this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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[–] aramis87@fedia.io 69 points 1 day ago (5 children)

There's all this focus on the NWS/NOAA not sending warnings early enough. Not from what I can tell, they were sending out warnings. And Kerr County, where many of the deaths have been, doesn't have a local flood warning system because they didn't want to pay for it.

[–] onslaught545@lemmy.zip 24 points 1 day ago

Let's not forget the Texas State Republicans who let the bill to provide more funding to the alerts system fail.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Even if they sent them earlier, who is going to catch a warning at 2AM vs. 4:30AM?

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Speaking from near the Palisades in Los Angeles:

After we all knew the hurricane-force Santa Anas posed a big danger of fire, because of both news stories and phone alerts, the whole city accidentally got a major "evacuate now" warning, with the big WOOPy noise from our cellphones, that was only supposed to go to residents in a particular area. I had my quadriplegic husband dressed and out of bed and our old go-bags and medical equipment thrown in the car in the 20 minutes it took for the retraction to come out. I also had a bit of a panic attack.

Some people decided to turn off their alarm settings because of that error. But I took it as a warning that we were not ready enough.

I went into the bags and made sure, for instance, that the pants fit me, as I'd gained weight in a year. I stashed the fridge meds in a cold carrier, handy in the fridge. And put the right cat food for the new cat in the cat-kit/litterbox. And created a go-box for the box turtle.

Then I stowed as much as possible in the actual car, including the Important Paperwork file.

All along, we were monitoring as the fires started to pop up and spread.

At 9 pm, we got another WOOP alert. Our address had become part (the far edge) of the Yellow Zone. Not the Red Zone. But as you said, who's going to catch a warning at 2am? (Well, me! But it's a lot harder to react at that hour) In fact, I'm sure that's why CalFire expanded the zones so wide at 9 pm, because they wanted to be sure they wouldn't have to issue a new one overnight.

So we bailed immediately but calmly. Spent 5 days at a hotel near LAX.

Fortunately we had no damage, but had to dip into our emergency drinking water for a few more days until they lifted the Boil Water notice.

Super glad we had and heeded those early warnings about how dangerous those hot dry winds were going to be, and the 9 pm evacuation zone warning.

The relatively low death count in the Palisades fire came from the accurate weather forecast.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

There’s all this focus on the NWS/NOAA not sending warnings early enough. Not from what I can tell, they were sending out warnings. And Kerr County, where many of the deaths have been, doesn’t have a local flood warning system because they didn’t want to pay for it.

If the warnings were louder, their parents would have done something. Why are you counting your "not from what I can tell" as data?

Edit:

People have reported receiving text message alerts on their mobile phones early on Friday morning, warning them of flooding. Some residents told the New York Times they did not understand the seriousness of them and others said they never received any at all.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0rvp24wvrqo

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The people designated to reach out to locals to make sure they understood how serious it was got fired

[–] aramis87@fedia.io 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The point is that the people of Kerr County made a deliberate decision that they didn't need a local system to reach out to people living there. They decided they whatever information and warnings they were getting from the state and the feds was sufficient. It's easy to point to the NWS/NOAA firings as "the culprit", but where's the local responsibility?

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago

The people? Or the husks in skinsuits we through mass delusion have decided to refer to as politicians?

[–] onslaught545@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I saw a story about a guy who received the alert as he was trying to climb onto his roof because his house was flooded.

But in all honesty, I usually ignore flash flooding alerts too. There are just so many false alarms.

[–] aramis87@fedia.io 4 points 1 day ago

Which is also part of the problem. If they're cautious and issue "too many" alerts or are "too alarmist", people ignore them.

[–] _stranger_@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

The entire county only has a population of like 50K people, and it's not an especially wealthy area.

All that said, this was a tragedy that probably could have been prevented if Texas had fewer Republicans, I'll 100% give you that, but flash floods are fucking terrifying, and in hilly areas, the flood can reach you in some cases before the rain does if it's especially bad.

This video shows how insane it got on the Guadalupe River that morning. I'm not sure about the timeline, but this would have been roughly downstream and after it hit camp mystic. The river rose over 26 feet in under 2 hours.

https://youtu.be/akzaqhRH0HQ

The owners should have closed the camp if they knew those rains were coming.

[–] theangryseal@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago

When I 16, a thousand years ago all the way back in 2001, my neighborhood experienced a flash flood.

My mother is bad for panicking over nothing, and we all rolled our eyes as she loaded us into the van and drove up the mountain.

It was one of the wildest things I’ve ever seen. It looked like there were waterfalls coming out of the sky around us. If someone had told me they seen something like that before I seen it, I would’ve called them a liar. But it literally would be dry in one spot and raining just a few feet away, but not normal rain. It was literally like someone was dumping a giant bucket from the sky.

The creek behind my house was instantly in my backyard. This happened as we were leaving.

Later, someone came to the store at the top of the mountain where we were sitting and told my mom that they were going to have to bring boats to get people out of our neighborhood. These big, two-story houses were underwater all the way up into the second floor.

I was so terrified, worried that all of my friends were dead. Fortunately, it didn’t take out the entire neighborhood and people were able to go up the road and take shelter in a church. Only two people died because they tried to drive through it and got sucked into the water.

The people who didn’t take it seriously had to be rescued. We spent months with shovels digging the mud from the houses when the water went back down. The whole neighborhood pitched in. Several families left and the value of the houses tanked. People were buying them for a few thousand dollars. One man from New York swept in and bought several of them and became a slumlord. He did just enough work to make them livable for 350 a month. The neighborhood was so beautiful before that, but it was forever changed. It’s a hellscape to this day.

Somehow we got very lucky. My house only got water in the back rooms and it wasn’t destructive. Everyone from the next house over and on down was ruined though.

1$ per person would have been the capex for a siren system on pre existing cell towers.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works -3 points 1 day ago

Regardless, I hope every single member of that county gets exactly what they voted for.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There is a saying I've been using a lot lately:

"May you get exactly what you voted for."

I love it, because It works as both a blessing and a curse. If they voted for kindness and compassion, then I'm wishing them well. If they voted for chaos and cruelty, then I hope that cruelty falls down upon them the hardest. You can tell someone this seven if you're not exactly sure how they voted. Though, if they react poorly, you probably just found out.

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Or maybe they're just upset that you're using the deaths of children to be smug.

There's a lot more going on in politics than "insert vote, recieve outcome voted for". Gerrymandering, simply being stuck in an area where you are the political minority, politicians campaigning on an entriely different platform than the actions they take later while in office... I could go on, but I expect my words would be wasted.

The dead girls weren't even old enough to vote.

In b4 you start running your mouth off about how it's okay to wish death on the bad people because of what they're doing to you/the good people. Two wrongs don't make a right, and even if it did, you're aimed at the wrong targets. Get your scope zeroed in properly.

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago

Maybe but 75,000 dead kids in Gaza killed by US weaponry, so maybe they just have the perspective that we don't really care about kids at all. After all we shoot them in classrooms all the time as well.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There’s a lot more going on in politics than “insert vote, recieve outcome voted for”. Gerrymandering, simply being stuck in an area where you are the political minority, politicians campaigning on an entriely different platform than the actions they take later while in office… I could go on, but I expect my words would be wasted.

Irrelevant. I speak only of intent.

The dead girls weren’t even old enough to vote.

Then they didn't vote for anything, and thus my blessing/curse is irrelevant.

I wish for people to get exactly what they voted for. If you voted for compassion to others, I wish for compassion for you. If you voted to hurt other people, I wish for you to get every ounce of cruelty you wished upon others to be brought down upon your own head.

In b4 you start running your mouth off about how it’s okay to wish death on the bad people because of what they’re doing to you/the good people. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and even if it did, you’re aimed at the wrong targets. Get your scope zeroed in properly.

I wish only that people's cruelty be directed right back to them. If you feel that someone telling you "I hope you get what you voted for" is anything but a blessing, then that says some pretty damning things about you. If you voted for good intentions to others, then I am wishing good things to you. If you voted because you wanted to see people killed, then I hope your wrath falls on your head instead.

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Respectfully: As I've already stated, none of this exists in a vacuum. You don't get to just declare shit irelevant. Regardless of your mental gymnastics, you are peacocking/gloating about having the right beliefs/voting policy in the aftermath of these children being dead.

Disrespectfully: Your belief that you can somehow claim any sort of moral highground here is absolutely ghoulish. I sincerely hope you never are denied compassion or help in your time of need by someone professing beliefs like yours.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 1 points 18 hours ago

The first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one. And Texas has a problem of Republican politicians leading the state to disaster. Whenever a disaster strikes due to Republican policies, Republicans circle the wagons, huff and puff, and say, "how DARE you. How dare you make this moment political! Now is not the time for politics!" They commonly do this after school shootings, and now you're doing the same thing after a mass death event caused by Republican policies.

Life is political. The right has trained people to view being "non political" as a social good. This allows them to play politics more freely, while the rest of the population is obsessed with not introducing politics except in a few narrow windows. Republicans bake politics into their entire life from their social circles to their religion. Democrats are more concerned with appearing noble, haughty, and above it all. They hate dirtying their finely manicured hands with the rough business of politics.

I'm sorry, but these hundred people are dead largely due to Republican policies. The flood was exacerbated by climate change, which Republicans support. The relevant federal programs were slashed due to a Republican president, and local Republican leaders refused to invest in badly needed flood warning systems. This is not a natural disaster; it's a Republican disaster.

Natural disasters, in terms of death toll, are always more of a function of politics than nature. Japan manages to have giant earthquakes with low death tolls; their political system is functional and provides and enforces good building codes. In more corrupt nations, the same strength of earthquake will kill a hundred fold more people.

You're sanctimoniously claiming that isn't the right time for politics. But this is the exact right time for politics. If you want to make changes, the time to do it is when political pressure is greatest. Otherwise, we just end up with less-than-useless "thoughts and prayers."

But I suppose you care more about covering for conservatives than you do about actually saving lives in the future.