Let's try this.
Last year my company decided to go rafting. The place was just near the bottom of the mountains, the rivers are all going down valleys. We get heavy rain in the summer, and it can cause flash floods. So, instead of rafting, because it was cold and I didn't want to sit on a raft in the middle of the river even if it wasn't cold, I went walking around the area. And I walked through this little tourist village that was being demolished. Why? Because they wanted to reduce the risk of flash floods killing people.
It happens here, I think maybe the year before, maybe last year, I can't remember, there was a big flash flood and people died.
Also, about 4 years ago there was a huge flood where my other half's parents live. They literally live on the flood plain, not only were warnings issued, but people turned up to tell people to get the hell out of there. Nobody died there and it was a HUGE flood. Literally people's houses got destroyed.
Here's what I'd be thinking would happen.
Weather warning at 1pm the day before.
NWS says Flash Flood Warnings were issued on July 3 and early July 4 in Central Texas, giving more than three hours of warning.
www.nbcdfw.com
"The NWS said that on the morning of July 3, the office in Austin/San Antonio held forecast briefings for emergency management and issued a Flood Watch that afternoon."
So, if you've already got a weather warning out, what are people doing about it? What's going on on the ground?
" The NWS said Flash Flood Warnings were issued on the night of July 3 and in the early morning of July 4, "giving preliminary lead times of more than three hours before warning criteria were met.""
So, 1pm there's a weather warning, 6:11pm there's a weather warning talking about flash flooding. 6:20pm there's a weather warning for an area including Kerrville. A weather warning was issued at 11pm for Bandera county, just sound of Kerrville. At 1am there was another for Kerrville and Bandera.
And the WHOLE TIME this was happening, NOBODY, not a single person, was seemingly in charge of getting the message to camp sites along the river. Can you imagine that?
In an age of instant communication, smart phones with data, nobody managed to contact people and say "hey, er... you might want to get out of there."
There didn't seem to be any emergency management in place at all. Why?
en.wikipedia.org
"Prior to the floods, Kerr County lacked a flood warning system. A system including sirens was advocated for in 2016 by the then Kerr County sheriff. Discussions about funding and constructing a system continued on and off until at least 2021. The current Kerr County Judge said that the lack of a warning system was due to the cost to pay for the system and claimed that local residents were resistant to the idea due to the cost."
Oh, the locals didn't want to pay for it. The state didn't want to pay for it. The feds didn't want to pay for it. Nobody wanted to pay for it, because, HEY IT'S TEXAS, we don't pay for not goord damn weather system, ain't no climate change here.
Even if there weren't climate change....
"The
Guadalupe River, along with surrounding rivers in the region have flooded multiple times in recent decades, often with deadly consequences. This includes flooding in July 1987 that killed 10, flooding in
October 1998 that killed 31, flooding in May 2015 on the nearby
Blanco River that killed 13, and flooding just 3 weeks earlier in nearby
San Antonio that killed 13."
I mean.... how ******* stupid do people have to be?
This was SO AVOIDABLE it's embarrassing.
www.nbcnews.com
ny1.com
