The Texas Disaster Freezing Sacrifices At The Alter Of Wind And Solar Power
POSTED BY: JEWELSTAITEFAN
UPDATED: Sunday, September 14, 2025 08:00
VIEWED: 11410
PAGE 15 of 18
LA Protests spreading to other major cities
Anti-ICE protest in Austin ends with a dozen arrests amid tear gas, pepper spray use
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/local/2025/06/09/austin-protest-po
lice-tear-gas-texas-los-angeles-protests-la-riots-immigration-raids/84125428007/
Active Duty Female Marine Joins Anti-ICE Protest While In Uniform, Reject's Trump's Use Of Military
https://vidmax.com/video/233655-active-duty-female-marine-joins-anti-i
ce-protest-while-in-uniform-reject-s-trump-s-use-of-military
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At least 13 killed, 20 children missing in Texas floods
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c15np18yy24t
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RVs and summer camps
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Quote:"All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
At least 13 killed, 20 children missing in Texas floods
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c15np18yy24t
Texas as a whole leads the nation in flood deaths, and by a wide margin. A colleague and I analyzed data from 1959 to 2019 and found 1,069 people had died in flooding in Texas over those six decades. The hills are steep, and the water moves quickly when it floods. This is a semi-arid area with soils that don’t soak up much water, so the water sheets off quickly and the shallow creeks can rise fast.
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/texas-hill-country-fl
ash-flood-explainer-20589667.php
"Time is a flat circle." - Friedrich Nietzsche and Rust Cohle in the TV series True Detective
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Death Toll keeps climbing
at least 51 with dozens missing
80 dead and 41 missing: Gov. Abbott provides update
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Quote:Children’s camps in Texas were located in areas known to be at high risk of flooding
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Death Toll keeps climbing
at least 51 with dozens missing
80 dead and 41 missing: Gov. Abbott provides update
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/07/climate/childrens-camps-texas-flooding
The Guadalupe River flood was a 1-in-100-year event, meaning it has about a 1% chance of happening in any given year.
Texas has already seen multiple dangerous flooding events this year, and the United States overall saw a record number of flash flood emergencies last year.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Officials Feared Flood Risk to Youth Camps but Rejected Warning System
Kerr County had discussed buying such things as water gauges and sirens after previous flood disasters. But as with many rural Texas counties, cost was an issue.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/06/us/texas-flood-warnings-sirens.html
Eight years ago, in the aftermath of yet another river flood in the Texas Hill Country, officials in Kerr County debated whether more needed to be done to build a warning system along the banks of the Guadalupe River.
A series of summer camps along the river were often packed with children. For years, local officials kept them safe with a word-of-mouth system: When floodwaters started raging, upriver camp leaders warned those downriver of the water surge coming their way.
But was that enough? Officials considered supplementing the system with sirens and river gauges, along with other modern communications tools. “We can do all the water-level monitoring we want, but if we don’t get that information to the public in a timely way, then this whole thing is not worth it,” said Tom Moser, a Kerr County commissioner at the time.
In the end, little was done. When catastrophic floodwaters surged through Kerr County last week, there were no sirens or early flooding monitors. Instead, there were text alerts that came late for some residents and were dismissed or unseen by others.
The rural county of a little over 50,000 people, in a part of Texas known as Flash Flood Alley, contemplated installing a flood warning system in 2017, but it was rejected as too expensive. The county, which has an annual budget of around $67 million, lost out on a bid at the time to secure a $1 million grant to fund the project, county commission meeting minutes show.
As recently as a May budget meeting, county commissioners were discussing a flood warning system being developed by a regional agency as something that they might be able to make use of.
But in a recent interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said that local residents had been resistant to new spending. “Taxpayers won’t pay for it,” he said, adding that he didn’t know if people might reconsider now.
The idea of a flood warning system was broached in 2015, in the aftermath of a deadly flood in Wimberley, Texas, about 75 miles to the east of Kerrville, the Kerr County seat.
The Guadalupe River Basin is one of the most dangerous regions in the United States when it comes to flash floods. Ordinary floods from heavy rainstorms occur regularly, inundating streets and threatening structures as floodwaters gradually rise. The region is also prone to flash floods, which can occur with little to no notice.
People living near the Guadalupe in Kerr County may have little time to seek higher ground, especially when flash floods come through late at night when people are asleep. In 1987, a rapidly rising Guadalupe River swept away a school bus carrying teens from a church camp, killing 10 of them.
Avantika Gori, a Rice University professor who is leading a federally funded project to improve flood resilience in rural Texas counties, said that flood warning systems are often simple networks of rain gauges or stream gauges that are triggered when rain or floodwaters exceed a certain level.
The gauges can then be used to warn those at risk of flooding, whether by text message, which may not be effective in areas with spotty cellphone service; notifications broadcast on TV and radio; or sometimes through a series of sirens.
More complex systems use forecasts from the National Weather Service to predict rainfall and model what areas might be subject to flooding, Professor Gori said.
After the 2015 floods, an improved monitoring system was installed in the Wimberley area, and cell towers are now used to send out notices to all cellphones in the area.
Mr. Moser, the former commissioner, visited Wimberley after its new system was in place, and then led efforts to have a flood warning system in Kerr County. His proposal wou
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Last Year, Hurricane Beryl
The mainstream media is deliberately lying about the events leading up to the catastrophic flooding in Texas.
https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1941987736849711216
The National Weather Service executed timely, precise forecasting and warnings, despite unprecedented rainfall overwhelming the region.
Here is the timeline of NWS’s proactive response:
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Texas lawmakers failed to pass a bill to improve local flood warning systems this year
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/06/texas-disaster-warning-emergen
cy-communication-bill-kerrville-floods/
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Quote:Guadalupe River flood deaths were entirely preventable — but Texas officials ignored the warnings
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Texas lawmakers failed to pass a bill to improve local flood warning systems this year
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/06/texas-disaster-warning-emergen
cy-communication-bill-kerrville-floods/
Climate scientists warned of worsening floods, and local officials knew the risk but decided $1 million was too high a price.
"We need leaders who will stop playing dumb while children die, because more storms are coming, and they will be worse," writes columnist Chris Tomlinson.
By Chris Tomlinson | July 7, 2025
https://tinyurl.com/mtt383py (this is a shortened Houston Chronicle URL)
Scientists warned us. Similar tragedies have already killed thousands. Yet our leaders still shift the blame and refuse to acknowledge what’s killing people or do something about it.
A rain bomb dropped over the Guadalupe River basin in the early hours of Independence Day, killing more than five dozen people. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly insisted they had no idea this kind of flood was possible.
“We have had weather events that were completely unpredictable,” Abbott declared. “And that is just a part of nature."
Kelly claimed: “No one knew this kind of flood was coming.” There was no warning system for thousands of residents and hundreds of young campers, even if someone did.
“Taxpayers won’t pay for it,” Kelly told the New York Times. Asked if voters in a county that went 78% for President Donald Trump might reconsider, he said, “I don’t know.”
Tomlinson's Take
Our leaders are willfully ignorant and intentionally unprepared.
Former Kerr County Commissioner Jonathan Letz, who retired in December, knew in 2016 that the flood risk was high and the warning system inadequate. Neighboring Comal County had spent about $300,000 to install a flood warning system with sirens.
“We are very flood-prone. We know that,” Letz told the San Antonio Express-News in 2016. “We have an obligation to look at what we have, especially since we have a warning system out there that may or may not work. If it doesn’t work, we need to get rid of it.”
The Republican leaders in Kerr County, which is relatively wealthy and very conservative, in 2018 chose not to spend less than $1 million to install a system like Comal’s.
The U.S. Geological Survey warned in 2019 that rain would fall faster and harder on the Guadalupe River due to climate change. Scientists compared past rainfall with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite data and global warming statistics and predicted a 20% increase in peak discharges.
The Texas Senate, which Patrick oversees, this year killed House Bill 13, which would have formed a statewide council to develop emergency response systems for the state's growing number of natural disasters.
State and county officials also ignored more immediate warnings. The privately owned forecaster AccuWeather called out local officials for ignoring them and the National Weather Service.
“The heartbreaking catastrophe that occurred in Central Texas is a tragedy of the worst sort because it appears evacuations and other proactive measures could have been undertaken to reduce the risk of fatalities had the organizers of impacted camps and local officials heeded the warnings of the government and private weather sources, including AccuWeather,” said AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter.
The July Fourth Flood reveals a broader problem with conservative politicians ignoring scientists' warnings of a worsening climate and more extreme weather.
Since the 1990s, climate scientists have predicted that a warming atmosphere would cause extreme rain events. Texans saw one of the most historic examples, Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Dozens of scientists and reporters, including me, warned that rain bombs are the new normal thanks to climate change, and we should prepare.
Aft
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