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ACCORDING TO LIZ - The first time I heard the Emergency Alert System broadcast when it was not a test was on July 3rd when high winds and intense thundersqualls ripped across northern Vermont and New York with the possibility of localized flash flooding.
The Emergency Alert System operates in conjunction with FEMA, NOAA, and the National Weather Service, all agencies especially hard hit by Elon Musk’s evisceration of government staffing.
If in the wake of the downsizing of funding for weather service positions by DOGE, if Kerr County had had effective emergency response systems in place and operating, would the death toll have been so high?
It was a perfect storm of circumstances colliding.
Although warnings went up on that Thursday, 12 hours before reaching the magnitude to trigger the Emergency Alert System, warnings to relevant personnel were delayed. Many were simply Facebook posts, and a four-hour interval meant they went up after the worst incidents.
EAS weather alerts should have sounded the alarm on cell phones… but that assumed phones had service or users hadn’t turned them off. It was after midnight, so few of those with service would have been awake to see the Facebook posts.
Kerr County officials had considered constructing their own warning system along the Guadalupe River after ten teenage campers died in 1987 but faced the same financial challenges of any local government, exacerbated by it being a rural community with a tiny tax-base.
Frequent heavy storms on an arid clay plain subject to run-off earned that area of the Texas Hill Country a sobriquet: Flash Flood Alley. Climate change in has only increased their violence and severity. The volume of rainfall that fueled this flood reportedly surpassed the daily flow over Niagara Falls, billions upon billions of gallons.
Southern New Mexico with a similar geography and weather patterns driving death and destruction lost three people Tuesday when 3.5 inches of rain hurtled off wildfire-denuded mountainsides with soil as water-repellent as pavement raising a river 20 feet.
The Trump-Musk double-tap did no-one any favors.
Along with its gleeful gutting of NOAA and the National Weather Service, the various emergency management agencies intended to succor disaster areas with effective predictions prior, strong backup support during, and the full resources of the federal government to expedite physical and economic recovery have lost key personnel.
As of Thursday morning, the Texas death toll had risen to 120 and futures for the known 173 missing are looking dim with the las live rescue having been last Friday. In Kerr County, the hardest hit area, 96 people have been killed with over 150 still unaccounted for, including five girls and their counselor from Camp Mystic.
The rain has moved on but people, including search and-rescue professionals from many other jurisdictions including Mexico and California, continue to search on horseback, on foot and by helicopter.
More than 750 girls were at Camp Mystic over Independence Day weekend. Of that number, 386 along with 64 staff members were at the Guadalupe River section that was inundated before daybreak when torrential rain coursing in two channels converged into a wave cresting over 25 feet above the bend in the river where the camp was located.
Cabins for the younger campers were located closer to the river where that wall of water swept over the banks while senior girls, all of whom survived, were on a hill adjacent to a creek, further away from the central area of dining hall, rec center and offices. A Coast Guard operation rescued 165 that morning and more were found later.
The camp has become the face of the tragedy, pulling on people’s heartstrings around the world, and it may morph into this administration’s kryptonite.
Tax inequities? Tariffs? Criminal behavior? Meh. But even the most powerful politician puts himself at risk when his actions threaten people’s children.
According to the American Camp Association, over 20 million American children attend sleep-away camp each summer. It’s a rite of passage, freedom from family bonds and supervision, an opportunity to make new friends and learn new skills in a sylvan setting far removed from schools and city streets.
But it’s also supposed to be safe, where camp counselors and staff surround and protect the children in their care.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott may call for no finger pointing but, to improve resilience for the future, people have to look at what went wrong. And it’s never one thing. It was a cascade of concerns which alone might be shrugged off but together…
A tropical storm heading up from Mexico joined up with the normal Gulf (of whatever) humidity to contribute to the 10 to 22 inches of rain that fell. Lack of funding after multiple requests to state agencies stymied the installation of a better early warning system, the lack of cell service along the river meant the Weather Service’s advance notifications and even the local Facebook posts did not reach those most at risk.
Climate change which has been exacerbating extreme weather events leaves limited time for authorities to address oversights and errors, aggravated by shrinking budgets and expanded responsibilities.
Budgets all around are being well and truly slashed. But not wisely.
The most critical element was a key Weather Service position responsible for handling the assessment of danger and coordinating expedited outreach in emergencies, the man who had the contact information to reach those who could make things happen and the authority to demand immediate deployment, doubly difficult in the middle of the night.
That position was not refilled when its previous occupant took early retirement in the face of the DOGE slash-and-burn attack on NOAA.
The most recent Texas chainsaw massacre may be over for now, but it stands as a warning. And how this government will balance the minimal savings from gutting essential services against a parent’s measurement of what their child’s life is worth.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno who now resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
