Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda...and Oughta

It absolutely never fails. A great disaster comes along, followed very shortly thereafter, maybe too shortly, by the critics needing to pin the blame on somebody.  In the case of the Texas Hill Country flood, some Democratic leaders pointed to the Trump administration’s funding cuts to the National Weather Service.

If blame is to be accurately fixed, it should go way back before this and spread out among many people. It’s said that almost a decade ago, the Texas legislature failed to approve money for a siren system to alert those along the Guadalupe River to a flood emergency. There has been much talk about it since, but no impetus for action until now.

As for the Weather Service, it did issue warnings before the flood, and there were extra staff members on duty. The reported lack of an experienced NWS emergency coordinator due to his taking early retirement in the DOGE days has been cited, but I’m willing to bet that the individual didn’t leave the job with key information trapped in his head. I’m sure that procedures were written down for others to follow. It’s government, remember. But did people receive the warnings?

We are so digitally connected now that we think we will always get the message when something is wrong. Really? Even in a hilly place where connections to a cell tower may be spotty? And when people are on vacation, some are there because they DON’T want to be connected to the outside world.

Sirens seem so old-fashioned as a means of getting our attention. So what, if the job gets done? More modern but still old tech, and cheap, is the NOAA weather radio, which will wake folks up if an alarm is sounded.

All of this said, when the analysis of this Texas flood response is done, it will turn up not only procedural but human errors. You can have all the machinery in place, but it has to be used correctly. And there have to be layers of redundancy, so that if a ball is dropped, it will be picked up somewhere else.

Things have changed over the years, like the climate, ya think? Sure, the Guadalupe River area had seen flash floods before, but nothing like this. You can put the Palisades and Eaton firestorms in a similar category: Santa Ana winds, even severe, had hit Southern California many times, but nothing quite like the 100-mph blast last winter. There will be plenty more of these incidents, and we had better get on top of the learning curve about how to be ready for them.