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As Floods Hit, Key Roles Were Vacant at Weather Service Offices in Texas; Some experts say staff shortages might have complicated forecasters’ ability to coordinate responses w/local emergency manager (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 11 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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The key thing that was missing was any capacity by local officials to alert people beyond posting to X/Facebook in the middle of the night:

Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive, and local residents are resistant to new spending.

“Taxpayers won’t pay for it,” Mr. Kelly said. Asked if people might reconsider in light of the catastrophe, he said, “I don’t know.”

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[-] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago

Lots of finger pointing going on. We will probably never know who dropped the ball. And that’s probably by design.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Well, we know that the NWS produced the warnings about an hour in advance, that the staff who communicate with local officials had been fired, that Texas abused their emergency alerts on phones so people largely disabled them, and that local politicians were unwilling to invest in a local alert system because of anti-tax sentiment.

So its pretty clear the key problem was getting the warning to people. And that requires investing in systems to do that and having the discipline to limit their use when not life-critical

this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
14 points (100.0% liked)

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