Roger Pielke Jr has observations.
As I write this, the death toll in the Texas flash floods now exceeds 70, with 12 people still missing, including 11 girls and one camp counselor. It is a heartbreaking and horrific tragedy.
Many have been quick to politicize the tragedy in an effort to support whatever agenda that they were promoting before the disaster — climate change, DOGE budget cuts, operations of the National Weather Service, the Biden Administration. The one political implication of the disaster that I’m ready to call for is to reassert the importance of establishing a U.S. Disaster Review Board, a case made here at THB by Mike Smith last March.
Today, I share some data and context on the event for those wanting to go beyond seeking to use tragic deaths is hopes of scoring online partisan points. Shameful.
Before getting to relevant data and research, my view — This tragedy occurred in a location that has among the greatest risks in the nation of flash flooding, where kids in summer camps have previously been swept away to their deaths, and where warning systems are (apparently and incredibly) not in place. This tragedy never should have happened and it should never happen again.
Update by @MarinaMedvin: This catastrophe keeps getting worse. A dam broke on the Guadeloupe and the rescue teams are now being evacuated. (Other reports dispute the dam break, but not the evacuation of rescue teams.)
Flash Flood Alley.
I have done work in Phoenix and Las Vegas. Those cities and regions are ALL ABOUT flash floods. It seems incongruous… but these dry dry desert environments prepare MORE for water than does Seattle. Every project must have massive (shallow) retention basins built into them to contain flash flooding events (below floor levels). And there’s an elaborate network of river washes and dry water causeways to channel flash floods. Every roadway crossing these washes have signs posted WARNING of flash flood DANGER.
https://247tempo.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/shutterstock-1858143241-huge-licensed-scaled.jpg
I wonder if “Flash Flood Alley” is similarly prepared?
In Arizona if you have to get rescued from a wash during a rainstorm, they make you pay for the rescue. Because the state police and all the fire departments decided if someone was so STUPID to try driving through a wash in flood, they should pay for it.
And amazingly, the number of flood rescues dropped quite a bit.
Las Vegas also has “mole people” who sometimes fall victim to the flash flooding there.
If this is the same area as “demolition ranch,” the youtube channel, then it’s all limestone carved by running water, covered with a few inches of soil…
And flooded a year or two ago as well.
Maybe Texas and other states should develop their own weather forcast centers.
Sure, they can use the NWS, NAM and European forecast for guidance, but the buck should stop at the States’ governors’ offices, not at a distant Federal or, even worst, a UN weather bureaucracy.
The temptation to make political hay out of every disaster is too irresistible for today’s doomsayers and pot-stirrers for smart Americans to trust old, centralized systems anymore.
In a discussion with my wife earlier today I wondered if there were any warning systems in place. As Roger Pielke opines here, incredibly there are not. Sad!
Well there is a HISTORY of flooding there, but those who ‘run’ that kid’s camp, must be complete IDIOTS and ignored that history.
History is literally repeating itself – 1987.
https://x.com/hustlebitch_/status/1941997035927814304?s=52
As the spokesperson on the radio said yesterday, you need a warning system, you need people to hear the warning system and you need an evacuation plan that doesn’t put people at risk. Much of flash flood alley doesn’t have cell phone reception and some of the people who died were trapped while trying to flee. It’s a complicated problem. And the next tragedy won’t be a flood. It will be an earthquake, tornado or hurricane. And the region (wherever it happens) won’t be ready for that either.
The river is notorious for severe flooding. What’s the solution? Let’s build more and closer to the river. Every freakin’ time.
Next time they can build the camp cabins on pontoons with sufficient cables to hold them in place.
(and yes, there is at least 1 camp I’ve been at that selected that “solution”)