Deadly Texas floods leave officials pointing fingers after warnings missed

The Hill

a day ago

AUSTIN, Texas — Local, state and federal officials are all pointing fingers in the wake of the deadly Texas flooding, but one thing is certain: The warnings weren't heard by the people who needed them.
After the catastrophic Independence Day floods that killed at least 90 across Central Texas, state and county officials told reporters that the storm had come without warning. But a wide array of meteorologists — and the Trump administration itself — has argued that those officials, as well as local residents, received a long train of advisories that a dangerous flood was gathering.
The timeline of the floods on Friday, experts say, revealed a deadly gap in the 'last mile' system that turns those forecasts into life-saving action.
That issue is particularly pronounced in Central Texas, where cell phones go off with National Weather Service (NWS) flash flood advisories practically every time there is a thunderstorm — and where limestone canyons split by countless creeks and punctuated by riverside campgrounds and vacation homes are particularly vulnerable to sudden flood.
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) timeline released over the weekend showed a drumbeat of steadily increasing warnings — something that is characteristic of flash floods, said John Sokich, former legislative director of the NWS staffers union.
Whether a specific neighborhood or camp floods can come down to 'which creek basin the rainfall is going to fall, and 3 miles makes a complete difference,' Sokich said.
So NWS forecasters, he said, put out region-wide warnings of potential flash floods, which they tighten as the danger develops. 'And then when it gets really bad, they put out the 'catastrophic flood levels,' messages, which is what they did for the situation in Texas.'
'The challenge there,' he added, 'was people receiving the information.'
Meteorologists' warnings of potential flooding, which drew on NWS forecasts, began as early as Wednesday, when CBS Austin meteorologist Avery Tomasco warned that the dregs of Tropical Storm Barry had parked 'all this tropical fuel' over Central Texas.
'I hesitate to show you this because it's so outlandish,' Tomasco said, but the storm could produce 'five to 15 inches of rain somewhere in Central Texas. Again, I think that's pretty far-fetched, but you can't rule out something crazy happening when you have this kind of tropical air in place.'
By sunset on the night before the floods, federal forecasters were warning that rainfall would 'quickly overwhelm' the baked-dry soil. By 1:14 a.m. local time, the NWS released the first direct flash flood warnings for Kerr County, which officials told The Texas Tribune should have triggered direct warnings to those in harm's way.
Instead, beginning on the day of the flood, state and local officials insisted they had no idea the flood was coming.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said leaders 'had no reason to believe this was going to be anything like what has happened here, none whatsoever.'
They were echoed the following day by Nim Kidd, the state's top emergency management official, who told reporters that forecasts 'did not predict the amount of rain that we saw.'
That quote 'baffled' meteorologist Ryan Maue, who on X blamed Kidd for setting off 'a furious news cycle in which the National Weather Service was blamed for the tragic events because a forecast 2 days prior wasn't as extreme.'
On Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that 'something went wrong' when Camp Mystic and other sleepaway camps alongside the region's rivers didn't receive warnings of the oncoming waters.
'Next time there's a flood,' Cruz told a Kerr County press conference on Monday, 'I hope we have in place processes to remove the most vulnerable from harm's way. But that's going to be process that will take careful examination of what happened.'
Some — like Sokich — argued that one possibility is that after rounds of staff reductions, NWS offices that may have had enough staff to issue accurate predictions didn't have the personnel for potentially life-saving outreach. 'If you don't have the full staff, then you can't do that,' he said. 'People are just focusing on issuing the watches and warnings.'
Such outreach, UCLA meteorologist Daniel Swain wrote on X, is 'one of the first things to go away when offices are critically understaffed.'
On Sunday, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) told reporters that he would urge state lawmakers to focus on a better system of state warnings in the upcoming July special legislative session.
One such system exists in other flood-prone basins, where gauges in a cresting river automatically send alerts to a network of river sirens, which sound alarms across the area.
That's technology that Kerrville officials say they have needed for years. But locals 'reeled at the cost' of a county program, Kelly told PBS's 'Frontline,' and attempts to pay for it with state or federal funds failed.
In 2018, during the first Trump administration, Kerr County and the Upper Guadalupe River Authority applied to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for about $1 million to build a flood warning system — and were denied, KXAN reported.
This year, a bill that would have spent $500 million on a modern system of disaster warnings across the state passed the House but died in the Senate. One House member who voted against it, freshman state Rep. Wes Virdell (R), represents Kerr County.
'I can tell you in hindsight, watching what it takes to deal with a disaster like this, my vote would probably be different now,' Virdell told The Texas Tribune on Sunday, adding that he had objected to the measure's price tag.
In 2020, with no prospect for paying for such a system, the county joined FEMA's Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, which sends out cell phone alerts when floods threaten.
One problem with the text-based flood warnings — and with warnings in general — is that 'people don't understand what a flash flood is,' said Keri Stephens, a University of Texas professor who studies disaster communication.
Her research has shown that in Texas, 'a lot of people are completely unaware that they're even at risk for flash floods.
'They don't understand how they happen. They don't understand what it means to experience a 20-plus foot rise in water in a short period of time — because they can't imagine and visualize what that looks like,' Stephens said.
No technology is good enough to keep people safe on its own, she added. Disaster warnings have to plug into accurate forecasting on one side and a clear course of action on the other — and they have to be believed.
Stephens' research found that the ubiquitous warning aimed at keeping motorists from crossing flooded rivers — 'Turn around, don't drown' — doesn't work for young adults.
'They don't think it'll happen to them,' Stephens said. Her research found that a better message — for those who don't believe that a foot of water can wash away a car — was 'Stay High and Dry,' which emphasizes the danger not to the driver but to the car's undercarriage.
In a rural area, those disaster notifications can often be handled individually: a county emergency manager working the phones, or a campground texting its visitors, which can make the question of whether they go out in time dangerously arbitrary.
Amanda Sue Jones, a woman camping beside the Guadalupe with her family, wrote on Facebook that she had received NWS notifications all night — but that only after it was clear from the rising water that they had to 'GTFO' did she receive a text from the campground telling her to seek higher ground.
By then, Jones told CNN, it was too late for many. Her family took shelter at restrooms, where they met a man whose camper — with his family inside — had washed away in the time it took to go the bathroom.
'In those few moments, the waters just overtook that area where his family was,' Jones said. 'It was just so fast. It was unreal.'
Sirens or not, a small rural county won't be able to make sure every camper heads for high ground in time, said Chad Berginnis, the head of the American Association of Floodplain Managers — making it incumbent on individuals and businesses to have their own evacuation plan.
Even in areas without cell phone service — which is spotty across much of the Hill Country — Berginnis said there's a low-tech solution to situations like that one, Berginnis said: weather radios.
'If you're at a campground, your plan could say, 'Hey, if we have a, if we have a weather situation, then we'll have staff awake and monitoring the weather.' You don't have to invest in huge amounts of technology.'
The crucial thing, Berginnis said, is that those systems have to be in place before 'flood amnesia' sets in. In 30 years of floodplain management, he said, he's learned that it only takes 'a couple years [before] people have forgotten the lessons and moved on.'
'I think we have a responsibility to those who lost their lives that we study this, understand and learn from it,' he added.