Texas officials face a meticulous examination of the response to catastrophic and deadly floods
Before going to bed before the July 4 holidays, Christopher Flowers checked the weather while staying with a friend along the Guadalupe river. Nothing in the forecasts has alarmed it.
A few hours later, he rushed safely: he woke up in the darkness of electrical power and deep ankle. His family quickly scrambled nine people in the attic. The phones burst out alerts, the flowers remembered on Saturday, but he did not remember when in chaos, they started.
“What they need is a kind of external system, like a tornado warning that tells people to go out now,” said Flowers, 44.
The destructive waters that started before sunrise in Texas Hill Country killed at least 43 people in Kerr County, the authorities announced on Saturday, and an unknown number of people remained missing. Those who are still not counted included 27 girls from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along a river in Kerr County where most of the dead have been recovered.
But while the authorities are launching one of the greatest research and rescue efforts in the recent history of Texas, they have been the subject of a meticulous examination on preparations and why the residents and the summer camps for young people who are strewn along the river were not alerted earlier or were informed to evacuate.
The National Weather Service sent a series of lightning flood warnings in the early hours before issuing emergencies of the flash floods – a rare alert informing imminent danger.
Local officials insisted that no one saw the flood potential coming and defended their actions.
“There will be a lot of fingers, a lot of quarters of the second and Monday morning,” said the Republican representative of the United States, Chip Roy, whose district includes Kerr county. “There are a lot of people who say” why “and” how “and I understand that.”
When warnings started
A first surveillance of the floods – which generally urges residents to be aware of the weather conditions – was issued by the local office of national weather services at 1:18 p.m. Thursday.
It predicts between 5 and 7 inches (12.7 to 17.8 centimeters) of rain. Office meteorological messaging, including automated alerts delivered to mobile phones for people in threatened areas, has become more and more worrying in the early morning hours on Friday, urging people to move to higher areas and evacuate the areas subject to floods, said Runyen Jason, meteorologist at the National Meteorological Services.
At 4:03 am, the office issued an urgent warning which increased the potential for catastrophic damage and a serious threat to human life.
Jonathan Porter, the chief meteorologist of Accuweather, a private weather forecast company that uses data from the National Weather Service, said that it seemed to be evacuations and other proactive measures could have been taken to reduce the risk of death.
“Persons, companies and governments should take measures on the basis of warnings of lightning floods that are issued, regardless of the amounts of precipitation that occurred or planned,” said a statement.
Officials say they didn’t expect it
Local officials said they did not expect such an intense downpour that was equivalent to rainy months for the region.
“We know we get rains. We know that the river increases, “said Kerr county judge Rob Kelly, the highest elected official of the county. “But no one saw it coming.”
Kerrville City director Dalton Rice said that he was jogging along the river early in the morning and had not noticed any problem at 4 am just over an hour later, at 5:20 am, the water level had increased spectacularly and “we were almost unable to get out of the park,” he said.
Rice has also noted that the public can become desensitized at too many weather warnings.
No county flood alert system
Kelly said that the county had considered a flood alert system along the river which would have worked as a Tornado warning mermaid about six or seven years ago, before being elected, but that the idea never took off due to the expenses.
“We have already examined it … The public has disturbed at the price,” said Kelly.
He said he didn’t know what type of security and evacuation plans that the camps could have had.
“What I know is that the flood first hit camp, and it came in the middle of the night. I don’t know where the children were,” he said. “I don’t know what type of alarm systems they had. It will come out in time. ”
The American Secretary for Homeland Security Kristi Noem said on Saturday that it was difficult for forecasters to predict how the rain would fall. She said that the Trump administration would prioritize the national meteorological service technology used to present warnings.
“We know that everyone wants more warning time, and that is why we are working to upgrade the technology that has been overlooked for too long to make sure that families have as much notice as possible,” said Noem at a press conference with state and federal leaders.
The meteorological service had additional staff members
The National Weather Service Office of New Braunfels, which provides forecasts for Austin, San Antonio and the surroundings, had additional staff in service during storms, said Runyen.
When the office would generally have two forecasters in service in clear weather, they had up to five staff members.
“There were additional people here that evening, and it is typical in all meteorological service offices – you make staff for an event and bring people to overtime and hold people,” said Runyen.
