Why America Still Can't Get Disaster Alerts Right (wsj.com) 177
US's emergency-warning infrastructure failed to prevent more than 100 deaths during flash flooding in Kerr County, Texas over the July 4 weekend, despite repeated warnings from the National Weather Service. At least 27 young campers and counselors died at Camp Mystic when the Guadalupe River surged during early morning hours. The alerts never reached residents who lacked cellphone service, had silenced notifications, or didn't carry phones with them.
Similar communication failures occurred during recent Los Angeles wildfires and Maui blazes. Maui's outdoor sirens never sounded during 2023 wildfires when cellular networks failed. Nearly 30% of Texas residents opt out of wireless emergency alerts, the highest rate nationally. Rural officials often lack funding or permission to send alerts through broadcasters and cellphones. So what's going on?
Federal, state and local authorities share responsibility for alerting citizens through multiple platforms, but the country's patchwork of digital and physical emergency-alert tools often lags behind rapidly developing weather events, WSJ argues.
The Atlantic has a story that adds more color: It details how officials lack training in writing effective alerts, how messages like "move to higher ground" are meaningless without context, and how the absence of warning-coordination meteorologists creates communication gaps between weather services and local authorities.
Similar communication failures occurred during recent Los Angeles wildfires and Maui blazes. Maui's outdoor sirens never sounded during 2023 wildfires when cellular networks failed. Nearly 30% of Texas residents opt out of wireless emergency alerts, the highest rate nationally. Rural officials often lack funding or permission to send alerts through broadcasters and cellphones. So what's going on?
Federal, state and local authorities share responsibility for alerting citizens through multiple platforms, but the country's patchwork of digital and physical emergency-alert tools often lags behind rapidly developing weather events, WSJ argues.
The Atlantic has a story that adds more color: It details how officials lack training in writing effective alerts, how messages like "move to higher ground" are meaningless without context, and how the absence of warning-coordination meteorologists creates communication gaps between weather services and local authorities.
Simple... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I was getting multiple alerts per night about some brat that's gone missing five counties over. What was I supposed to do about that or why should I care?
Exactly. If the first five messages aren't going to get a person to let the kid out of their cage in the basement, the sixth message probably won't do much either.
More seriously though the harm is sending out a message isn't usually as great as the potential harm from not doing so. I'd rather get an energy alert about needing to seek immediate shelter that turns out to be wrong or a bit overblown than not getting one at all.
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More seriously though the harm is sending out a message isn't usually as great as the potential harm from not doing so.
That can easily be wrong. If you save 1 person but cause 10,000 to switch off alerts so that they don't get them when there's an actual hurricane, you can actually do lots more harm by sending a message than by not sending it, possibly even leading to several hundred deaths. When every alert is delivered to several million people then those numbers aren't unreasonable. People must have ways to opt out of specific types and locations of alerts without opting out of all of the alerts.
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Re:Simple... (Score:4, Insightful)
Came here to say this, as well. The useless amber alerts (and silver/blue alerts) from 600 miles away are the number one reason I and most people I know turn them off.
The reality is that basically all amber alerts are "false alarms" in that people can't do anything with them in most situations:
- At home? Useless unless the abductor is breaking into your house with the abductee.
- At work? Basically same as above. Office workers won't see them, and retail/similar employees probably aren't allowed on their cellphones to get the alert.
- Driving? You shouldn't be getting out your cellphone to check an alert while you're driving.
We all know what happens when people get useless alerts: they turn them off or just ignore them.
Fortunately, you can usually turn of JUST amber alerts on phones, but not all radio devices.
S.A.M.E. (Score:3)
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Fortunately, you can usually turn of JUST amber alerts on phones
Unfortunately, they don't have a separate category for "Silver Alerts". Around here they keep sending them as "Extreme Alerts", which ought to be reserved for flash flooding and other things which put large numbers of people in danger, not just one Alzheimer's case.
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"Around here they keep sending them as "Extreme Alerts""
Politics, unfortunately. Any attempt to reduce their classification would immediately produce howls of "It's TERRIBLE how you just want abducted children/people with dementia/police officers to DIE!"
Wait, what? (Score:2)
Wait, your amber alerts come as emergency notifications? That's absurd! The EU alert system has several levels, you can opt out of the low ones, but not the highest level. That will show up on your phone whatever your notification settings, but it is only sent if there's grave danger, like this flash flood, so you are only expected to get those very rarely, maybe years apart...
No substitute for a real test (Score:2, Interesting)
Amen, I did the same; WTF am I going to do about a lost child or Alzheimer patient 20 miles away at 3am? And then "wind advisories" did similar: it's always windy here, tell us when it's NOT windy.
They need level threshold: those who want only "major" issues should be able to shut off small potato alerts. Unless Dorothy has an 80% of flying by, I don't want a wind advisory.
That being said, major-event alarms need to be tested at least yearly using our actual phones. There is no substitute for live testing.
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About 10(?) years ago, I was at a Gabriel Iglesias show at PHX (known at the time as Talking Stick) Arena.
He had literally just asked everyone in the arena to turn off their cell phones, when every single phone in the arena went off... Amber Alert. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen.
Re: Simple... (Score:2)
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This is exactly right. The alerts are worse than worthless because they are delivered to people for whom there is no sense in them receiving them, and they cause devices to make noise at times when they should not be. There is not only zero value attached to delivering an alert to me at a time at which I am asleep as I cannot do anything about it, there is negative value because it causes me to turn off alerts so that it does not happen again. I have even received alerts for missing children who have alread
Re: Simple... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because someone else got the alert and recognized the vehicle pulling up to the store and just saved a life that way. Sorry it disturbed your slumber after a OT shift at your second job that you need just to pay the rent.
Fixed that for you. Your argument isn't wrong per se, but if you don't offer a more charitable account of why someone might be more than merely inconvenienced by 5 alerts in a night, you're going to be easily dismissed as missing the point. The situation is not exactly like crying wolf, since the issues are very real, but the result is the same: alert fatigue. The problem that should be addressed is: how do we ensure alerts go out to people who might actually be able to action them, and not to people who cannot? I know that's easier said than done, but like the OP said, it's hard to care about something that you can't do anything about... might as well be getting air raid warnings for Kyiv for all the difference it makes.
Re: Simple... (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally turned off amber alerts, but fucking California flags all of silver, ebony and feather alerts as extreme threats to life and property, which is supposed to be "if you don't act now, good chance you're dead" not "a Native American is missing, please join us in a game of where's waldo even though you're nowhere nearby". I got sick of it happening every other week, so I literally turned all but national alerts off (even though grapheneos allows turning those off too) because national alerts are th
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The first step is to put tiers of alerts. Emergency alerts operate as normal, while amber alerts can be setup so that they don't awaken people but still display when the phone is checked.
This was demonstrated in Canada - the most frequent alert type received was an Amber Alert, and when it started, people had two amber alerts per child because the English
Noise Rate (Score:3, Interesting)
Using the system for things like a missing child means that you are broadcast an alert t
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Using the system for things like a missing child means that you are broadcast an alert to everyone in ~100km or so which makes them largely noise
You're assuming the system works the same way everywhere, but you are talking about a different country. Right now I am in awe, absolutely SHOCKED that the system would alert you to something 100km away. I couldn't imagine a country implementing a system in such a stupid way.Emergency alerts where I live can be highly localised, often to a sub 5km radius. Major toxic fire alerts? Yeah we localise those to maybe 1-2 surrounding suburbs. I've never received anything other than the 6 monthly test alert where I
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For the missing child scenario, they cast a wide net because they want to try to cover about a 2-3 hour radius of likely travel so that someone might see a license plate. But as was pointed out, this can be useful for people actively driving or in a parking lot, not so useful when it's on a nightstand indoors at home where there's zero chance the person is going to see any license plate.
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"In Texas, we can get a half dozen "watch" alerts a day when storm systems are moving through."
This is an education problem; you should know the difference between "watch" and "warning". "Watch" is just "things are looking a bit dicey, be alert for more info." "Warning" is "bad stuff is happening, take appropriate action."
A GUI alert with no bing noise ... (Score:2)
Perhaps "watch" can bring up one GUI warning, no bing. Launch some government agency app if you want to follow in real time.
"Warning" can go bing. Maybe even go bing during sleep mode based on proximity?
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The thing is, too many false alarms, or in this case, alarms that don't apply to you, dilute the power of alerts. If 99% of the alerts you receive, don't require you to do anything, then you're going to likely miss that 1% that do require action.
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The alerts are supposed to be localized to the area where they can do some good. When I get an alert about something on the other side of the state at 3 A.M. It has missed the mark, unless that ever so rare silver or possibly white Honda drives through my bedroom window (which can't happen for at least 3 hours given how far away it is), there's zero chance I will see it.
Now, if they displayed the alert on the signs over the interstate, they would better target people who might actually see it.
Re: Simple... (Score:3)
Amber alerts shouldn't wake people up.
The nature of them is that people who are already awake and alert can potentially respond; but they aren't applicable to people sleeping.
The fix, for the very rare circumstance where such an alert should wake people up is to structure special alert for that.
Weather alerts, flood, tornado, etc. should be able to wake people up.
Missing kids aren't in that list.
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Oh they'll do it anyway.
Besides, most amber alerts, when I've seen them followed up on, are more likely custody disputes than "Strange man jumps out of bush and steals kid" type thing. ie a parent is told emphatically by a Judge they're not allowed to go near one of their own children (usually for a good reason), they grab them anyway, and an amber alert is issued.
(Which is why they almost always have a full description of both adult and child, and the car they're in's license plate.)
Not suggesting these ar
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While his comment was a bit off putting, there's a point about overuse of the system.
A child goes missing. That's unfortunate. Perhaps not as unfortunate as you might guess, it's often a custody dispute with lower risks than the alert would make you think, but still worth getting the word out.
But 150 miles away, on a nightstand where it's certain that I won't be recognizing the license plate in the alert, there's not much to expect that I'll be able to do anything helpful. Sometimes the alerts are pointles
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Wow, the description of a mother who persuaded a judge to deny custody to a father (exactly how do you suppose she did that? I assume you're going to accuse her of sleeping with her - in the real world judges HATE giving sole custody to a single parent) as a "Karen" really helps add to the level of misogyny dripping from this post.
It's a shame because you weren't wrong about amber alerts mostly being about custody rather than strangers. But that doesn't make them invalid. A parent protecting their kid again
Nothing was going to help (Score:2, Insightful)
From what I've read, nothing was going to help. Kids in csmos, probably scattered doing activities - and the river rose around 30 feet in less than an hour?
Upstream was a weird storm that remained stationary while dropping 2 feet of rain. Impossible to predict, and once it happened, there was basically no time to warn folks.
Re:Nothing was going to help (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I've read, nothing was going to help. Kids in csmos, probably scattered doing activities - and the river rose around 30 feet in less than an hour?
Upstream was a weird storm that remained stationary while dropping 2 feet of rain. Impossible to predict, and once it happened, there was basically no time to warn folks.
The river that swept away those girls actually rose by up to 45ft in an hour. And the NWS had extra staff on hand as they knew there was a possibility of flooding. Flash Flood watches went out at least 3 hours prior. It was just one of those situations where a number of things combined quickly to make a tragedy. The storm grew fast. The camp was in a valley that used to have flooding problems but, since there hadn't been one in years, people got complacent. And of course, it happened in the middle of the night, while everyone is asleep. In Summer Camp. It was, pardon the expression, a perfect storm of things.
Re:Nothing was going to help (Score:5, Informative)
. It was, pardon the expression, a perfect storm of things.
It seems that the one thing that would have helped would be actual sirens in the area. This was something that was recommended in 2016 [npr.org] and rejected because 1 million pounds was considered too much.
That's not just about a perfect storm. Clearly with sirens this could have been avoided. The question is, given that the need for sirens had been identified and then rejected, what was put in place instead and was the plan that was put in place followed?
You know I hear this every time (Score:2)
The first time it happens to you yeah maybe. The second or third time sure. By the time you're on movies 6 and the shark is beating a supersonic jet you just stopped going in the water.
But nobody likes to learn and nobody likes to iterate.
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An extreme weather alert was issued hours before hand at 1:14AM. The flood waters started rising near where everyone died at 4am. The rise in the water upstream was also plenty of time beforehand (3:35 a.m five miles north of Camp Mystic). If the weather warnings had been delivered immediately they became active and if sirens had gone off as soon as flash flooding was detected then evacuation would have been fully possible.
There are a bunch of people that made what might seem stupid decisions around this th
Re:Nothing was going to help (Score:5, Informative)
Those are not relevant to this particular case
This is incorrect. Turns out, that the person responsible for getting alerts to Texas officials left the NWS earlier this year ( https://www.pressreader.com/us... [pressreader.com] ), taking the early retirement option. And he was not replaced because changing positions makes you a "temporary" employee, and thus eligible for termination.
This is a rare case where we can pinpoint the EXACT sequence starting with Trump's decisions and ending with innocent deaths.
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Okay, I found Cyberax's other comment with this link - https://www.kxan.com/weather/w... [kxan.com]
Since that office did actually issue an alert, I'm not clear yet what is claimed to have gone wrong
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Was there a direction that the office should have contacted but failed to? I haven't seen any evidence of that.
The NWS was issuing multiple warnings, and a person with knowledge of local details would have had a chance to raise the local authorities.
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Yeah, that is interesting and difficult because the weather center did raise alerts. They did contact the local authorities. Hopefully in some of the lawsuits or inquiries that happen following this someone will raise precisely what that guy would have done, whether the same thing was done and, if not, why not.
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The Snopes article says someone from the agency says it was fully staffed at the time. What does that even mean? For example — with imaginary numbers for illustrative purposes because we do not know the true numbers. But by all accounts staff levels and seniority have not increased.
Suppose that in January 2025 you have 100
Re: Nothing was going to help (Score:2)
"The people who blamed the person who cut the NOAA before actually checking out if it's true have done almost as much damage as the people who failed in this particular situation."
You, sir, are smoking tiny orange dick.
Re:Nothing was going to help (Score:4, Informative)
From what I've read, nothing was going to help. Kids in csmos, probably scattered doing activities - and the river rose around 30 feet in less than an hour?
The flooding occurred early Friday morning with the rise starting around 4am . I hardly doubt the campers were "scattered doing activities" at 4am. We do not know what warnings the camp got. We do know the National Weather Service issued a warning at 1am about possible flooding and at 4am as a flood watch instead of a mere warning. We also know that the campers themselves did not have cellphones as it was a stipulation of the camp that they not have their cellphones. We do not know if camp officials received warnings.
Upstream was a weird storm that remained stationary while dropping 2 feet of rain. Impossible to predict, and once it happened, there was basically no time to warn folks.
It took about 45 minutes to river to rise to peak. It was possible to warn them, but we will wait on an investigation to determine if it was practical to warn people.
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it's weird then that other camps in the area evacuated
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it's weird then that other camps in the area evacuated
Do you have a link for that? I searched google and didn't find that stated so easily.
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"weird" storms that keep happening more frequently.
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From what I've read, nothing was going to help
The kids at the camp who were in cabins on higher ground all survived. The cabins where the campers died NEVER should have been there (and it seems the long-term owners of the camp knew it from prior flash-flooding incidents). Relying on alerts is foolish because they often don't work.
Re: Nothing was going to help (Score:2)
This. There flatly should not be a camp there, period.
I blame federal flood relief for this. As a society we are used to the government paying for things to be rebuilt in the very same place where they were destroyed by a flood. I'm not against flood relief, but I am completely against the government paying for rebuilding in the same place which is definitely going to flood again. Relief funds should be only for relocation, and part of getting them should be giving up the land, which should become national
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We already know what the cause (Score:3, Interesting)
So for example the kids that died at that camp eight of the 17 cabins were in a known high-risk area according to government reports but the government reports didn't include current climate change related data so 9 of the cabins that were all so at high risk weren't included in that.
of course this is all include point because if you've got 8 cabins in a high risk flood zone the other nine are probably not safe either. But the right wing is already splitting hairs to blame FEMA so they can shut it down.
Oh and the governor of Texas is currently working hard to get money from FEMA while also working hard to shut down fema. He is literally on Trump's board that was set up to disable and destroy FEMA so that the money from it could be pocketed by billionaires.
Bottom line this is Trump's fault. And the fault of the Republican party that let him do it. We all know it and we're all going to sit around here while disingenuous assholes derail the conversation in a variety of ways to deflect blame from Trump and his political party.
If you live in a place that disasters can strike just know now that you will have little or no warning and little or no help to recover.
If you're a child I am fucking so sorry that my generation fucked up so bad for you.
If you're a Democrat or even a non-voter given what I know about voter suppression you did what you could.
If you voted republican, well have the day you voted for.
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Though I agree with your take on Trump, blaming him for everything that goes wrong, is just as intellectually lazy as Trump claiming to find all kinds of "waste, frau, and abuse" through DOGE cuts. Reality is more nuanced than that, and the factors that led to this catastrophe are also more nuanced than that. It's incorrect to point to any one person or policy, for this disaster.
Re:We already know what the cause (Score:4, Insightful)
Intellectually lazy is assuming that cuts will not affect services. the county where most deaths occurred was missing critical staff at the federal level not to mention that they were looking to others to finance their emergency response while the county downriver with their emergency response system had no deaths due to the floods.
I have yet to see an entity restored to it's original glory by the cut and burn in order to rebuild mentality. In this case we are still in the cut and burn faze and I don't have much confidence that their will be a serious rebuild faze. Pork barrels don't work that way.
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So one county did the right thing and saw no deaths, while another county did not, and that's Trump's fault? If it were Trump's fault, wouldn't that have resulted in similar tragedy in both counties?
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This camp was built in that location 99 years ago, in 1926. Flood maps weren't a thing back then. Nor was the Republican party "to blame" for allowing them to build there. They just did it.
Also, in 99 years, this camp never experienced such a devastating flood. So they had good historical precedent, to think that they would be OK.
Like I said, it's more complicated than just FEMA or Trump.
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So it's the Federal government's job to make sure sirens are put in place? That's not how it works in most of this country. Each county and city installs their own systems.
You put a lot of effort into trying and failing (Score:2)
The point is that proper regulation and bureaucrats could have saved those children's lives.
And it's not complicated. It's the same problem every time. Trump did exasperate it and directly resulted in the deaths of those specific children but there are hundreds of thousands of dead kids because o
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So which is it? 50 years of deregulation, 50 years of Republican influence, or 3 months of Trump? You can't have it both ways. Pick a villain and stick to it.
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Mystic was a camp the wealthy elite sent their kids to.
That is a very bigoted thing to say. Some of these kids got odd jobs or sold lemonade, to earn money to go to camp. Many go on scholarships. I know this because my own church sends kids to camps like these each summer, and nobody gets turned away because they can't afford it. This is standard practice in churches that send kids to these camps. You have no idea how "wealthy" and "elite" they were.
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Can you please trace for me that chain of cause and effect? I genuinely would like to know.
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I don't disagree with your take on Trump. I just don't see how his actions are responsible for this particular tragedy.
Re:We already know what the cause (Score:4, Informative)
Jason Runyen, a meteorologist with the NWS, told AP that the NWS office in New Braunfels, which delivers forecasts for Austin, San Antonio and the surrounding areas, had extra staff on duty during the storms. While it usually has two forecasters on duty during clear weather, they had up to five during the storms, Runyen said.
Are Donald Trump's NOAA Cuts to Blame for Texas Flood Tragedy? What To Know [newsweek.com]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Trump slashed staff to FEMA and other emergency alert systems which delayed the response. We have also had 20 years of cuts to the data that FEMA and other federal agencies are allowed to access because they were very inconvenient to the oil companies. So for example the kids that died at that camp eight of the 17 cabins were in a known high-risk area according to government reports but the government reports didn't include current climate change related data so 9 of the cabins that were all so at high risk weren't included in that. of course this is all include point because if you've got 8 cabins in a high risk flood zone the other nine are probably not safe either. But the right wing is already splitting hairs to blame FEMA so they can shut it down. Oh and the governor of Texas is currently working hard to get money from FEMA while also working hard to shut down fema. He is literally on Trump's board that was set up to disable and destroy FEMA so that the money from it could be pocketed by billionaires. Bottom line this is Trump's fault. And the fault of the Republican party that let him do it. We all know it and we're all going to sit around here while disingenuous assholes derail the conversation in a variety of ways to deflect blame from Trump and his political party. If you live in a place that disasters can strike just know now that you will have little or no warning and little or no help to recover. If you're a child I am fucking so sorry that my generation fucked up so bad for you. If you're a Democrat or even a non-voter given what I know about voter suppression you did what you could. If you voted republican, well have the day you voted for.
I see your TDS is going strong. If you actually read TFS you'd know the problem wasn't "TEH GUBBERMINT (reverent bow) failed to predict flooding cus Trump cuts and DOGE and stuffs", it was FEMA fucktards having long cultivated alert fatigue in people by overuse of amber alerts, and reaping its inevitable consequences.
Re:We already know what the cause (Score:5, Informative)
How is this upvoted? I have seen news story after news story showing when all the alerts happened, and what they were. It is extremely well documented. [cbsnews.com] The alerts went out in plenty of time - the warnings went out over an before the river in that area had begun to rise, and watches and other alerts four hours before that.
The problem with biased political rants like what you're spouting is they will result in more deaths. That's because the REAL reason these girls died is not going to be addressed if you want to make Trump, or even the NOAA, the bad guys.
The failure is in the extremely localized levels - that is the local government and even the camp itself. The NOAA can't know that in the absolutely insane amount of thousands of square miles they forecast for that there would be a summer camp in particular danger. That is up to local authorities. You want to place a camp right on the banks of a river, in one of the nations most risky flood zones? Then the local authorities are the ones with emergency services, building code inspection and enforcement, on and on, who are the ones who are supposed to make sure these kinds of situations can be handled. For example the fire department will come and inspect the place for fire safety - exits, alarms, fire plans, fire drills, fire extinguishers and on. Their flooding requirements / plan was token at best, and that is why people died at the camp.
This is a wake up call for local governments to require alarm systems to trigger evacuation to higher ground. What triggers it? How do they know? Is the business responsible for the costs? The county? That is what has to be done to prevent this from happening again.
Here are all the alerts that went out, in spite of what your post says [iastate.edu].
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Tump cut FEMA staff, including NWS staff [thehill.com].
Camp was built in an extremely hazardous flood zone [houstonchronicle.com].
Abbott is on the FEMA Review Council [click2houston.com] which is working to dismantle FEMA.
Abbott, through his press secretary has said:
âoeTexas has built the strongest emergency management operation in the nation,â said Andrew Mahaleris, the governorâ(TM)s press secretary. âoeGovernor Abbott has full confidence that the Texas Division of Emergency Management will be able to swiftly take action when disaster strikes.â
But yeah, it's not Trump's fault for cutting FEMA staff or gutting its budget. As for Texas, this is another disaster under Abbott where Texans lost their lives because he didn't want to spend the money on any "woke" climate change bul
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So many blanket assumptions in this comment with no evidence. But yes we all know it is probably the fault of Trump one way or another.
Next time you go to the doc you should get your irony-levels checked.
Re: We already know what the cause (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent up (Score:2)
self inflicted? (Score:2)
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hopes and prayers will fix it.
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They were killed in a mass shooting?
After the flood, Noem screwed this up. (Score:4, Interesting)
If the Biden administration had fucked up the post-disaster response as badly as Noem, the RWNJ media would be blaring about it non-stop. And they would have been right.
- Every expenditure over $100K requires her signature.
- FEMA's search-and-rescue team was delayed 72 hours.
- Aerial imagery was delayed 72 hours.
- The FEMA director has been completely absent from the picture.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/09... [cnn.com]
Re:After the flood, Noem screwed this up. (Score:4, Interesting)
And she's still insisting that the recovery should be on the state's dime.
I'm so glad Texas is getting what they voted for.
Weather report (Score:3)
Re:Weather report (Score:4, Informative)
Germany, which is known for being well organized, had a similar catastrophic flooding [wikipedia.org] in 2021 (184 dead) in the Ahr Valley. Also here, the Weather Service had warned about heavy rainfall and possible catastrophic flooding, but it did not register with the people responsible for civil protection.
That's a real problem with once-in-a-century events. People just can't imagine the possible damage, and are completely unprepared or even consider preparations as wasteful and an obstacle to business, development or personal freedom.
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This is on Abbott and Trump (Score:2, Informative)
"I'm not trying to put a dollar on a life or a flood, but the fact of the matter [is] floods do happen, and we need to be prepared for them," then-Kerr County Commissioner Bob Reeves noted during a series of public meetings that began in 2016. And, his former colleague Tom Moser pointed out, "We also have more summer camps than anybody else along the Guadalupe River."
This is the same situation when over 300 people died when Texas froze a few years ago. Abbott didn't want to spend the money to winterize the lines or fossil fuel plants prior to the storm and the result was Texans dying.
Mind you, Abbott and his party have no
Also Texas refuses to update their grid (Score:3)
The big reason that everyone lost power in those 300 people died so that the private power company in Texas doesn't have to make their grid reliable enough to join in with States on a deal where if one of them has a grid failure the other can provide power.
The winterization you're talking about would have solved the problem but so would have being able to drop power from neighboring states. Texas can't do that because they would just be taking a
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Low Probability, Low Frequency (Score:5, Interesting)
Americans do not fund protections against (or warnings for) low-probability events. They don't care if the severity is high-- a significant part of the population can't imagine something RARE happening to them and thus don't want to pay for it. Moreover, the idea of funding something that benefits others but not yourself is labeled as "evil socialism" by said population.
* Hurricanes: Regional risk, Regionally high frequency, seasonal, highly predictable, and deadly. They get very specific warnings and calls for evacuations.
* Tornadoes: Regional risk, Regionally high frequency, seasonal, moderately predictable, and deadly. They get regional warnings and calls for taking shelter.
* Wild Fires: Regional risk, Regionally high frequency, seasonal, highly predictable once started, and deadly. They get very specific warnings and calls for evacuations.
* Earthquakes: Regional risk, Regionally high frequency, no seasonality, highly unpredictable, and rarely injurious. There are no earthquake risk warnings-- only alerts that earthquakes are happening or have recently occurred.
* Flash Floods: LOCAL risk (flood planes), LOW frequency everywhere, seasonal, and deadly. They get general risk warnings, but the primary protection is "Don't be in a flood plane".
Math is hard (Score:2)
The same is true for natural disasters. Give it enough time and someone in your immediate circle is going to get hit by one. The same goes for healthcare.
But understanding that requires at least a intuitive level understanding of probability and a lot of folks, might even be most, didn't get that far. They got the c
Alarm Fatigue (Score:3)
is exactly the reason that I have all alerts silenced on my phone. I support the concept of Amber alerts, but when there are 20 different colored alerts all operating under the same umbrella, and when non-custodial parent issues get lumped under the same umbrella as "child snatched from the playground", I just don't want to hear about it anymore.
But it points out an issue that should be addressed. If I lived in an area with tornados or flash floods, I want a warning - but I don't want a warning aimed at people 10 miles away. We need to move away from the broadcast radio mindset, and into a "We know where you are, we know where and what the hazard is, we're going to inform the people who need to know about this".
I live in Phoenix, which has some summer thunderstorms, some quite spectacular. It's not uncommon for the NWS to issue a "flash flood advisory" covering 100 square miles. Frankly, I live on a rise 100' above the lowlands; if I have to worry about a flash flood, then I'm terribly late in building an ark. The County has weather stations in an array all over the city; the County has topographic maps and historical data about where water likes to go in heavy rains. Marrying those two to decide which ravines are going to (or are getting) filled should be easily do-able, as is notifying people in danger from those specific ravines. I want that alert, not the "sometime today it's possible that a thunderstorm will fill a ravine somewhere in the county" alert.
Its because they don't care (Score:4, Informative)
https://abcnews.go.com/US/kerr-county-officials-waited-90-minutes-send-emergency/story?id=123631023 [go.com]
Someone compiled all of this in the r/Texas sub in Reddit [reddit.com] piecing together how the county knew their systems were inadequate back in 2016 but didn't want to fix it.
the problem is being numb to disasters (Score:5, Insightful)
I am in california now. Every winter we have atmospheric rivers come over and dump a bunch of rain. The news stations need something to get viewers to tune in so it is "STORM SURGE 202x" coverage every 15 minutes. Yes, it is raining, yes roads wash out, yes, some local flooding - nothing to make me think I need to take action.
I lived in Texas - tornado warning came out. Time to sit on the porch and watch it blow by... Lots of fun had by all. I hear people in Florida won't evacuate until after they determine that a Cat x hurricane is going to hit right where they are. The longer you live there the higher the x is of course.
What do we expect the government to do - force us at gunpoint to evacuate? No, we individually take responsibility to know what is going on around us and act accordingly. You live close to a river that is prone to flash floods - you watch the weather more closely than I do that lives 50 ft higher elevation.
Re:the problem is being numb to disasters (Score:5, Funny)
This reminds me of the movie Independence Day where Will Smith wakes up when the ground shakes and tells his wife there's an earthquake only for her to reply "It's not even a four pointer, go back to sleep".
I was bemused, if the earth moved even slightly where I live I'd be freaking the fuck out!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Camp Mystic had flooded before, this wasn't the first time. And the area in question had decided that flood warning was "too costly" in the past.
I agree with you, in principal, if they've had floods before and that wasn't enough to scare them in to paying attention then I don't think that there is any direct solution to the problem. It's the families that sent their kids that I feel like we could help with. Maybe insurance should be denied after flooding, we already spend tons of money insuring peop
Re: (Score:3)
Numb to emergency alerts. After the WEA [wikipedia.org] system went live, the first one I got was from a Medicare broker: "Call now with your Zip Code and make sure you are getting everything you are entitled to." (The dog whistle for all retired people.)
Amber Alerts are next on my list. Solve your child custody fights on your own time. The recent Travis Decker case (killed his three daughters) illustrated how useless the alert system was. Because they don't issue them for planned visitation. This one also falls into the
Try this instead... (Score:2)
messages like "move to higher ground" are meaningless without context
Instead of "move to higher ground", try "Get the f**k away from the Guadalupe River RIGHT NOW!"
They took the cell phones (Score:3)
Well, they didn't really take them, but rather didn't allow the campers on the Guadalupe River have them. From what I've heard, the counsellors didn't even have their cell phones. This is the problem with the idea of taking everyone's phone away at a school or something. These days, cell phones are basically essential. Yes, they are annoying, and the Amber, Silver, and Blue alerts are cast over an insane area and that needs to be fixed. There also needs to be a way to turn the various ones off. And in this case, NWS should have had a way to force it, basically a reverse 911.
Maybe this will get people to rethink this. The kids and counsellors at Camp Mystic would probably have been alive if they had these communication devices.
Re: (Score:3)
From what I've heard, the counsellors didn't even have their cell phones. This is the problem with the idea of taking everyone's phone away at a school or something.
They didn't have their cell phones because there is no cell service in that area. The camp is over 20 minutes away from the closest town (population 1,787) by car.
Re: They took the cell phones (Score:2)
Less sympathetic (Score:3)
The camps had hundreds of children's lives in their hands, and were in an area known for flooding.
They should have pro-actively been reaching out to the NWS and getting forecasts, they should have ensured that they could get alerts even if there was excess chatter, and they should have acted upon the earlier warnings even if there was uncertainty.
If negligence played a role in so many young deaths I hope the organizers involved rot in jail
We seem to be blaming the lack of warnings but to my mind it is the lack of will to act, not taking the early warnings seriously enough.It's not as if a 30 minute warning of a flood like that is much use, I saw the video and the roads were submerged with fast-moving water in minutes. The warnings that should have been heeded were days before and I suspect the camp organizers will have been aware of them or at the very least the sheriff could have driven out to the camp and told them first hand. Waiting to act until you get a message that disaster is imminent is not a viable strategy
Re: (Score:3)
alerts (Score:3)
First responder/trainer perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Micro: the recent Kerrville incident. The NWS did its job and did it in a timely manner -- despite reckless cuts by Trump/DOGE/etc. The issued an urgent flash flood warning at 1:26 AM, which should have been taken very seriously because that area has a long history of flash flooding. Local officials should have woken everyone up any way they could: tornado sirens, local and state police cars with full sirens and lights, fire trucks, civilian pickup trucks with horns, anything, everything. If possible they should have brought in a helicopter with a loudspeaker.
The river was already rising at that point, but slowly, and rose only moderately (per the USGS gauge, linked below) until 5:15 AM. That's when the flow went exponential. So they had the better part of 4 hours to wake people up and get them moving away from the river. That includes the girls camp that's been so often discussed: local officials knew it was there and knew it was full. And yet they didn't even manage to send a squad car over there to wake up everyone. If they'd done that, those girls could have WALKED to safety in the time they had available. (And of course if there were buses or other vehicles, it'd have been faster.)
Here's the gauge -- note that the left-hand vertical axis is logarithmic. Guadalupe Rv at Kerrville, TX – 08166200 [usgs.gov]
Every responsible locality has plans for this, doubly so if it's something that's happened before -- which in this case, it has. While there's always some improvisation in emergency response, most of this should have come down to "pull out the red binder, open to page 1, and start working through the checklist -- you know, the one we've rehearsed every 4 months for the last 6 years." Every person should already know what they're going to do, like "wake up every school bus drivers, tell them to drive to the X high school, start the buses, and head to their assigned locations to pick up people" or "get someone on the bridge upstream with a spotlight on the river so that we can see the flood coming before it gets here and registers on the gauge". The incident commander should supervise all of this pre-planned activity, making on-the-fly modifications as necessary...and if the plan is a good one, and if it's been kept updated, and if it's been rehearsed well, then there shouldn't be too much improvisation needed.
This by no means guarantees success. Things go wrong, equipment breaks, miscommunications happen. But it gives the best chance, and if even half of this had happened in Kerrville, it would have saved a lot of lives.
Macro: There is never money or time for disaster preparation, avoidance, training, mitigation. There is usually money for disaster cleanup. Oh, and there are "thoughts and prayers", which are (a) useless and (b) an attempt by the cheap, lazy, and incompetent to excuse their complicity in all the death and destruction that just happened. We don't need thoughts. We don't need prayers. We need science (like the NWS and NOAA do), we need data (e.g. the best forecasts they can possibly give us), we need training and equipment, we need plans, we need cooperation, we need clear messaging, and we need the money required to do all these things. Give us that and we have a fighting chance -- and our historical record when given that chance is damn good. Deny us that and you're going to get Kerrville on a regular basis. (Doubly so given global warming and its effect on locally-intensified weather events.)
This is already long, but I want to ask you all to consider one more thing. Right now, as you're reading this, there are people out there who are trying to recover all the bodies. (
That may be true, but..... (Score:2)
Maybe America will never get such alerts "right".
However, I don't really think it is the government's responsibility to warn people every time bad shit is gonna or may happen.
Fire, flood, UFO attack, whatever.
Just how I feel about it.
That said, I have ALL government alerts on my phone turned off anyway. I'll take my chances, especially since the odds of receiving some useless alert are so much greater than receiving an alert that would matter to me and would actually take some action on.
Drink Bleach School of Emergency Response (Score:2)
They denied the emergency sirens. They fired or “retired” the meteorologists. They delayed the emergency response.
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09... [npr.org] https://www.kxan.com/weather/w... [kxan.com] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/0... [cnn.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't rule #1 Don't build in a flood plain?
Some time ago that rule was replaced with "Make sure you can get someone else to pay for your mistakes".