Texas Tragedy

Sparkchaser · 2025-07-06T20:46:51+00:00

Been following this for a couple of days. It’s unbelievable. At least 70 dead in central Texas flash floods, with over 2 dozen missing. Many of the victims were children at a summer camp. No one expected the amount of rain that fell. The Guadalupe River rose about 26 feet in 45 minutes. More rain is expected. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-hill-country-severe-floods/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/jul/06/texas-floods-search-missing-camp-mystic-girls-live-news-updates

digitalfutur

urbanriot Yes they were preventable, but like most deadly disasters, there’s more than one event in the chain of disaster.

px_eliezer_

urbanriot A flood “watch” notification was issued at 1:18 PM the day before. You can google screenshots of meteorologists providing these alerts. For the evening news they reiterated the flash flood “watch” notification. At around 1 AM they issued a flash flood “warning”. Channel 11 Houston is one of those stations.

I certainly won’t disagree, but at present we don’t even know if the camp even HAD any TV sets. access to TV broadcast signal and/or access to cable TV.

Likewise did they have Internet access… and if so was anybody actually ON the Internet at a relevant time… ?

Kerr County is QUITE rural.

Yes, the city of Kerrville is a decent size but as noted the camp is not in the legal city limits, and geographically is several miles outside.

And it’s very hilly, hence the name Hill Country.

If your background is big city (going by your screen name), you might not have the perspective of very rural Texas.

(Again, I do agree with your overall point).

On a parallel note, this camp having a Christian and family-type orientation, probably watching TV or being on the Internet were NOT common things, aside from any technology issues.

egeezer

px_eliezer_
Here’s a coverage map for NWS transmitters in the area;
https://www.weather.gov/nwr/states_dyn?state=TX
While it appears that coverage is good, with overlapping transmitters on different frequencies, Wx transmitters are HF so there could be low spots where signals are poor.
WWF90 162.450
WWG93 162.475

Guy54435

Flash floods—how do the hills and valleys turn rain into a wall of water?

px_eliezer_

Transmitters are great, but (even assuming signals are ok), who has Receivers ??

This whole thing is horrible, horrible, but at least there are some things that may help to reduce loss of life in the next flood (and there WILL be more floods):

1) It will now be harder to cut back NOAA/NWS.

2) It will now be harder to cut back FEMA.

3) People will be more aware, dare I say more paranoid, in these flood-prone regions.

egeezer

px_eliezer_ Transmitters are great, but (even assuming signals are ok), who has Receivers ??

If they do, do they have S.A.M.E notifications configured, turned on, and checked for functionality and operation? We have one on each floor in our house that are always powered on and configured. Although commercial receivers might be in order, even consumer grade receivers like Midland WR400s would be useful. We have these, and are quite satisfied with their performance.

I’ve seen and heard comments by people who don’t have radios or turn them off because they consider the notifications to be irritating, ‘crying wolf’, or not credible enough to pay attention to. I would hope that this is not the case with those responsible for peoples’ lives and safety.

Dks01

It turns out that a key senior NOAA staff position in Austin/San Antonio was vacant when a key senior meteorologist retired in April following recent NOAA staff cuts.

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Paul Yura, the warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio office, has announced he has taken the early retirement offer as part of NOAA’s recent cuts to personnel and budget.

Yura has over 32 years experience, spending more than half of his career at the NWS Austin/San Antonio office. In the process, he gained tremendous experience understanding local weather patterns while ensuring timely warnings get disseminated to the public in a multitude of ways.

The warning coordination meteorologist (WCM) is a senior role at a local NWS office. According to NOAA, “The WCM coordinates the warning function of the office with the outside world. This would include heading the Skywarn Program, conducting spotter training and being a voice to the local media for the office.”

Only the ‘meteorologist in charge’ (MIC) has a higher position within a local office.

https://www.kxan.com/weather/weather-blog/head-of-local-weather-warnings-takes-early-retirement-as-noaa-cuts-continue/

The context of the retirement is explained in this way.

When a reporter demanded to know why the summer camps along the Guadalupe River weren’t evacuated before its waters reached their deadly peak on July 4, Rob Kelly, the highest-ranking local official, had a simple answer: “No one knew this kind of flood was coming.”

Why not? Kerr County, Texas, had lots of history to go on — as Kelly went on to explain: “We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States.” The National Weather Service had even brought in extra staff that night. Most important, the service had issued three increasingly dire warnings early that morning — at 1:14 a.m., 4:03 a.m. and 6:06 a.m.

What Kelly didn’t mention, but which has since become well known, is that the Weather Service employee whose job it was to make sure those warnings got traction — Paul Yura, the long-serving meteorologist in charge of “warning coordination” — had recently taken an unplanned early retirement amid cuts pushed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. He was not replaced.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/opinion/texas-floods-nws.html (Paywall)

HFB1217

Did his early retirement and not being replaced effect the warning system we will never really know but it defiantly did not help it.

Dks01

HFB1217 It appears that it may have had an impact as his job was to ensure warnings “got traction”. There were other failures, as well.

According to audio obtained by KSAT, at 4:22am, a fireman with the Ingram Volunteer Fire Department reportedly called into emergency dispatch to warn that the Guadalupe River appeared to be rapidly overshooting its banks. Around that time, the river rose as much as 26 feet in 45 minutes, according to state officials.

The firefighter urged officials to authorize a CodeRED alert, an emergency system that would send warning messages to the cellphones of people who had previously signed up for the service.

“The Guadalupe Schumacher sign is underwater on State Highway 39. Is there any way we can send a CodeRED out to our Hunt residents, asking them to find higher ground or stay home?” the firefighter asked, according to KSAT.

A Kerr County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher responded that the request would need approval from a supervisor.

The earliest CodeRED alerts appear to have reached local residents about an hour later, according to multiple local media outlets, while some reported not getting their first CodeRED alert until after 10am.

“It should have been an immediate county-wide alert,” resident Louis Kocurek, who didn’t get his first alert until after 10am, told Texas Public Radio.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-texas-firefighter-pleaded-for-an-alert-amid-rising-flood-waters-it-took-an-hour-to-go-out/ar-AA1IhVT6?cvid=AD26F1318D7C453A98A2FA8E4819B1CB&ocid=hpmsn

Multiple failures in multiple places. The after action debrief should be interesting, at say the least.

egeezer

Dks01 Multiple failures in multiple places. The after action debrief should be interesting, at say the least.

That’s a fair assessment. The public deserves an objective thorough review, and planners and stakeholders should be working together to revise both short and long term emergency planning.

urbanriot

px_eliezer_ I certainly won’t disagree, but at present we don’t even know if the camp even HAD any TV sets. access to TV broadcast signal and/or access to cable TV.

You should hear my wife rage about this, as far as she’s concerned it’s gross negligence of all parties concerned that had guardianship of those children not to have been monitoring for the potential for floods every day in a place called “flash flood alley”. Actually she takes a step back and she’s enraged that they’d even have a camp in such a place for children.

Dks01 So we blame the victims.

Sure, if that’s what you want to do. Who else would you blame? If I lived in “flash flood valley” I wouldn’t be surprised if I received… flash floods.

px_eliezer_ Likewise did they have Internet access

…? I literally wrote TV and radio above, who cares if they had internet access. People have been using radio for over a century.

I don’t know about the rest of you but for the past many decades our home has the radio and/or the TV turned on every morning during the winter to hear if there are any environmental issues we should be concerned about. If I lived in “flash flood valley” I’d have that radio on every day.

px_eliezer_ If your background is big city (going by your screen name), you might not have the perspective of very rural Texas.

If you live in the United States you might not have perspective of how large Ontario is; It’s larger than Texas.

px_eliezer_ this camp having a Christian and family-type orientation, probably watching TV or being on the Internet were NOT common things

That borders on intentional negligence then, considering they’re in “flash flood valley” and not concerning themselves with avenues of alert. But again - radio. Even the Amish can listen to radios for emergency preparedness. They’re also working on a project to make radio more available to groups like the Amish - https://vlab.noaa.gov/web/weather-awareness-for-a-rural-nation-warn-taskforce

InternetJeff

urbanriot NOAA also issued the information that led to these news reports. NOAA did its job.

It should also be noted…

Weather service had extra staffers

urbanriot

InternetJeff One meteorologist had said that its possible that people in general have ‘warning fatigue’ in the sense that they’re constantly being warned by weather events that turn out to be nothing of concern and as such people may have actually seen these warnings and ignored them.

I can relate. We continually get heat wave warnings here and it’s just your basic hot summer day. In the winter we get winter storm watches and nothing happens.

We’re almost at the point where we need to see, “okay, listen, it’s REALLY hot outside!” or “no, seriously, this time we’re going to have a real blizzard!”

Guy54435

THE ULTIMATE WEATHER EDUCATION WEBSITE

Sparkchaser

urbanriot One meteorologist had said that its possible that people in general have ‘warning fatigue’ in the sense that they’re constantly being warned by weather events

I get that BUT:
They are in an extremely hazardous area.
They are responsible for a lot of children.

InternetJeff

urbanriot constantly being warned by weather events that turn out to be nothing of concern

The ability of things like being able to “predict the weather” has generally been oversold, and we live in an environment of over saturation and overload of warnings, notifications, cautions, alerts, and alarms in all aspects of society (not just weather). The more dire and frequent the “warnings” for things that do not pan out, the lower the public confidence is for future warnings. People become numb to it and just shut it off or tune it out.

Case in point, for the ridiculous highly speculative hurricane “spaghetti models” that are publicized in the media, those just spread FUD. In this example for Ian, what was being publicized was it no way representative of where the storm was actually going.

Actual path:

Somewhat-Reticent

InternetJeff Before the event, it’s all about statistics & probabilities.
Afterward, it’s simply facts, as in History.

px_eliezer_

urbanriot If you live in the United States you might not have perspective of how large Ontario is; It’s larger than Texas.

And maybe big parts of Ontario don’t have local TV broadcast signals…

px_eliezer_

urbanriot Actually she takes a step back and she’s enraged that they’d even have a camp in such a place for children.

I [was] going to say that, the camp has been there for 99 years.

However, I now see:

Floodwaters have invaded the grounds of Camp Mystic many times since it was founded nearly 100 years ago. In July 1932, torrential rains swept away some of the cabins.

In August 1978, severe flooding across the Texas Hill Country forced the camp to suspend activities for several days. In December 1984, one of the camp’s leaders, who was about to give birth, had to be airlifted from the site after floodwaters made nearby roads impassable.

At a televised news briefing hours after the July 4 flood, Kerr County Judge Robert Kelly pointed out that flooding is a perennial problem in the Hill Country – although rarely of the magnitude seen that day. “We deal with floods on a regular basis,” Kelly said, calling the Guadalupe “the most dangerous river valley in the United States.”

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2025/07/10/camp-mystic-was-in-the-nation-s-most-dangerous-river-valley-parents-say-they-never-knew/84542253007/

(In Texas, this category of “judge” is not a court judge, but rather a county government official).

That IS one hell of a thing…

ugly95

Sparkchaser I get that BUT:
They are in an extremely hazardous area.
They are responsible for a lot of children.

The expected standard seems unclear. On one hand some are suggesting that people are negligent for not listening to the radio or TV. But also suggesting that the problem is that there are too many warnings because you just can’t trust the experts.

Of course, that’s the nature of warnings. They warn you of potential danger. If there is potential for a problem and no warning is made, then that is a failure to warn and those responsible would be raked over the coals if no warning was given when a problem occurs. If there is a potential for a problem and a warning is made, but no problem ever happens, those responsible get criticized for being wrong. That’s largely a no-win situation, but we know what choice would be worse if the worst were to happen. When mitigation measures work, most people are unaware that they worked, and they become an easy target for those that always want to cut costs.

The way to get better results would be to fund research, and invest in expertise instead of defunding science and intentionally undermining expertise.

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