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Flash Flood Alley sounds like the perfect location for a girls campground

kenny

kenny

Super_Ideal_Rock
Premium
Joined
Apr 30, 2005
Messages
34,625
What could possibly go wrong?
Oh ... maybe a flash flood. :doh::doh::doh:

Likely it was named Flash Flood Alley LONG before climate change.
Oh wait!
Climate change is fake news. :doh::doh::doh:

"Camp Mystic is an all-girls summer camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River, in the heart of an area known as Flash Flood Alley."

Besides 13 dead, at least 23 girls are missing. :knockout:

www.tpr.org

Flooding kills at least 13 people in Kerr County. At least 23 girls are missing. Rescue efforts underway.

Authorities advised people to call 800-733-2767 if they were trying to locate a loved one.
www.tpr.org www.tpr.org
 
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Drought makes people careless about the danger of flash floods. When I moved to California, there was a terrible drought and some people were camping in a dry riverbed. I think they were all lost when a huge rainstorm came through.
 
Maybe gutting the NOAA(NWS) wasn't a wise move.
It's okay, there won't be FEMA either.

The current toll is 79, so far. Dozens missing and more rain forecast.
 
I watched all 38 minutes.
Judging by how long this bridge is, this has happened before!

WOW! ASTOISHING!

 
Absolutely devastating. I also saw the video of the woman who had her father, bedridden on hospice, with water in her house literally up to the bottom of his bed begging for help from someone, anyone. I only hope her and her family received the help they needed.
As for the video of the speed where the water rose up, very very dangerous. I’m not sure whether advance notice could have helped but surely having camp grounds on and near a river known for flash flooding seems irresponsible.
Prayers and condolences for the families affected by this tragedy,
 
I'm surprised there wasn't a warning system installed similar to what's used for tidal wave warnings. When DOGE was enacting cuts per budget reduction policy, the administration stated that it would become the responsibility of each state to handle its own emergencies and this flood is a prime example of what can happen and how expensive it will be to recover from future disasters with less federal assistance.

 
Being a camper, I would avoid sites near a river for concerns with flooding.

R.I.P..

DK :(2
 
Its hard to forecast when you don't have enough of the right people there and this is what happened in this case. Bad enough with hurricane season here. We are so screwed y'all...
 
This is horrible. These poor families having to deal with such devastating loss.

How could there have been no warning sirens? Many people said there were no warnings on their phones or warning sirens blaring outside. This area has a history of many floods thru the years. How could a children’s camp be allowed to stay there?

What is it going to take for people to realize we need FMEA and NOAA?

@Arcadian, You are correct. We are all screwed!!!
 
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The video actually has me confused. I didn't watch the whole thing but what I did watch was during the daytime. I was under the impression that this occurred in the middle of the night, early morning hours when most were asleep and perhaps not have heard their weather alerts. I just don't understand why more didn't evacuate. I must be missing some information. It's such a tragedy,
 
Calliecake said:
This is horrible. These poor families having to deal with such devastating loss.

How could there have been no warning sirens? Many people said there were no warnings on their phones or warning sirens blaring outside. This area has a history of many floods thru the years. How could a children’s camp be allowed to stay there?

What is it going to take for people to realize we need FMEA and NOAA?

@Arcadian, You are correct. We are all screwed!!!
Click to expand...

From what I have read, the Hill country where the camp was has spotty cell service.

In sparsely populated country, sirens would be complicated. A relay, like in Return of the King?


I'm not saying it was unavoidable, only that it would not have been easy and would likely have been expensive. Unfortunately, human nature is more inclined to say "Why should we pay for an expensive system we might never need? We've done fine so far."

It's so obvious after the fact, but like they say, every safety regulation is written in blood.

Those poor children. Their poor parents.
 
empliau said:
"Why should we pay for an expensive system we might never need? We've done fine so far."
Click to expand...

But I believe this has happened before. In something like 1987 there was also a flood where several people died. And honestly, a camp full of kids right by a river with this history of flooding needs to have some kind of system if their cells aren't reliable. This is just such a tragedy.

 
Lookinagain said:
But I believe this has happened before. In something like 1987 there was also a flood where several people died. And honestly, a camp full of kids right by a river with this history of flooding needs to have some kind of system if their cells aren't reliable. This is just such a tragedy.

Click to expand...

Believe me I agree. We are willing to sacrifice any number of people for - economy, principles, whatever we call it. After a few years the numbers fade and no one wants to spend the money - again.

People thought the massacre of the innocents at Sandy Hook would finally make changes necessary. Then Fort Lauderdale, then Uvalde. The Washington Post had an article about the father of one of the missing girls, Linnie, who was there searching for his child. He couldn't sit and wait. I understand. I'm a parent. I would look for my child too.

Linnie isn't missing any more.
 
Lookinagain said:
The video actually has me confused. I didn't watch the whole thing but what I did watch was during the daytime. I was under the impression that this occurred in the middle of the night, early morning hours when most were asleep and perhaps not have heard their weather alerts. ... I must be missing some information....
Click to expand...
744.png

Per Wikipedia Texas's Guadalupe River is 230 miles long, and empties into the Gulf of Mexico, yes Mexico.
Of course the entire length of the river doesn't surge all at once.
Like a wave moving across a pool, or across an ocean, it takes time for a surge to make its way down a river 250 miles long

How much time?
I've no idea.

But, given the apparent night vs. day discrepancy you mention, I assume the bridge in the video I posted above (post # eight) is far down-river from the now-notorious girl's camp, Camp Mystic.
 
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The Washington Post also says that 1.8 trillion gallons of water fell on the Texas hill country and Edwards Plateau Friday morning.

So much water - here's a folksy illustration of how much a trillion really is:

" A billion dollar bills laid end to end would stretch 96,900 miles, winding around the Earth nearly four times. A trillion dollars laid in the same manner would stretch for 96,906,656 miles, a distance farther than the sun."

Almost two trillion gallons of water fell from the sky. On one morning.
 
www.rawstory.com

Hurricane expert sounds alarm that Trump's admin killed key weather satellites

Hurricane and storm surge expert Michael Lowry penned a column on Thursday, warning of a recent decision by President Donald Trump's administration to kill three weather satellites just as hurricane season is ramping up. He wrote that on Monday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced it would...
www.rawstory.com www.rawstory.com
www.theregister.com

Security behind decision to end DoD's satellite data sharing

: Official notice confirms delay to cutoff until the end of July. Not to worry, AI modelling's in the wings
www.theregister.com www.theregister.com
This is not good news. Not at all.
 
I saw a piece on the news last night showing various hearings through the years on installing a warning system. By and large, the local entities either didn’t want to pay for it, didn’t think the taxpayers would support it or tabled it for discussion/studies in the future.
I also saw a camp counselor interviewed. She had been a camper herself and loved the camp. They asked if she had received an alert on her phone. She stated that counselors had to turn their phones in and only got them back when they were off duty.
These poor kids were probably sleeping soundly after a long camp day. Trying to awaken kids from a sound sleep to move quickly was probably a challenge in itself. Apparently the younger campers were the ones on lower ground. As you aged up in subsequent years, you moved up the hill. Just so many factors that made this an absolute disaster. The heartache is difficult to even try to comprehend for these families.
 
Okay, I'm not a computer geek at all, but if the reason they are cutting off these satellite is
"to mitigate a significant cybersecurity risk to the High-Performance Computing environment."

Couldn't they be put on a separate network/server? Again, just asking the question as I have no idea.
 
MissGotRocks said:
I saw a piece on the news last night showing various hearings through the years on installing a warning system. By and large, the local entities either didn’t want to pay for it, didn’t think the taxpayers would support it or tabled it for discussion/studies in the future.
I also saw a camp counselor interviewed. She had been a camper herself and loved the camp. They asked if she had received an alert on her phone. She stated that counselors had to turn their phones in and only got them back when they were off duty.
These poor kids were probably sleeping soundly after a long camp day. Trying to awaken kids from a sound sleep to move quickly was probably a challenge in itself. Apparently the younger campers were the ones on lower ground. As you aged up in subsequent years, you moved up the hill. Just so many factors that made this an absolute disaster. The heartache is difficult to even try to comprehend for these families.
Click to expand...

I don't think the campers were allowed phones either but I haven't verified that. But I would assume that is accurate if the counselors couldn't have them when they worked.
 
Lookinagain said:
Okay, I'm not a computer geek at all, but if the reason they are cutting off these satellite is
"to mitigate a significant cybersecurity risk to the High-Performance Computing environment."

Couldn't they be put on a separate network/server? Again, just asking the question as I have no idea.
Click to expand...

And if the threat was immediate, how would an AI program(the replacement) mitigate it?
 
It sounds like the camp didn’t have a plan for flash floods, even when the area had been catastrophically flooded in the past (1987) because it was built on the flood plain. (Depriving counselors of an emergency cell phone or walk-in talkie when they are in charge but isolated is unacceptable for a camp).

The fire and rescue of the area ALSO didn’t have a rescue plan. Apparently the Austin firefighters union is initiating a vote of no confidence for the Austin fire chief, who refused to deploy rescue boats to the area during the floods.

The deflection of blame onto the current administration needs clarification. My understanding is that the NOAA office in the area was fully staffed. The weather forecasters predicted all this with no problem. Even the local cloud seeding program was notified to stop cloud seeding a couple days prior, when they announced almost certain flooding.

From what I’m reading: everyone in weather and emergency services knew this was a potential catastrophic flood. They even warned commercial weather modification organizations. But no one in all the various agencies attempted to reach the citizens in the flood plain to mobilize any detection or evacuation until it was already happening. And the people living there had no warning system and no flood emergency evacuation plan. And then RESCUERS were prevented from showing up by the Austin fire chief.

Eery echoes of Paradise, Lahaina and Palisades fires, BTW. This was about government and private organization failures, not about deficiencies in weather forecasting.
 
Instead of discussions about warning systems, how about doing the practical thing and permanently closing the summer camps that shouldn't have been built in a flood plain in the first place.
 
@LightBright - I do understand that, in the throes of sadness for the loss of life (and children have a special place in the hearts of most) we look for someone to blame, often prematurely, sometimes mistakenly. But if NOAA was fully staffed (and I don't know of my own knowledge), the Weather Service was not. Per the New York times:

Screenshot 2025-07-09 at 15.58.29.png
Yura was in the San Antonio office.
 
This disturbs the living heck out of me. I don't have Facebook. If I did I wouldn't be checking it at 5:16 a.m.

Screenshot 2025-07-09 at 16.01.38.png
 
empliau said:
@LightBright - I do understand that, in the throes of sadness for the loss of life (and children have a special place in the hearts of most) we look for someone to blame, often prematurely, sometimes mistakenly. But if NOAA was fully staffed (and I don't know of my own knowledge), the Weather Service was not. Per the New York times:

Screenshot 2025-07-09 at 15.58.29.png
Yura was in the San Antonio office.
Click to expand...


empliau said:
This disturbs the living heck out of me. I don't have Facebook. If I did I wouldn't be checking it at 5:16 a.m.

Screenshot 2025-07-09 at 16.01.38.png
Click to expand...

Well, from what I've seen and heard on the news from some local officials, there does seem to be a lot of questions that they haven't answered. And I also heard that there was a bill that didn't pass that would have funded more flood warning systems. I haven't done the research on that though, to verify.
 
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