It may be cuts to the National Weather Service impacted forecasts for Kerr County, TX, but it also may be that Mother Nature created a perfect storm at a time when warnings would not be seen or heard by most.
I’VE BEEN SEEING some real vitriol on Facebook over then last 24 hours concerning the tragic flooding and loss of life along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, as well as areas up and down river.
The posts have been from people I usually agree with when it comes to politics. They are slamming the Trump Administration for all the cuts made to the National Weather Service and to disaster relief. I agree with those criticisms. But not the ones that have gone over the top.
One post said those who died, lost homes, deserved it because, by voting for Trump, they created the situation that devastated them; that is, the cuts to the forecasting meant faulty forecasts, no lead time.
Stop it. Not today. Not now. Not while rescuers are scouring the river banks, looking in trees, piled of flood-swept for bodies, many of them sadly, children. It’s not the time.
It might be time to actually defend the forecasters, the directors of the camps who did not evacuate.
The Guadalupe River I knew when I lived in Texas, the one I waded in, tubed along, swam in, for the most part if a gentle river. It does have history of flooding, some serve, but not like this.
The river is fed by creeks. When they fill, the river floods. In this case, the front that brought heavy rains did not move out. It stalled. As a result the river rose between 25 and 30 feet in about two hours, and it did it just before dawn when all those in the camps, and the homes along the river, were asleep.
Here is the timeline:
At 12:42 a.m., the National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio posted on X upgrading its flood watch to a flood warning for part of the impacted area. In a post from 2:14 a.m., that area was expanded.
At 1:26 a.m., the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center said “flash flooding likely overnight with significant impacts possible.” This message was posted on X a minute later.
Around 3:30 a.m. the Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said he was out for an early morning jog along the Guadalupe River and saw “not a drop of rain.”
At 4:06 a.m. the National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio posted on X: “A very dangerous flash flooding event is ongoing.”
Then, at 5:15 a.m. the National Weather Service San Angelo posted on X that there was a flash flood emergency. The Austin/San Antonio office posted on its X account about the emergency at 5:23 a.m. This type of alert is “exceedingly rare” and used when there is a “severe threat to human life and catastrophic damage,” according to the National Weather Service.
Between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., the Guadalupe River surged, with water levels rapidly rising as much as 30 feet. (Timeline from NPR)
When the campers went to bed, and when residents along the river called it a night, there was nothing to indicate this was going to be any worse than river folks had experienced before. All the warnings between midnight and dawn went largely unheard, unread by those who were about to have their lives destroyed.
So, let’s all just take it down a notch.
There needs to be a through debrief of what happened, but after the funerals are over. Then it will be time to see if cuts to the weather service played a role. The warning systems most likely need to be re-evaluated to deal with sudden changes in weather that come in the wee hours. That needs to be a coldly analytical debrief of what happened and why.
Let the chips fall where they may.
Rich Heiland is a retired journalist and semi-retired consultant, trainer and public speaker. During his journalism career he was a reporter, editor, publisher, college instructor, part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team and a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year honoree. He also writes the intodementia.com blog about his family’s experience with dementia. He lives in West Chester, PA and can be reached at [email protected].