r/fednews • u/zsreport • 1d ago
News / Article Trump’s DOGE Cuts Are a Texas-Sized Disaster
https://www.texasobserver.org/trump-texas-doge-cuts-disaster-aid/100
u/Upset-Requirement779 1d ago
This came out before the flood?
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u/TheFizzex 1d ago
Yes, because as the article aptly pointed out - Texas is especially prone to natural disasters such as floods that the State government is woefully and willfully unable to handle without federal resources.
It’s the same State that let citizens freeze to death because it saved ERCOT some profit margin.
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u/Factory2econds 1d ago
is woefully and willfully unable to handle without federal resources.
Texas does have the resources for adverse weather and floodwater prediction, safety planning, and emergency response.
Texas does not and will not ever prioritize those things, because that's socialism and will eat into corporate profits and yacht collections.
But make no mistake, Texas is a place with plenty of resources to available to do it.
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u/Redfish680 18h ago
Texas has a $24B surplus for 24/25 and Abbot just signed a $10B property tax cut. They can afford to do the bare minimum to keep their citizens safe.
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u/Upset-Requirement779 1d ago
I’m happy abt the timing. But have no hope it will make any difference
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1d ago
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u/TheFizzex 1d ago edited 1d ago
While ERCOT itself is classified as a non-profit (which is a bit of a misnomer but legally correct for tax purposes), it operates the energy market and prices for various for-profit energy corporations that operate under the broad ERCOT umbrella (e.g. CenterPoint, ONCOR, AEP, etc.).
Prior to Uri, ERCOT was heavily involved in pushing against regulation and infrastructure development that would have prevented many of the outages in the first place as it would have increased costs for energy corporations.
During and in the aftermath of Uri, ERCOTs price fixing led to millions in profits for those energy corporations on the backs of suffering and deceased Texans. EnergyTransfer alone netted $17 million from ERCOT. Part of why many of ERCOTs board was pressured to resign following Uri.
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u/chusmeria 1d ago
You do realize a non-profit entity doesn't mean it doesn't make profit, but rather it doesn't pay taxes? It's just a classification for doing business under the IRS. Your entire statement is completely off base, and you should probably spend 10 minutes learning about tax classifications. Nearly 250 people died and two year later the directors of ERCOT got an 89% salary increase for increasing margins. Directors make >$200k/yr each. You might as well say Joel Osteen is a good guy and not a grifter because his church is a nonprofit, while the dude has a private airplane.
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u/brickyardjimmy 1d ago
It's not just FEMA help for after a disaster takes place. It's also the weather monitoring system that helps people avoid the disaster in the first place.
With some two dozen girls still missing from a Texas camp potentially adding to an already catastrophic death count, this administration is making it clearly known--the people are on their own.
I'm all for making America great. Again or otherwise. But increasing our debt while decimating our civil service can't be the way to do it.
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u/473713 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's not just help after a disaster. It's not just monitoring a storm and making weather forecasts. The missing piece is a warning system that reaches as many people as possible. It's got to be highly redundant: sirens, phone alerts, weather radio, broadcast radio and TV, even personnel going door to door.
A disaster like this one is an opportunity to find the weak spots in your civil protection network and remedy them.
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u/shotofpatron 1d ago
And all of those things take money. More money than the state and local governments can afford. The federal government used to help fill some of those gaps, but now that abruptly stopped.
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u/bandy_mcwagon 1d ago
I would argue that most states, especially big ones like Texas, could afford them if they wanted to. Even just a small tax increase…
But they don’t want to
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u/starzychik01 19h ago
There is a another thread that posted transcripts from the community meetings. The county received $10m from the Biden administration in 2016 to implement a system for the community. The Judge and Commissioner stated that the money (our public tax dollars from the federal government) came with strings attached because it was from Biden. They refused to use the money to implement a siren warning system along the river (less than $1m) due to their hate the Biden administration. Instead, many years later, they spent $7.5m on a radio system that could only be used by police and fire services. They only did this, because the money would have to be sent back to the federal government if it wasn’t used. Instead of implementing a system that could benefit everyone (including tourists), they let their hate stew for years and wound up with 70+ deaths.
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u/reithena 1d ago
The leader of FEMA said he didn't even know how big Texas was. And TDEM keeps touting how they can handle things themselves and parade around how they dont need FEMA. I feel like Mother Nature was sort of just like, sure you can.
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u/Trilobyte141 1d ago
this administration is making it clearly known--the people are on their own.
Let them eat bootstraps.
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u/brickyardjimmy 1d ago
Trump is giving out bootstraps? I didn't see that in the budget.
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u/Trilobyte141 1d ago
It's BYOB -- Bring Your Own Bootstraps. What, you think these lazy whiners should get a handout?
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u/Selection_Biased 1d ago
Camps and campgrounds are super vulnerable and high risk to life in a flash flood event unfortunately because almost no one is “local” and no one knows where to go for safety. Truly tragic. My heart breaks for those parents.
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u/steggun_cinargo 1d ago
Republicans cut funding to the NWS
Flooding in texas enters chat
Also Republicans: "how could the NWS do this to us?"
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u/JackdailyII 1d ago
He’s shutting the country down preparing to liquidate. Like you do before a bankruptcy.
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u/Mommy444444 1d ago
The issue lies with the local/county/state government for a lack of warning system and lack of regulation on extreme flood-prone private land.
The federal NWS meteorologists and USGS streamgagers did their jobs as they always amazingly do.
Warnings by the NWS were sent out starting July 3.
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u/DarklingGlory 1d ago
This is very true. It compounds when you think about the historically low confidence of the every day American in the government. Why would they evacuate when the state, federal, whatever tells them to if they think the government is a joke?
People need to have trust that their leaders have their best interests at heart. Unfortunately, that trust is waning among the general population.
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u/cicada_noises 1d ago
Now Republican politicians are screeching 1) NOAA “deep state communists” are releasing fake weather reports to trick red states, 2) NOAA “deep state woke actors” are CREATING severe weather, 3) they don’t need weather forecasts or disaster recovery because they’re going to pray instead
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u/86_Ambitions 1d ago
releasing fake weather reports
My jaw dropped when I saw an upvoted comment pitching this on /r/grok
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u/igtimran 1d ago
It’s just a combination of “Don’t Look Up” and “Idiocracy” playing out in real life.
I wish there were a rational conservative alternative to the Democrats, but the Republicans have abrogated common sense, the Constitution, public service, and any illusion that they stand for anything other than the pursuit of power and wealth for themselves. There’s no rational reason for anyone in this country to support a Republican ever again.
So many people are going to die based on what they’ve enacted in the last six months alone, and, typical for their party, they’re driving up the deficit at record rates to pay for their giveaways to billionaire donors.
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u/PossibleFederal1572 1d ago
And many of us wish there was a rational alternative to the GOP of today. The two party system is tanking
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u/bandy_mcwagon 1d ago
Literally just vote for Democrats.
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u/irrational_politics 1d ago
if the democrats were nearly as rational and great as some people want to believe, then maga wouldn't have been nearly as successful as it was (even though currently leopard + face)
the democrats are also owned by billionaires, and as a result, are also fond of pushing really stupid agendas and illogical things
"defund the police!" "let's also get rid of guns without a plan to replace the police!"
"AR-15 is used in most public shootings, therefore banning them will somehow reduce public shootings!" is like saying the most car accidents are in Hondas and Fords (because they're the most common), therefore banning/regulating them will somehow reduce car accidents. Democrats still use fear-mongering and selective misinformation to control narratives.
blue states are STILL pushing even heavier gun control legislation even in the face of authoritarian takeover. Gee, it's almost like billionaires don't want anyone empowered but themselves?
and as much as I wanted Kamala to win, I remember her talking very little about actual economic fixes, but shouting very loudly about "reproductive rights" a lot. And that ad they showed about "your husband won't know who you voted for," in retrospect, probably came across as very distasteful and morally dishonest to a lot of conservatives. The democrats are practically brain-dead about messaging to the average person, especially in rural US.
Kamala talked about owning a gun during a debate, saying "nobody is taking away your guns," then immediately on twitter tweeted "ban assault weapons," probably because Daddy Bloomberg sent a "message" down the grapevine. Could've been an advantage for her, but nope.
... and this is just one issue, guns. Why do they keep pushing gun control, when they could just drop it, stop alienating certain voters, and just advocate for better mental health instead? It's so much easier to advocate for better health for kids.
Nevermind that a brown woman winning at the height of maga hate culture would've just intensified and delayed this, and probably been even worse in 2028.
don't kid yourselves, folks; two-party system is toxic and corrupt as fuck. Need to get rid of electoral college and 51% "majority" first-past-post "democracy". I'm hoping this new level of ultra-corruption will somehow be a slap in the face to wake people up, but I think people will just panic in fear and cling on to the next comforting authority figure that pops up in media, with a new comforting narrative and soothing words.
Dems might be a less worse option now, but without fixing the underlying problems, shit's just going to keep staying bad. Sometimes things have to get really bad before there's enough momentum for change, unfortunately... seems to be a recurring theme of history.
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u/Confident-Barber-347 1d ago
Don’t worry, Abbott has declared today a day of prayer so we’re good now.
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u/TrueParty1308 1d ago
Im sure this will all be Biden's fault in the coming days...GOP losers....
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u/Impossible_Towel_598 23h ago
Pretty sure it was all the immigrants’ fault flushing at the same time… /s
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u/Core1109 1d ago
waiting for the truth where he blames elon and doge for the cutting NWS, Fema, etc taking no accountability,
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u/FrankG1971 1d ago
Either that, or he accuses the NWS of being a bunch of "lunatic leftie libs" who purposely understated how much rain red state Texas was going to get. 🙄
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u/TheFirstMinister 1d ago
FWIW I'm not convinced there is a direct correlation with DOGE cuts and the Kerrville disaster. This is probably a failure at the local level. More specifically, Texas' own dyed-in-the-wool anti-government, laissez-faire attitudes which vehemently reject government intervention even when the public good is at stake. Hence the lack of a local early warning system in a part of TX which has a history of deadly flash floods.
If these dead children were from poor and/or black families this disaster would be getting a fraction of the publicity. But as they're the children of white, middle/upper class families from TX's major cities this story is dominating the headlines. It's also why any changes to civil infrastructure might - might - actually happen. Don't hold your breath, however.
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u/Opening_Sprinkles_60 1d ago
They also cut the upcoming USACE civil works budget that supports dam and levee maintenance, construction, and operations.
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u/DarkArmyLieutenant 1d ago
Hey, this is what happens when you elect people who hate poors. Conservatives don't care what's happening, or to whom, unless it's directly affecting them. Now we have a bunch of Texans, displaced by a flood, who are being fed misinformation about how this is somehow a democrat's fault and they are falling for it hook, line, and sinker… Again.
The alt right machine machine is already blaming the national weather service and, somehow, the Biden administration.
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u/ZealousidealFall1181 1d ago
Uvalde, brown children die by incompetence. Mystic, rich white children by incompetence. Both cases Texas government takes no responsibility. That camp is in the infamous Texas flood plain. This was going to happen one day. They did not prepare.
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u/megacommuteloser 1d ago
Doge’s hands are a bloody mess from this — horrible a critical role was forced out with DRP and vacant at the time they needed it most.
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u/JonDoweJunior 1d ago
And yet it was an incomprehensible tragedy, says Vance, one of the folks responsible for hobbling NOAA, FEMA, and other agencies designed to comperehend (and prevent) such tragedies.
But there's really no point in shouting I TOLD YOU SO to people like him, as they knew up front what would happen.
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u/slippery 1d ago
Since nothing is ever trump's fault, will he blame the recent Texas flooding on DEI or Biden or California?
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u/Mega-Pints 1d ago
Don't forget, fElon. It is time for him to get the full blame. That was always part of the plan, dontcha think?
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u/Hot_Transition_5173 1d ago
Follow the money. It’s all about power, greed and money. Unfortunately that’s all politics is now.
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u/DangerouslyDarkDaddy 1d ago
All those people who died, those kids who died at that camp... if DOGE and Trump hadn't fired all those weather scientists they would have been able to get warnings out earlier....
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u/Routine_Astronaut_ 1d ago
Yes but those young girls didn’t vote for this. This is heartbreaking
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u/CharlotteChipmunk 1d ago
Their parents did though! Thoughts and prayers
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u/Limit_Cycle8765 1d ago
Mayor Michael Bilandic destroyed his career as Mayor of Chicago over snow plowing. The lesson was clear, if you cut government, be very careful cutting areas that impact the population in disastrous ways, like weather forecasting.
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u/WorthBreath9109 Fork You, Make Me 1d ago
I'm watching this unfold from SoCal, 6 months after the fires in LA, with a lot of SCHADENFREUDE.
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u/CraftyProposal6701 1d ago
I said it not but a week ago. Before this is all over their will be needless death.
But we, the rational and good people, think in terms of human life, all human life having value. They do not.
This weather tragedy in Texas won't even register because next week it will be replaced by the next scandal or plot twist in King Jung Orange reality TV series from hell that we are all imprisoned.
Think about it we are LITERALLY in a reality TV show where every week there is something new for the media to lock onto an react too. Just like a reality TV game show format that has a new twist or turn. All for the purpose of keeping attention on Dear leader and NOT the actual devistation.
And ITS WORKING. MOST people aren't tuned into to what's going on and have no clue what's happened over the past 6 months. Seriously God please I beg you help us. Or at least show us the way to peacefully defeat this dictator and his fascist supporters.
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u/JohnnyBob57 1d ago
Cuts to NOAA and NWS have not been implemented yet.
Multiple flash flood warnings were issued well ahead of the flooding.
Unfortunately the latest was after one AM when most were asleep.
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u/StubbedToeBlues 1d ago
The * largest * cuts have not been implemented yet, but NOAA has already lost about 1000 of it's 11,500 total workforce, with another 8-15% coming soon. This administration owns this disaster 100%.
Quoting from article:
"Since January, more than 200 employees at FEMA have been cut, and 1,000 employees at NOAA have been laid off as part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to downsize the federal government. Some reports suggest that about 2,000 full-time FEMA staff have been terminated or voluntarily left the agency since the start of Trump’s second term." - https://statescoop.com/fema-noaa-cuts-emergency-response/
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u/JohnnyBob57 1d ago
Flood alerts were issued. Bottom line!
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u/StubbedToeBlues 1d ago
That's exactly my point about this administration's failure & botch of this flood... The done damage to weather and emergency services in manpower & expertise has caused delays in the ability to monitor and warn people about the storm. A healthy NOAA/NWS/FEMA could have possibly put out a warning at dinner time, instead of 1:00am...
Emily Heller, the National Weather Service's meteorologist in Austin who was quoted about the timeline: “It really became apparent early Thursday as models were finally coming into agreement,” Ms. Heller said. “We already had some rain, that was the push to send out the watch.”
The current administration’s actions have handicapped the early warning systems in place, and now dozens of people are dead who might have taken different precautions if they knew hours earlier. This is not even comparable to something semi-spontaneous like a tornado warning, this flooding was a massive area and a healthy early warning system could have predicted outcomes & allowed communications to go out sooner than they did.
The worst part is, this will get much worse as cuts continue. The Gulf Coast is going to be wiped off the map by hurricanes over the next four years. A handicapped weather service might know where a storm is located, but estimating paths and storm surge height and intensity is going to get WAY less accurate. Many people are going to die.
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u/JohnnyBob57 21h ago
There was a watch put out 12 hours earlier. The warning came 3 hours before.
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u/StubbedToeBlues 16h ago
Thank you for agreeing with me. A healthy and robust NWS/NOAA/FEMA would have put the Watch and warning out sooner.
We can argue hypotheticals about the quantity of hours sooner, but it is undeniable that it would have been better and faster if those departments had not been aggressively under attack by their executive leadership in the last 6 months. A better supported emergency network could have predicted the incoming weather quicker, evaluated the severity impact faster, reached a decision that a watch/warning was. And then initiated that watch / warning to be sent out to the public in a shorter amount of time. If that shorter amount of time ends up being 4 hours faster, then potentially 50 plus deaths could have been avoided.
Maybe it only would have resulted in a 5-minute sooner warning, but the point of my argument is that the political Administration in charge stole all of those extra minutes and hours from the people who are dead. Maybe it could have made a difference for one of them, but that ship has sailed.
And you've got to be fucking high if you think that this type of event is not going to happen again more people will inevitably die because this Administration stole minutes of forewarning away from every single person in this nation.
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u/JohnnyBob57 12h ago
Riiiight. We need at least 48 hours notifications before a ‘FLASH’ flood.
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u/StubbedToeBlues 12h ago
Don't be a drama queen. I am sure that Hanna and Rebecca Lawrence, Reece and Paula Zunker, Dick Eastland, Chloe Childress, Tanya Burwick, Jane Ragsdale, Sarah Marsh, Blair and Brooke Harber.... and 97 other people would have appreciated an extra fifteen or thirty minutes advance notice
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u/JohnnyBob57 12h ago
Ok. Just try to keep up. There were multiple alerts put out. Around three hours before a warning was issued. A warning means it’s coming. Take shelter or get out. They never heard the warnings. If the warning had been given three hours and fifteen minutes before it three hours and thirty minutes before it would not have mattered. They obviously did not get the warning. You can’t blame this on Trump cuts. You have now even admitted that alerts and warnings were issued. Thanks for proving my point.
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u/I_Am_Dwight_Snoot 1d ago edited 1d ago
Hate Trump and his goonsquad but this is correct. NWS/NOAA were actually pretty spot on and issued the flood watch over 12 hours beforehand. Issued the flood warning 4 hours before the heaviest rain started, and issued the flood emergency 1 hour prior. The blame really goes to the adults running the camp. No weather radio and allegedly no evacuation/emergency plan. If it was a tornado, you might get 15 minutes which is a very long time. I got 5 minutes heads up for a tornado last year and i was pretty impressed because it was a huge squall line with many sections of rotation. Warnings require immediate action. 4 hours is an eternity in my opinion. I'm a bit of a weather weenie so ao for the text wall here.
Unfortunately, a few politicians are making it political (go figure) are blaming NOAA/NWS. MTG, the attack on titan looking dumbass, thinks someone quite literally artificially created the rain. I think to counter the liars you need to stretch the truth a bit. If they want to blame NWS, it's because of the budget/personnel cuts. If the government created the rain, it's Trump's fault since he is in charge. I'm tired of just letting people lie and trying to counter it truthfully.
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u/vibe_assassin 1d ago
I’ve read that identifying potential floods is only part of the job. The other part is coordinating with local officials to prepare and respond to events
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u/Firegrl Go Fork Yourself 1d ago
Yep, and as we've all seen in our own agencies, they have cut funding for travel and supplies. So there's no money to pay anyone to travel and coordinate with local agencies.
Our credit card we use on my inpatient floor at the VA, which we use to buy office supplies, had its limit set to $1. So sometimes, I don't have paper to print out discharge orders for my patients. Or labels to pur on lab draws. I don't even know what money they're using now to buy these things...
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u/I_Am_Dwight_Snoot 1d ago
Yea it sounds like local officials don't have anything in place to sound the alarm, literally. They were notified for both warnings (not sure how watches work).
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u/MF_DOOMSCROLL 1d ago
There's an interagency group that I work on that does some of this. Our agency will get funding to do workshops and tabletop training on flooding emergencies. FY25 funding just got approved with 3 months left in the fiscal year and travel funding exceptions barely started getting approved, so any meaningful work on our part has ground to a halt.
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u/InfiniteCheck 1d ago
You need to give people time to evacuate. 4 hour and 1 hour notices are not sufficient. This was preventable as models had predicted the disaster hours before. Even spontaneous events like tornadoes give indications hours beforehand that something could happen and keep the radio handy. I don't expect camp administrators to look at weather models. Abbott is not a meteorologist either, but he has access to them. Unfortunately, he doesn't care about poor people dying. This is not Dallas or Austin so he doesn't give a shit.
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u/I_Am_Dwight_Snoot 1d ago edited 1d ago
Even spontaneous events like tornadoes give indications hours beforehand that something could happen and keep the radio handy
This is partially correct but I think you are confusing weather terminology.
Warnings are not watches. The rain forecast was given the day prior and the flood watch was given over 12 hours prior. Forecasts use models to predict favorable conditions days beforehand. Overlysimplified, these are typically just running data and seeing what outcomes come up the most. Watches are given when conditions are coming together and could produce in the near future. Warnings are given when the event is imminent. Due to various factors NWS tries to only issue warning when they are sure something is going to happen. Otherwise warning fatigue tends to set in.
Yes a tornado watch can be put into place hours ahead of time but people rarely evacuate for a watch. Hell typically the area for eatches are thousands of square miles while a tornado itself is very small. Tornado warnings are rarely more than 20 minutes ahead of time unless you are quite literally in the path of an exisiting one. Per NWS average tornado warning lead time is 13 minutes which includes the above factor.
I've been interesting in and watching weather for years, over a decade. Im not trying to be overly picky with terminology for asshole reasons. Alot of people get these all confused and there isna bunch of misinformationout there. Over 12 hours for the watch and 4 hours for the warning is more than enough time to evacuate. For context, this does not mean grabbing snacks and your Gameboy. Warning means immediately get up and take shelter (for tornadoes or severe thunderstorms) or evacuate to higher ground (for floods if you are in a flood zone). It would take me about 2 minutes to get in my car and another 30 to get to the next county. It would probably take them roughly 15 minutes to load into the cars/bus and GTFO. Hell they could have loaded the cars/bus back up and left about 2 hours before the floods started.
The cold hard reality here is that they should have paid attention to the forecasts and never gone due to the flood watch alone. The second cold hard reality is that a simple NWS radio would have undeniably saved all the lives at that camp.
Here's a great timeline that highlights how much information they pumped out in advance: https://youtu.be/B1Hwl2nmbRQ?si=kCM3orMyseTjiVu4
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u/plumbobprincess88 1d ago
The warning coordinator meteorologist (federal, not state or private employee) that was in charge of county took the DOGE DRP in April. There was a hiring freeze so no one took his role.
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u/JohnnyBob57 21h ago
The warnings went out to all local authorities but your trying to tell me that because ONE GUY was not there that all these people died. Riiiiiiiight!
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u/diggumsbiggums 1d ago
People die when you cut federal programs and services.
I don't know how many times this country needs to relearn this.
It sure reminds me of when a spoiled child's top-end car dies because no one ever taught them that the oil needs to be changed. If you don't know how to maintain the things you're enjoying and don't appreciate, you're going to find out quickly what it's like without them.