As flash floods intensify, current alert systems put lives at risk, including in New England

Boston Globe

5 hours ago

'We knew that we were going to see thundershowers and storms through the night, but we hadn't had any kind of a warning that there might be flooding,' said Chad Whitehead, the town manager. 'And then the storm came through' and dumped eight inches of rain as it stalled directly over St. Johnsbury.
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Aftermath of flash flooding on Concord avenue along the Passumpsic River in St. Johnsbury, Vt., on July 30, 2024.
Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
In the wake of the deadly
The typical alerts are those jarring messages on your TV, radio, or cell phone warning of imminent danger, such as flash floods, extreme heat, or dangerous winds.
A series of alerts were issued in Texas, but it
Landing quick alerts is a problem that all emergency responders confront, said Dawn Brantley, director of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.
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A fallen street sign lays by the river as search-and-rescue personnel continue on Monday to look for missing people in Texas.
Joshua Lott/The Washington Post
'If you don't have cell service, you cannot receive the alert,' she said. Some security settings on phones might preclude an alert, and some people manually turn alerts off. Others who use internet for their phone service may run into a different problem, because the internet sometimes logs people's locations incorrectly, and alerts are targeted to specific geo-locations.
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Other alerts may be issued by state or local communities, though those often require opting in — meaning not everyone will get the message.
That was the case in Leominster two years ago when 11 inches of rain fell in a matter of hours. The city texted and emailed a 'Code Red' message, but residents had to opt in to get them. Mazzarella reached out to emergency managers to call for help. And, he also took to social media, broadcasting live over Facebook.
'I immediately started saying, 'Do not go outside. Do not go outside,'' he said, and thousands of viewers received his warning in real time.
Meanwhile, emergency managers and transit workers from the state rushed to aid swamped residents in Leominister and fire departments from around the region went door to door to help.
Vehicles made their way through a flooded Lancaster Street during heavy rain in Leominster on Sept. 11, 2023.
Rick Cinclair/Associated Press
And when the storm hit St. Johnsbury, just days after an earlier extreme storm, the National Weather Service in Burlington had the phone number of Eric Forand, director of Vermont Emergency Management, on the wall and knew to quickly alert him.
'The relationship that we had, I'm positive saved a lot of lives because they were very quickly able to contact us, and we were very quick to get rolling,' Forand said.
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These kinds of intense flash floods have become a hallmark of climate change, said Zachary Zobel, risk associate director at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth. 'Because the atmosphere is warmer, it can hold more water,' he said.
And, New England has experienced the
'We have two options, essentially, to adapt a warmer climate, the first of which is to upgrade our infrastructure, which is obviously quite expensive,' said Zobel. 'The second of which, and this is more on the life-saving aspect of these storms, is to upgrade our forecasting tools and our advanced warning and to have plans in place.'
In Texas, investigators will need to sort out what went wrong, or could've been done better.
Officials combed through the banks of the Guadalupe River after a flash flood swept through the area on July 5 in Hunt, Texas.
Julio Cortez/Associated Press
The entire process of preparing for and managing a potential flash flood requires a lot of coordination between the federal, state, and local governments. Forecasting data comes mostly from the National Weather Service, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). State meteorologists contribute too, though they also rely on datasets from the federal government.
Following deep staffing cuts at the National Weather Service and NOAA, meteorologists and climate scientists have warned the country's ability to predict and respond to extreme events would be hampered. It's not clear whether that played a role in the devastation in Texas, but going forward, emergency responders said it could.
'All meteorologists rely on NOAA's robust suite of products and services to help safeguard communities,' said Brantley. 'Any impact to NOAA's capability and the National Weather Service's capability potentially has significant impacts.'
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Marissa Anderson, a spokesperson for the National Weather Service, said the agency is working on filling roles with the greatest operational need, with the agency advertising 'a targeted number of permanent, mission-critical field positions' to 'further stabilize frontline operations.'
Still, many worry about the impacts the Trump administration's cuts could soon have during this year's hurricane season. 'When you're talking about a 25 percent reduction in staffing ... budgets, the brain drain of losing their entire senior leadership and that expertise and experience, we don't know how you can say it's not going to be impacted,' said Brantley.
Funding cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will likely
play a part, too. President Trump has said he plans to eliminate the agency entirely, and that states should take on more responsibility, though he said no major changes will be implemented until after hurricane season ends in November.
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But there have been some impacts on New England
already. In March, Trump
And a program that sends FEMA workers door-to-door following a disaster to help people file claims has been cancelled. After the floods in Leominster, that FEMA program found more people who needed help than a state or city could have, said Brantley, especially the historically marginalized or underserved.
In New England, cuts to FEMA could be particularly problematic, warned Samantha Montano, an assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.
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'Because we are smaller states, we have less emergency management resources, so we're more dependent on FEMA,' she said.
It's not clear yet how FEMA's budget cuts will play out, but 'what we do know is that there have been cuts and money paused related to mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery,' Montano said. 'That is going to have an effect at the state and local level all across the country.'
Globe lead meteorologist Ken Mahan contributed to this report.
Sabrina Shankman can be reached at