the worst President in history with the worst economy ever [1], yadda yadda. We should all be thanking Taco right now for his glorious plans for our future…
[1] Which Taco is going to keep repeating forever even if we could see the economic data ourselves under Biden. It’s about repeating the big lie over and over and over. Sadly, many on the left help him in this…
saving so much damn $$$ you’ll be sick of saving so much damn $$$…
It is almost like dumb shit Republicans are going to get you killed.
It’s like a death cult where they’re in a cult and their biggest objective is death
Good thing Texas Republicans killed the bill that would have expanded the warning systems.
Also actively took funding from existing systems that would warn of weather problems.
Between this and blaming wind turbines for their massive power outage a few years ago (instead of, you know, actually exploring the real cause), it seems Texas has a hate-hate relationship with weather and general preparedness.
We’ve known for decades that Texas has loose regulations allowing development to ignore flooding concerns. "Texas shoulders the most urban stormwater runoff of any state in the country ". After Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston in 2017, everyone was talking about the development issue, but alas, mostly just about Houston instead the state as a whole.
Post Harvey, The Atlantic had a big piece on how, “The combination of climate change and aggressive development made an event like this almost inevitable.”
Also from that 2017 disaster, The Washington Post concluded:
Thus, to ensure acceptable stormwater-system performance, jurisdictional agencies and officials must ensure that the type, timing and amount of real estate development are in sync with the capacity and configuration of the jurisdiction’s storm system. Many communities are at risk because of overbuilding or for allowing building in areas with inadequate infrastructure.
Some argued that “Houston isn’t flooded because of its land use planning” … but while the author there is an expert in urban planning, he is not an expert in hydrology.
Of course the recent tragedy was no where near Houston. It was closer to Austin and San Antonio. On Austin: “Flash flooding is a pressing concern for Austin, so much so that it has been labeled the “Flash Flood Alley” of Texas.” On San Santonio:
San Antonio is a populated area in one of the most flash-flood prone regions in North America. SARA manages a series of structural controls (dams and drainage systems) to help prevent and/or reduce flood problems. For example, the San Antonio River Tunnels (see illustration) proved invaluable as they diverted water safely underneath downtown during the 1998 and 2002 floods.
I don’t want to hear “No warning at all.” This was a risk known for decades where the state and municipalities decided they’d rather allow an eventual catastrophe than spend the money needed to prevent one.
I’m not arguing with your post, just one of your sources.
I live in Houston and was really interested in what that article has to say, because based on your comment, I thought, “Am I wrong? Was I misled by bad information and failed to do my due diligence?”
Nope, that article about Houston flooding is absolute trash.
One of his points he’s like, “I don’t even know what that means.”
One point he argues more green space would lead to more paved surfaces and then doesn’t really explain how that supposedly works.
Another point he says something along the lines of, “Like, I guess an argument COULD be made that some people were impacted because developers built on a flood plain…”
GTFO with that bullshit article.
Yeah, Harvey dropped more rain than the land, that was overbuilt, could have absorbed, but that was just one of the contributing man caused factors.
There was always going to be flooding from Harvey, but it was WAY worse than it should have been if proper planning had been used. But Houston, like Texas as a whole, seems allergic to zoning and real urban planning development.
Developers always have been and always will be happy to build anywhere, and cut every possible corner they can, as long as it stands for the for the 10 years they still have a warranty.
I agree wirth you, but since I’m not a hydrologist nor any other type of expert, I included that contrary piece as an opposing view on whether better planning could have helped. Since we now know that there’s been a plan to have warning sirens in the works for years, I think it obvious that the area is a known flood risk and at least that much COULD have been done.
Kerrville, where the campers all died, is an hour west of San Antonio, and 2 hours west of Austin. no where near the city limits of either city.
San Antonio lost 13 people in early June when a massive wall of flash flood water pushed every car on a specific section of road into a ditch and carried them a mile down stream. I don’t think anyone died in the most recent storm.
Austin had a similar event where one specific area where two rivers converge caught a group of people.
Kerrville is too small to get cited as an example in a big national report on Texas flood issues, so my citations are meant to show this is a problem for the whole state rather than a particular town. If you go to USGS, you’ll see they don’t even have a flow gauge upstream of Camp Mystic. The closest is downstream at gauge:hntt2(click dot on map to see readings). Simple link without map: https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/HNTT2
I just read a headline about how accurately these floods were forecast. How did they not know? Is Facebook how people get flood warnings?
Thats what happens when DOGE fires a bunch of NOAA meteorologists.
When nobody pays taxes, and the national shit gets gutted, your state doesn’t function properly.
This area is prone to flooding, according to scientists. This is when floods happen, according to scientists. Forecasters sent flood warnings hours in advance, based on the data.
Officials did not pass the word along. Massively fucking stupid thing to do. Waiting 4 hours and then you post to social media?
Parents had their kids staying in camps “without technology.” In flood lands, during flood season. Massively stupid thing to do. I mean how fucked in the head are these parents? They put their kids directly in harms way, took away their communication, and now many are dead.
I mean how fucked in the head are these parents? They put their kids directly in harms way, took away their communication, and now many are dead.
I mean, that’s just the free market at work. If they had done their research, they would have sent their daughters to a different camp that wouldn’t have flooded. No need for the government to be involved at all.
(Hope the /s isn’t needed)
it’s clear that no one can rely on help or warning from “officials” anymore. everyone needs to get themselves prepared for whatever weather disaster might happen in their area. supplies, bug out bags, escape plans–all of that
western NC is still trying to recover from the hurricane last september, with state legislature (all R) bickering and not passing the budget
it’s clear that no one can rely on help or warning from “officials” anymore. everyone needs to get themselves prepared for whatever weather disaster might happen in their area. supplies, bug out bags, escape plans–all of that
This is the Libertarian wet dream.
Every dumbfuck Dale Gribble that distrusted the Big Gubbermint couldn’t get normal Americans to buy into their Galt’s Gulch bullshit. Now that they’ve captured the government with the likes of Taco, they are going to FORCE normal Americans to join them in their stupid dystopian fantasies in Galt’s Gulch.
We all live in Galt’s Gulch now and I guess it’s prone to flash floods.
Can the bears just show up already? (I’ll take any opportunity I can get to expose more people to this hilarious, and informative, cautionary tale):
It’s a good book.
This has always been the far right endgame. They don’t want people to rely on government, so they make government unreliable. Citizens become more exploitable, and thus more profitable.
Saw an interview of a guy whose house had like 5 feet of water…
He swam out a broken window, climbed on an electrical box but couldn’t make it to the roof so he held on for 3 hours.
He said the phone alarm that there was a warning came thru while he was already outside clinging to the side of his house.
Hope he sees the connection in his voting habits. I hate to assume but he seems like a squeaker when it his turn at bat
Over 200 people died in winter storm Uri, we had the Uvakde shooting, and then 2022 had insanely low turnout (like 45%) and the Republicans held onto control at all levels in the state. This is another absolutely tragic loss of life, but I’d be surprised if it impacts their votes (Abbott won Uvalde county).
You know they won’t. They dont want to make it “political.”
Now’s not the right time for this conversation.
Or tomorrow, or the next day. In fact let’s just keep our heads in the sand and keep doing nothing!
What do Republicans (fascists) actually want or even do? Besides raising taxes, expanding military budget, war, dismantling institutions and programs, and rounding up immigrants. Crazy people vote for them, they literally dismantle everything to line their pocketbooks. They have no actual policy.
Furthermore, they don’t think there is anything you can do about weather/climate change, school and mass shootings, housing, education, healthcare, etc. Anytime some major event or catastrophe happens… “these things just happen, nothing you can do about it! Thoughts and prayers! Let’s not make it political.”
And then we just move on, with no actions being taken at all while everything around us just gets worse. Yes you CAN do things to help mitigate weather disasters and school shootings and all the rest. If they don’t think there is a way why are they in leadership positions? That’s the hypocrisy.
What do Republicans (fascists) actually want or even do?
To be feared. To exercise each and every whim with absolute authority and no consequences.
Outside of that, the usual. Chicks, football, cocaine, whoopin’ and a-hollerin’.
They want to own everything, even the people.
Theyre living in their power fantasy and are willing to destroy everything to gain more of it.
