Texas tragedy

 

Looks like it might have been simply a natural disaster, and blame isn't helpful.  But, things aren't going to improve under the Trump regime.

Water rose fast along the Guadalupe River, causing more than two dozen deaths. Local officials said they couldn’t have seen it coming.

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A flood watch was issued by the National Weather Service at 1:18 p.m. that predicted up to 7 inches of isolated rainfall early Friday morning in South Central Texas, including Kerr County.

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The Guadalupe River gauge at the unincorporated community of Hunt, where the river forks, recorded a 22-foot rise in just two hours, said Bob Fogarty, meteorologist with the NWS Austin/San Antonio office.

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At least 32 people were killed by the flooding. Dozens more remained missing as of Saturday morning, including 27 young girls from a Christian summer camp, according to the Kerr County sheriff’s office.

The scale of the disaster — and the fact that major flooding is common in this part of Texas — has raised questions over whether more could have been done to warn people in the path of the flood waters.

Local and state officials were quick to point to weather forecasts that did not accurately predict the intensity of the rainfall.

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“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,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter wrote in a statement Saturday morning.

Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, on Friday pointed to NWS forecasts from earlier in the week that projected up to 6 inches of rain.

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The most serious warning came at 4:03 a.m. when the NWS issued a flash flood emergency, warning of an “extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation” and urging immediate evacuations to higher ground.

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The flooding came amid concerns about staffing levels at the NWS, after the Trump administration fired hundreds of meteorologists this year as part of Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts. The NWS Austin/San Antonio office’s warning coordination meteorologist announced in April that he was retiring early due to the funding cuts, leading to speculation that vacancies could have impacted forecasters’ response.

The NWS forecasting offices were operating normally at the time of the disaster, said Greg Waller, service coordination hydrologist with the NWS West Gulf River Forecast Center in Fort Worth.

“We had adequate staffing. We had adequate technology,” Waller said. “This was us doing our job to the best of our abilities.”

Staffing data provided by the NWS’s labor union showed the San Angelo forecasting office currently has four vacancies out of 23 positions and San Antonio has six vacancies out of 26.

Legislative Director Tom Fahy said that was adequate to issue timely forecasts and warnings before and during the emergency.

At least one independent meteorologist working in Texas echoed that statement, writing on his website that “we have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that current staffing or budget issues within NOAA and the NWS played any role at all in this event.”

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Between 2 and 7 a.m., the Guadalupe River in Kerrville rose from 1 to more than 34 feet in height, according to a flood gauge in the area.

  Texas Tribune

UPDATE 06:07 pm:

 

UPDATE 07/06/2025:

Before taking any questions, Texas’s governor Greg Abbott, the homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, the Texas senator John Cornyn and the representative Chip Roy opened today’s press conference with long statements of self-congratulation and praise for the response from local, state and federal officials. They also repeatedly thanked Donald Trump in effusive terms.

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Much of the statements from Abbott, Noem, Cornyn and Roy focused on praising their own efforts, thanking Trump and the White House and encouraging people to pray.

“Prayer matters,” Abbott said. Prayers “could have been the reason why water stopped rising”.

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There are still 27 people missing from the flooding event. Of the bodies recovered so far, five adults and three children are still unidentified.

  Guardian

Then maybe more than 27 are still missing?

Dalton Rice, the Kerrville city manager, said that 27 girls from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along the Guadalupe River, are still missing. Other people who were in the area but not at the camp could also be missing, Rice added.

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Following two long statements from the Texas governor and US homeland security secretary praising their own response efforts, the senator John Cornyn took the mic at the press briefing and began: “My thanks to President Trump.”

Next to speak is representative Chip Roy, who opened with a joke, saying: “Before I was crazy enough to run for Congress” he spent a lot of time in this area. He goes on to praise the governor and the homeland security secretary.

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Officials have said the floods were not predicted by forecasts and that the river rose by 26ft (8 meters) in just 45 minutes. A local weather forecaster disputed that and said that warnings were issued hours before the disaster.

UPDATE 07/06/2025:

Huh, what?

UPDATE 07/07/2025:

UPDATE 07/08/2025:

UPDATE 07/11/2025:

UPDATE 07/12/2025: