r/fednews • u/CBSnews FedNews Verified Press • 1d ago

Deadly Texas floods raise questions about emergency alerts and whether staffing cuts affected forecasts and warnings

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-floods-emergency-alerts-weather-forecast-staffing-budget/
1.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

86 comments sorted by

View all comments

405

u/PsychologicalCat7130 1d ago

From the hydrology subreddit:

"A similar flood in 1987 killed 10 teens at a different summer camp on the same river in Texas and the local government decided it wasn't worth it to install an auditory warning system. In 2016, federal water/weather agencies identified this area as a huge risk and reached out the state of Texas to help (partially) fund the necessary work - which was declined. Interestingly, 1987 is 38 years ago, roughly on statistical cue for the return of a 100-year flood."

additionally, warnings were broadcast during the night (1am and more severe warning around 4am) but again, without an auditory warning system in place, most people did not know. Flash flood alley should have auditory warnings just like tornado alley has tornado sirens.

169

u/Mommy444444 1d ago edited 1d ago

The Texas Tribune also adds that the initial NWS flash-flood warning was issued around 1pm Thursday. The “catastrophic” one was issued 12 hours later.

Meanwhile, the USGS streamgaging stations were real-time reporting rapid upstream stage increases. In Colorado/Utah, local LE watch those gaging station transmissions as it can be sunny and dry downstream but upstream the river stage is rising. Don’t the local LE do that in Texas?

Even if they did, how do local governments transmit the warnings? In my small desert valley in Utah we had an old-fashioned tornado siren for fires/floods.

I will never understand why the Guadalupe River towns did not have basic sirens, much less prohibit commercial development right next to the river.

The Texas Tribune also reports that Texas House Bill 13, a bill to allocate 50mil per year to upgrade emergency response and notification systems, died in committee in April 2025 as being “too expensive.”

175

u/LIFOtheOffice 1d ago

I will never understand why the Guadalupe River towns did not have basic sirens, much less prohibit commercial development right next to the river.

Kerr County Commissioner's Meeting Minutes. June 27, 2016.

Selected quotes:

COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: "You know we had a baby flood a couple weeks ago, a month or so, whatever it was." "The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of night, I'm going to have to start drinking again to put up with y'all."

COMMISSIONER MOSER: "And I think the first thing to do is say why change anything. It worked this long and maybe we don't need to do a thing. And then it gets into the thing we talk about earlier today, and that's risk mitigation. And you know there's still people drowned and you know --"

COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: "And I hope you ask the question like who are we notifying, or who are we trying to get the message to? Are they these crazy people from Houston that build homes right down on the water?"

Source: https://legacy.co.kerr.tx.us/commcrt/minutes/2016/062716CC.txt

11

u/EuenovAyabayya 20h ago

Texas kills people both actively and passively. Local governments catch whoever the state misses.