Kerr county discusions on a flood warning system

[Jirel]

4. This is an inexcusable political red herring.

First off, I live in the area. I had to evacuate on the 4th. What I have to say here comes from the perspective of a person who lives in the area, is less than half a block from water, pays through the damned nose for insufficient flood insurance (I’ve had to use it), has experienced one 500 year flood already here and a number of smaller ones, and was out in the middle of some of this mess. We are seeing this armchair quarterbacking nonsense EVERYWHERE starting yesterday. It’s in incredibly bad taste, and the assumptions behind it are plain wrong.

The disaster was NOT DUE TO LACK OF WARNING. It happened for several key reasons:

- Absolutely unprecedented rain from a storm (which is STILL circulating even today to our north) sparked off from the remnants of TS Barry. We’re talking close to 20 inches in a day in some areas. Unfortunately, one of those 20 inch areas was right over the Guadalupe far upstream of Hunt. Between the river itself and multiple feeder creeks, a wall of water formed.

- We’ve dealt with these walls of water before. This one was unprecedented in size, but also speed, and it hit before dawn while people are sleeping. EVERYONE got warnings in multiple forms, but not everyone was awake, responding, or taking it seriously. More on that in a moment…

- We have an excellent set of river gauges monitored and used in forecasting by NOAA. By the way, the graphical predictions for that wall of water were up in good time, and the forecast curve at each river location they provide data on as super accurate. At our closest gauge, about 2 miles from my house, I think they were off by something like 6 inches on the predicted versus actual crest. NOAA had 3 extra people on that night specifically for this storm and potentially catastrophic flood. They were issuing warnings well in advance.

- These are the warnings received by people in the area, often multiple received by each household: (1) Weather warnings in apps, radio, TV, web (gotta be awake to check on those at 5 am), (2) Emergency texts from the local governments (you have to not have turned those off because you don’t want to keep getting emergency alerts at inopportune moments, they don’t go to people who don’t reside in the area, and again some people turn off phones or don’t respond at 5 am), (3) weather alert radios, which a lot of people have on the river, just not necessarily visitors, (4) sirens (these are designed to be heard OUTDOORS primarily, so the volume varies indoors and may be ignored at 5 am), (5) first responders going door to door, home to home, RV to RV rousing people out with personal warnings to evacuate, and (6) all manner of police vehicles running up and down blaring warnings through loudspeakers. For example, I woke up at 5ish AM having a weird flood dream, checked the weather since it was raining, saw the warnings, checked the NOAA and USGS river gauges and saw the problem coming, didn’t get a text because I had long ago blocked those (though other friends got them) but did get a call from a friend who was also already working the problem, got up and was monitoring, puttering, and organizing in case we needed to evacuate (the wall wasn’t due to hit where we are for a couple hours), walked the creek along with other locals who know what signs mean trouble and talked with emergency responders at the bridge, had time to inform others that the danger signal from the creek itself had occurred, got a personal door-knock from a firefighter as we were packing to go, heard the sirens go off, and left as additional sheriff cars were going up and down streets blaring the speakers to evacuate.

- Now let’s look at who got swept or at least trapped despite the warnings. It was mostly visitors, and we know many got warnings personally or the people responsible for the site (like Camp Mystic personnel) did. In many cases, these were people who don’t know the fickle ways of this river, or that the warnings MEAN SOMETHING.
(1) People living in low lying areas far from a higher elevation road out simply got cut off. Most were fine.
(2) Vacation RV resorts and cabins, many of which are built lower to the banks than is safe, because people love pretty views. Again, those people don’t know that a serious warning is SERIOUS here.They don’t know to look at the river gauges themselves. Many were asleep or half asleep, and while many had some warning from sirens to alerts to door knocks, getting out didn’t occur until it was too late and they SAW the rise. In at least one case, people were well aware, but didn’t know how to get out of the area safely. Also, that’s a lot of door knocks on extensive private properties chock full of 4th of July visitors. The bigger failure point belongs to the corporations that built in a risky location, and THEIR failure to warn customers or have an efficient BUSINESS-based warning system that ensures everyone there, in areas first responders may not know well, understand that they need to get out fast, and where to go.
(3) Summer camps right on the river - so pretty, so convenient for summer fun, so easily flooded. A lot is made of those poor girls who died at Camp Mystic. Does anyone seriously believe that they weren’t acting on a warning when they successfully got over 725 campers and staff away from the flood? That took time and skill, and they had all that. Unfortunately, the location of the camp did them in - they fell into the “cut off” category, so though they got the vast majority of kids to relative safety, they couldn’t get them off the grounds without first responder *helicopter* assistance.
(4) Homeless folks. There are a bunch missing, and we don’t necessarily have an idea of who they are. There is an extensive riverfront park system for miles, perfect for pitching a tent in a deep, hidden spot. They would’ve been instantly cut off. With nobody living there as far as the government knows, and no places to door-knock, they would’ve only had warning from sirens or possibly by phone if they had working phones.
(5) Some people in private riverfront homes very close to the water. Most were rescued. It sounds like they got some level of warning but by the time they acted they were cut off. Many headed for roofs. I’m not kidding about how FAST this one came in. We’re downstream from Kerrville, and between the warning signs in the creek to when we were out and water was headed up the road to my house, it was about 15 minutes. Even for this area, that is extreme.

So please, let’s not internet-sleuth for dirty deeds by local politicians. There were multiple failure points, but most of them were human mistakes, not the availability or delivery of warnings.