Will FEMA get involved?
There is a county in central Texas, where 76% of its voters went for Trump in the last election. In this county, there is a sallow valley in which the Guadeloupe River Flows. A normally tranquil river. Except when it has what amounts to a tropical rain event. These past few days, the river rose 25 feet in less than a day. A current report says 25 people were killed, something like 26 children from a local camp are missing. 850 people rescued.
There obviously was not adequate warning.
Where is the federal government in all of this? Will FEMA get involved?
Is this a result of climate change?
Do you think it might change the way people in that area are voting?
I think it is one of the worst disasters in Texas.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the deceased and the missing.
But, given the recent track record of FEMA under Trump, I doubt they will be much help.
Might as well build another Alligator Alcatraz.
There obviously was not adequate warning.
Where is the federal government in all of this? Will FEMA get involved?
Is this a result of climate change?
Do you think it might change the way people in that area are voting?
I think it is one of the worst disasters in Texas.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the deceased and the missing.
But, given the recent track record of FEMA under Trump, I doubt they will be much help.
Might as well build another Alligator Alcatraz.
Comments
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary Kristi Noem said the flooding in Texas is “unprecedented,” adding that the federal government will be providing further resources.
Noem confirmed that various DHS agencies are actively working in efforts, including the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
She added that the Border Patrol’s tactical unit named BORTAC, a special operations group, is also on the ground assisting.
My italics.
Whether or not FEMA will be of much help remains to be seen, surely.
Just a band aide to larger problems. Climate Change, lack of adequate warning systems, etc.
Just because Noam says the Feds will be coming does not mean it will happen. Heck, South Carolina is still waiting for promised aid from last year's disaster. Even in Washington, there were two small hamlets that never got needed aid during the previous Trump administration--even though the voters in those hamlets nearly all voted for Trump. Trump is known to play favoritism.
From the Guardian again:
“Prayer matters,” Abbott said. Prayers “could have been the reason why water stopped rising”.
Make of that what you will.
Reminds me of the story of Chanticleer. the rooster. Every morning, he thought he could cause the sun to come up every morning when he would crow. True enough, he would crow and the sun would come up. Then one day, he overslept. When he finally got up the sun was already up.
Several videos and photos of the flooding.
BORTAC sounds so Soviet.
The point of FEMA is to bring all the resources of government to bear in the recovery of an area hit by a disaster, be it the hill country in Texas, or the hill country in South Carolina or two small hamlets in Washington State.
North Carolina is being hit with a hurricane now. Will FEMA respond? Should it depend on the whims of a unstable president?
Which brings up another issue, NASA is cutting of access to satellite data needed to track hurricanes and other storms.
And this still does not address the underlying problem of climate change.
I suspect he has no firm opinion, but knows that climate change denial appeals to many of his supporters. He also hates wind turbines.
Yeah, if he'd never gone into politics, he'd probably just casually accept that climate-change is real, and would vote for politicians who also believe it's real, though he likely wouldn't be voting based on that issue in particular.
Tropical Storm Chantal made landfall in South Carolina this morning. As it moved toward North Carolina, it fairly quickly weakened to a tropical depression, with maximum sustained winds of around 35 mph. It continues to weaken. It is bringing heavy rain, so flash flooding is a possibility. The main concern at the beach is rip currents.
There were other camps also involved in the flooding. Can't rule them out. Just that most of the infomation is about Camp Mystic.
Donald Trump declared the deadly flooding in Texas to be a major disaster under the Stafford Act on Sunday.
“I have authorized Federal relief and recovery assistance in the affected area,” said a letter signed and posted to social media by Trump to Texas’s governor Greg Abbott. “Individual Assistance and Public Assistance will be provided.”
Trump has designated the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate assistance efforts.
I’m not saying that systems were adequate, just that being surprised and caught off guard by the extent and speed of the flooding is nothing new at all.
The National Weather Service has given out a timeline of its warnings. If gave the first flood warning Thursday morning, but the warning that would have triggered alerts on cell phones was at 1 a.m.
I have to wonder how many heard their cell phones going off. I know wife and I do not have cell phones on during the night.
With the continuing rain, the Hill Country has now had 20 inches since 3 July.
The Hill is reporting two key Weather Service Managment positions were vacant, one of them that would have coordinated flood warnings with local emergency alert systems.
So, there will be a lot of xplaining to do.
The National Weather Service apparently issued timely warnings. There was apparently some difficulty in having that information distributed, though.
So some of this seems to be typical government austerity fetishism. On the other hand:
So it's not like there aren't austerity fetishists in Comal (R+23) and Kendall (R+28) counties, but for whatever reason the decision was made locally to prioritize a flood warning system, unlike Kerr county (R+28).
Normally it would, but overuse of the emergency alert system in Texas seems to be a particular problem.
I can imagine a number of Texas residents taking measures to silence alerts about police activities at the other end of the state after an early morning wake-up like that. The real mistake is using the same system that warns about dangerous floods and tornadoes for this kind of thing.
FFS. Just... fuck.
Lawerence O Donnell last night reported at the end of this hurricane season FEMA is scheduled to be dismantled. When Trump was asked about that last night, he reportedly said, "We will have to talk about that. They are a little busy right now."
Tonight, on PBS, the commentator asked the reporter on scene what is different with this disaster. The reporter said in past disasters he had covered, there would be one central staging area where FEMA would plant its flag and coordinate all recovery from there. In this disaster FEMA does not have a central location. Much of the recovery work is being done through volunteer organizations. He said about the only Federal presence he has seen are Coast Guard river boats and helicopters.
Guess who is being a good neighbor? Mexico has sent in some of its rescue teams.
We must not forget the senior senator of Texas, Ted Cruz. Where was he when the disaster happened? At the Acropolis in Greece. He has a tendency to be out of the picture when something serious is going down in Texas. Remember the time when Texas had a major power outage during the deep freeze of 2021? He took his family to Cancun, Mexico. Ted had just inserted a cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's budget to eliminate the development of models which are designed to predict such disasters in the future. The one model the NOAA was working on would have been designed for each state, to take into account the unique characteristics of the state.
Good going, Ted.
It could be argued that some of this is the inefficiency associated with over-centralization. On the other hand, given the general hostility the current administration has towards FEMA and anyone receiving federal aid, it's possible this was deliberate. This kind of bureaucratic hurdle creation is the same method Republicans use to cut Medicaid or suppress voter registration.
And? What makes their loss any more tragic than anyone else’s? I’m of course sympathetic to their families — this is indeed tragic for them — but who’s to say they had more potential than, say, a bunch of little girls in a cage waiting to be deported.
Sorry, but being rich and powerful doesn’t make you special in my book. There’s a lot to unpack about how this tragedy unfolded and why warnings weren’t given and heeded, but this lament for these girls’ lost potential because of their families’ connections is elitist BS at best.
My point is that this could be the beginnings of a big shake up in Texas Politics. When Rich and Powerful get hurt, they move mountains.
I very much agree we should not forget the young girls locked in the deportation cages.
There is so much wrong with the whole story.
Why didn't Kerr County have an adequate warning system, especially when both Obama and Biden administrations offered to upgrade what they had?
Why were warnings ignored until the water was actually rising?
Why were campers and residents allowed to be in a flood plain known to be extremely dangerous.
Why was FEMA so slow in responding?
How did vacant positions in critical agencies contribute to the loss of lives?
What does this say about what is happening with climate change?