Why America Still Can't Get Disaster Alerts Right (wsj.com)
- Reference: 0178326968
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/07/10/1533207/why-america-still-cant-get-disaster-alerts-right
- Source link: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/climate-environment/emergency-weather-alert-systems-us-d0bd275d
Similar communication failures occurred during recent Los Angeles wildfires and Maui blazes. Maui's outdoor sirens never sounded during 2023 wildfires when cellular networks failed. Nearly 30% of Texas residents opt out of wireless emergency alerts, the highest rate nationally. Rural officials often lack funding or permission to send alerts through broadcasters and cellphones. So what's going on?
Federal, state and local authorities share responsibility for alerting citizens through multiple platforms, but the country's patchwork of digital and physical emergency-alert tools often lags behind rapidly developing weather events, WSJ [1]argues .
The Atlantic has a story that [2]adds more color : It details how officials lack training in writing effective alerts, how messages like "move to higher ground" are meaningless without context, and how the absence of warning-coordination meteorologists creates communication gaps between weather services and local authorities.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/us-news/climate-environment/emergency-weather-alert-systems-us-d0bd275d
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/07/texas-flood-emergency-alert-failures/683461/
Nothing was going to help (Score:2, Insightful)
From what I've read, nothing was going to help. Kids in csmos, probably scattered doing activities - and the river rose around 30 feet in less than an hour?
Upstream was a weird storm that remained stationary while dropping 2 feet of rain. Impossible to predict, and once it happened, there was basically no time to warn folks.
Re:Nothing was going to help (Score:5, Insightful)
> From what I've read, nothing was going to help. Kids in csmos, probably scattered doing activities - and the river rose around 30 feet in less than an hour?
> Upstream was a weird storm that remained stationary while dropping 2 feet of rain. Impossible to predict, and once it happened, there was basically no time to warn folks.
The river that swept away those girls actually rose by up to 45ft in an hour. And the NWS had extra staff on hand as they knew there was a possibility of flooding. Flash Flood watches went out at least 3 hours prior. It was just one of those situations where a number of things combined quickly to make a tragedy. The storm grew fast. The camp was in a valley that used to have flooding problems but, since there hadn't been one in years, people got complacent. And of course, it happened in the middle of the night, while everyone is asleep. In Summer Camp . It was, pardon the expression, a perfect storm of things.
Re:Nothing was going to help (Score:5, Informative)
> . It was, pardon the expression, a perfect storm of things.
It seems that the one thing that would have helped would be actual sirens in the area. This was something [1]that was recommended in 2016 [npr.org] and rejected because 1 million pounds was considered too much.
That's not just about a perfect storm. Clearly with sirens this could have been avoided. The question is, given that the need for sirens had been identified and then rejected, what was put in place instead and was the plan that was put in place followed?
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5461143/texas-floods-kerr-siren-warning-system
You know I hear this every time (Score:2)
A preventable disaster kills a bunch of kids. It's always just one of those things.
The first time it happens to you yeah maybe. The second or third time sure. By the time you're on movies 6 and the shark is beating a supersonic jet you just stopped going in the water.
But nobody likes to learn and nobody likes to iterate.
Re: (Score:1)
Bigot.
Re: (Score:2)
An extreme weather alert was issued hours before hand at 1:14AM. The flood waters started rising near where everyone died at 4am. The rise in the water upstream was also plenty of time beforehand (3:35 a.m five miles north of Camp Mystic). If the weather warnings had been delivered immediately they became active and if sirens had gone off as soon as flash flooding was detected then evacuation would have been fully possible.
There are a bunch of people that made what might seem stupid decisions around this th
Re:Nothing was going to help (Score:5, Informative)
> Those are not relevant to this particular case
This is incorrect. Turns out, that the person responsible for getting alerts to Texas officials left the NWS earlier this year ( [1]https://www.pressreader.com/us... [pressreader.com] ), taking the early retirement option. And he was not replaced because changing positions makes you a "temporary" employee, and thus eligible for termination.
This is a rare case where we can pinpoint the EXACT sequence starting with Trump's decisions and ending with innocent deaths.
[1] https://www.pressreader.com/usa/san-antonio-express-news/20250423/281590951419606
Re: (Score:1)
Your link does not work and I cannot find the same story. Could you please link to the original article, even if it doesn't work. I think it's the pressreader service which is breaking this.
Snopes statement [1]https://www.snopes.com/news/20... [snopes.com]
> Although Trump's cuts did affect staffing at the two weather service offices in charge of the affected area, an agency spokesperson told Snopes via email that both offices were fully staffed at the time of the floods.
[1] https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/07/09/trump-nws-cuts-texas-floods/
Re: (Score:3)
Okay, I found Cyberax's other comment with this link - [1]https://www.kxan.com/weather/w... [kxan.com]
> According to the NWS Austin/San Antonio website, the office is already short two meteorologist positions currently listed as vacant. The positions of ‘lead meteorologist’ and ‘meteorologist’ remain open. Separately, NWS Austin/San Antonio have a vacant ‘electronics technician’ position.
Since that office did actually issue an alert, I'm not clear yet what is claimed to have gone wrong
[1] https://www.kxan.com/weather/weather-blog/head-of-local-weather-warnings-takes-early-retirement-as-noaa-cuts-continue/
Re:Nothing was going to help (Score:4, Informative)
> From what I've read, nothing was going to help. Kids in csmos, probably scattered doing activities - and the river rose around 30 feet in less than an hour?
The flooding occurred early Friday morning with the rise starting around 4am . I hardly doubt the campers were "scattered doing activities" at 4am. We do not know what warnings the camp got. We do know the National Weather Service issued a warning at 1am about possible flooding and at 4am as a flood watch instead of a mere warning. We also know that the campers themselves did not have cellphones as it was a stipulation of the camp that they not have their cellphones. We do not know if camp officials received warnings.
> Upstream was a weird storm that remained stationary while dropping 2 feet of rain. Impossible to predict, and once it happened, there was basically no time to warn folks.
It took about 45 minutes to river to rise to peak. It was possible to warn them, but we will wait on an investigation to determine if it was practical to warn people.
Re: (Score:2)
In this timelapse further upstream, it rose about 10 metres in less than three minutes. [1]https://youtu.be/Upa07ltxBsk?s... [youtu.be] The initial rise was very rapid. Not sure if it was similar downstream or whether the overall water distribution was softened.
[1] https://youtu.be/Upa07ltxBsk?si=WBdWV9PFSnMdF0gy
Re: (Score:3)
it's weird then that other camps in the area evacuated
Re: (Score:2)
> it's weird then that other camps in the area evacuated
Do you have a link for that? I searched google and didn't find that stated so easily.
Re: (Score:2)
"weird" storms that keep happening more frequently.
Re: (Score:2)
> From what I've read, nothing was going to help
The kids at the camp who were in cabins on higher ground all survived. The cabins where the campers died NEVER should have been there (and it seems the long-term owners of the camp knew it from prior flash-flooding incidents). Relying on alerts is foolish because they often don't work.
We already know what the cause (Score:4, Interesting)
Trump slashed staff to FEMA and other emergency alert systems which delayed the response. We have also had 20 years of cuts to the data that FEMA and other federal agencies are allowed to access because they were very inconvenient to the oil companies.
So for example the kids that died at that camp eight of the 17 cabins were in a known high-risk area according to government reports but the government reports didn't include current climate change related data so 9 of the cabins that were all so at high risk weren't included in that.
of course this is all include point because if you've got 8 cabins in a high risk flood zone the other nine are probably not safe either. But the right wing is already splitting hairs to blame FEMA so they can shut it down.
Oh and the governor of Texas is currently working hard to get money from FEMA while also working hard to shut down fema. He is literally on Trump's board that was set up to disable and destroy FEMA so that the money from it could be pocketed by billionaires.
Bottom line this is Trump's fault. And the fault of the Republican party that let him do it. We all know it and we're all going to sit around here while disingenuous assholes derail the conversation in a variety of ways to deflect blame from Trump and his political party.
If you live in a place that disasters can strike just know now that you will have little or no warning and little or no help to recover.
If you're a child I am fucking so sorry that my generation fucked up so bad for you.
If you're a Democrat or even a non-voter given what I know about voter suppression you did what you could.
If you voted republican, well have the day you voted for.
Re: We already know what the cause (Score:1)
So many blanket assumptions in this comment with no evidence. But yes we all know it is probably the fault of Trump one way or another.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Everything is factual and easily fact checkable
Tump cut FEMA staff, [1]including NWS staff [thehill.com].
Camp was built in an [2]extremely hazardous flood zone [houstonchronicle.com].
Abbott is [3] on the FEMA Review Council [click2houston.com] which is working to dismantle FEMA.
Abbott, through his press secretary has said:
> âoeTexas has built the strongest emergency management operation in the nation,â said Andrew Mahaleris, the governorâ(TM)s press secretary. âoeGovernor Abbott has full confidence that the Texas Division of Emergency Management will be able to swiftly take action when disaster strikes.â
But yeah, it's not Trump's fault for cutting FEMA staff or gutting its budget. As for Texas, this is another disaster under Abbott where Texans lost their lives because he didn't want to spend the money on any "woke" climate change bul
[1] https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5388436-texas-flooding-flash-flood-camp-mystic-trump-cuts-noaa-nws-fema-national-weather-service/
[2] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2025/texas-camp-mystic-guadalupe-fema-floodplains/
[3] https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2025/06/11/texas-is-ready-abbott-responds-to-trumps-fema-exit-strategy/
Re: (Score:2)
> So many blanket assumptions in this comment with no evidence. But yes we all know it is probably the fault of Trump one way or another.
Next time you go to the doc you should get your irony-levels checked.
Re: We already know what the cause (Score:5, Informative)
We even know the _name_ of the person who would have been responsible for coordinating the alerts with local authorities: Paul Yura ( [1]https://www.kxan.com/weather/w... [kxan.com] )
[1] https://www.kxan.com/weather/weather-blog/head-of-local-weather-warnings-takes-early-retirement-as-noaa-cuts-continue/
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Also damn. Just fucking damn... That is a pure mic drop right there.
Re: (Score:1)
Though I agree with your take on Trump, blaming him for everything that goes wrong, is just as intellectually lazy as Trump claiming to find all kinds of "waste, frau, and abuse" through DOGE cuts. Reality is more nuanced than that, and the factors that led to this catastrophe are also more nuanced than that. It's incorrect to point to any one person or policy, for this disaster.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't. The oil industry that is holding FEMA back from accessing necessary data in order to minimize climate change damage is also at fault.
Now mind you local Republicans that allowed a camp to be built on a known high-risk flood zone or also at fault. Deregulation and taking down Chesterton's fence.
But you will notice that the thread through all of this is the US Republican party.
Trump doesn't actually do anything he's a senile old man, this is just a continuation of the heritage foundation an
Re: (Score:2)
This camp was built in that location 99 years ago, in 1926. Flood maps weren't a thing back then. Nor was the Republican party "to blame" for allowing them to build there. They just did it.
Also, in 99 years, this camp never experienced such a devastating flood. So they had good historical precedent, to think that they would be OK.
Like I said, it's more complicated than just FEMA or Trump.
Re: (Score:2)
The tribune had a good article. [1]https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org] It kind of comes down to it will when circumstances are right. This latest event reminds me a great deal of the reference in the article of the Memorial day floods in 2015 on the Blanco in Wimberly. I lived in Tucson for awhile and they too would have flash floods during monsoon season. You did not want to be in a "wash" when it was raining.
I'm thinking for this one, TX may actually do something. Mystic was a camp the wealthy elite sent their
[1] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/08/flooding-history-texas-hill-country/
Re: (Score:2)
But with 21st century science, knowledge and technology, the extreme flood risk was well known and documented. Yet they denied the emergency sirens for years. They fired or “retired” the meteorologists a few months ago. They delayed the FEMA emergency response more than 72 hours. It’s the Drink Bleach and Stick Horse Dewormers Up Your Arse school of emergency preparation and response, from the same anti-science clown show.
You put a lot of effort into trying and failing (Score:2)
To disprove my point. It doesn't matter if it was built 100 years ago it still should not have existed today. All you've done is kick the can down the road to , "it should have been torn down 50 years ago".
The point is that proper regulation and bureaucrats could have saved those children's lives.
And it's not complicated. It's the same problem every time. Trump did exasperate it and directly resulted in the deaths of those specific children but there are hundreds of thousands of dead kids because o
Re:We already know what the cause (Score:4, Insightful)
Intellectually lazy is assuming that cuts will not affect services. the county where most deaths occurred was missing critical staff at the federal level not to mention that they were looking to others to finance their emergency response while the county downriver with their emergency response system had no deaths due to the floods.
I have yet to see an entity restored to it's original glory by the cut and burn in order to rebuild mentality. In this case we are still in the cut and burn faze and I don't have much confidence that their will be a serious rebuild faze. Pork barrels don't work that way.
Re: (Score:1)
But in this particular case, with the chain of cause to effect well established, the names of each of those kids should be tattooed on his face in blood red ink, mirror imaged so he can be reminded every morning when he gets up.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
> Though I agree with your take on Trump, blaming him for everything that goes wrong, is just as intellectually lazy as Trump claiming to find all kinds of "waste, fraud, and abuse" through DOGE cuts. Reality is more nuanced than that, and the factors that led to this catastrophe are also more nuanced than that. It's incorrect to point to any one person or policy, for this disaster.
While agree in some sense in this situation, as the sign on President Truman's desk said, "The Buck Stops Here" so Trump has some accountability, especially with the federal cuts made under his administration.
Trump is famous for demanding credit for everything that goes well, even if they happened under another administration, and rejecting blame for anything that goes wrong under his. For example, according to several articles, like [1]How Trump Is Taking Credit For Biden’s Biggest Achievements [yahoo.com], alm
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-taking-credit-biden-biggest-170649624.html
Re:We already know what the cause (Score:4, Informative)
They apparently voted for extra staffing when needed.
> Jason Runyen, a meteorologist with the NWS, told AP that the NWS office in New Braunfels, which delivers forecasts for Austin, San Antonio and the surrounding areas, had extra staff on duty during the storms. While it usually has two forecasters on duty during clear weather, they had up to five during the storms, Runyen said.
[1]Are Donald Trump's NOAA Cuts to Blame for Texas Flood Tragedy? What To Know [newsweek.com]
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-noaa-cuts-texas-flooding-2095437
Re: (Score:3)
How is this upvoted? I have seen news story after news story showing when all the alerts happened, and what they were. [1]It is extremely well documented. [cbsnews.com] The alerts went out in plenty of time - the warnings went out over an before the river in that area had begun to rise, and watches and other alerts four hours before that.
The problem with biased political rants like what you're spouting is they will result in more deaths. That's because the REAL reason these girls died is not going to be addressed if you wan
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-flood-emergency-alerts-timeline/
self inflicted? (Score:2)
[1]https://abc13.com/post/former-... [abc13.com] Seems like they had AMPLE opportunity to fix the problem, but declined to do so.
[1] https://abc13.com/post/former-kerr-county-commissioner-says-he-pushed-early-warning-system-decade-before-flood-disaster/17041332/
Re: (Score:2)
hopes and prayers will fix it.
Re: (Score:2)
"Thoughts and prayers" is the correct tagline.
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They were killed in a mass shooting?
After the flood, Noem screwed this up. (Score:5, Interesting)
If the Biden administration had fucked up the post-disaster response as badly as Noem, the RWNJ media would be blaring about it non-stop. And they would have been right.
- Every expenditure over $100K requires her signature.
- FEMA's search-and-rescue team was delayed 72 hours.
- Aerial imagery was delayed 72 hours.
- The FEMA director has been completely absent from the picture.
[1]https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/09... [cnn.com]
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/09/politics/fema-texas-flood-noem
Re:After the flood, Noem screwed this up. (Score:4, Interesting)
And she's still insisting that the recovery should be on the state's dime.
I'm so glad Texas is getting what they voted for.
Weather report (Score:3)
I saw on the news that flash flood predictions were given by the weather report, the day before. If true, THOSE should have been acted on, not wait for possible 3-in-the-morning alerts. Maybe the residents thought "oh, just more small flooding" versus "catastrophe".
Re:Weather report (Score:4, Informative)
Especially everyone supervising the operation of the Mystic summer camp should be made aware beforehand that they are in a flooding area, which would be under water even with less rain (but not catastrophically so), and be alert to the weather forecast for a possible evacuation. But people forget, and 20 years no flooding feels the same as totally impossible, and flooding itself is often seen as getting wet feet. The idea of being washed away by 45 feet of water was completely out of the minds of people.
Germany, which is known for being well organized, had a similar [1]catastrophic flooding [wikipedia.org] in 2021 (184 dead) in the Ahr Valley. Also here, the Weather Service had warned about heavy rainfall and possible catastrophic flooding, but it did not register with the people responsible for civil protection.
That's a real problem with once-in-a-century events. People just can't imagine the possible damage, and are completely unprepared or even consider preparations as wasteful and an obstacle to business, development or personal freedom.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_European_floods#Germany
Re: (Score:2)
As I posted above, not once in a century. The Blanco flooded in a similar way in 2015. These are not an uncommon occurrence in central Texas due to topography and soil type. It is sort of like the icing events that cause blackouts on the grid in TX. They happen about once a decade. And every time the current governor will say "Never again, we will prepare". And the pea brains forget it 6 months later. I'm expecting there will be no changes after this flood as well. I could be wrong though, again as I said a
Re: (Score:2)
But still, it's a different place, and different people in charge. Intellectually knowing that flash flooding can happen and applying it to your immediate environment, where you never experienced it, or the last event was decades ago, are two very different pair of shoes.
This is on Abbott and Trump (Score:2, Informative)
For eight years Kerr County [1]requested money [statesman.com] to replace its aging alert system and all eight times Abbott and his cabal wouldn't pony up the money. Even after Hurrican Harvey, when federal funds would have been available, their request was denied.
> "I'm not trying to put a dollar on a life or a flood, but the fact of the matter [is] floods do happen, and we need to be prepared for them," then-Kerr County Commissioner Bob Reeves noted during a series of public meetings that began in 2016. And, his former colleague Tom Moser pointed out, "We also have more summer camps than anybody else along the Guadalupe River."
This is the same situation when over 300 people died when Texas froze a few years ago. Abbott didn't want to spend the money to winterize the lines or fossil fuel plants prior to the storm and the result was Texans dying.
Mind you, Abbott and his party have no
[1] https://www.statesman.com/story/news/investigates/2025/07/07/kerr-county-asked-texas-to-help-pay-for-a-flood-warning-system-for-8-years-can-it-happen-now/84499625007/
Also Texas refuses to update their grid (Score:2)
So they're not allowed to connect to other state grids.
The big reason that everyone lost power in those 300 people died so that the private power company in Texas doesn't have to make their grid reliable enough to join in with States on a deal where if one of them has a grid failure the other can provide power.
The winterization you're talking about would have solved the problem but so would have being able to drop power from neighboring states. Texas can't do that because they would just be taking a
Re: (Score:2)
TX is connected to other grids. 4. Fairly small potatoes these days in terms of transfers. I'm not going to defend the actions, hell I froze for a week because of it, but grids in the US are localized. I forget the number but I think around 8 or 9 in the US that are separate. [1]https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov] The only thing different about the TX grid is it is managed by ERCOT whereas the others are managed by a central US entity. And the TX grid is actually larger than some of the US managed ones. It has o
[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=27152
Low Probability, Low Frequency (Score:5, Interesting)
Americans do not fund protections against (or warnings for) low-probability events. They don't care if the severity is high-- a significant part of the population can't imagine something RARE happening to them and thus don't want to pay for it. Moreover, the idea of funding something that benefits others but not yourself is labeled as "evil socialism" by said population.
* Hurricanes: Regional risk, Regionally high frequency, seasonal, highly predictable, and deadly. They get very specific warnings and calls for evacuations.
* Tornadoes: Regional risk, Regionally high frequency, seasonal, moderately predictable, and deadly. They get regional warnings and calls for taking shelter.
* Wild Fires: Regional risk, Regionally high frequency, seasonal, highly predictable once started, and deadly. They get very specific warnings and calls for evacuations.
* Earthquakes: Regional risk, Regionally high frequency, no seasonality, highly unpredictable, and rarely injurious. There are no earthquake risk warnings-- only alerts that earthquakes are happening or have recently occurred.
* Flash Floods: LOCAL risk (flood planes), LOW frequency everywhere, seasonal, and deadly. They get general risk warnings, but the primary protection is "Don't be in a flood plane".
Math is hard (Score:2)
So if you drive and we all do sooner or later you're going to get in a wreck. It's inevitable because it's just a numbers game. No matter how careful you are something is going to happen.
The same is true for natural disasters. Give it enough time and someone in your immediate circle is going to get hit by one. The same goes for healthcare.
But understanding that requires at least a intuitive level understanding of probability and a lot of folks, might even be most, didn't get that far. They got the c
Alarm Fatigue (Score:2)
is exactly the reason that I have all alerts silenced on my phone. I support the concept of Amber alerts, but when there are 20 different colored alerts all operating under the same umbrella, and when non-custodial parent issues get lumped under the same umbrella as "child snatched from the playground", I just don't want to hear about it anymore.
But it points out an issue that should be addressed. If I lived in an area with tornados or flash floods, I want a warning - but I don't want a warning aimed at p
America has more severe weather. (Score:1)
America has more severe weather. Why can't European countries get their heat alerts right? 2,300 Europeans died in just the last few weeks.
Its because they don't care (Score:3)
Kerr County was notified by the fire department and took 90 minutes to send out a notification
[1]https://abcnews.go.com/US/kerr-county-officials-waited-90-minutes-send-emergency/story?id=123631023 [go.com]
Someone compiled all of this in the r/Texas sub in [2]Reddit [reddit.com] piecing together how the county knew their systems were inadequate back in 2016 but didn't want to fix it.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/kerr-county-officials-waited-90-minutes-send-emergency/story?id=123631023
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/TexasPolitics/comments/1ltnjf8/we_have_floods_all_the_time_and_small_town/
the problem is being numb to disasters (Score:5, Interesting)
I am in california now. Every winter we have atmospheric rivers come over and dump a bunch of rain. The news stations need something to get viewers to tune in so it is "STORM SURGE 202x" coverage every 15 minutes. Yes, it is raining, yes roads wash out, yes, some local flooding - nothing to make me think I need to take action.
I lived in Texas - tornado warning came out. Time to sit on the porch and watch it blow by... Lots of fun had by all. I hear people in Florida won't evacuate until after they determine that a Cat x hurricane is going to hit right where they are. The longer you live there the higher the x is of course.
What do we expect the government to do - force us at gunpoint to evacuate? No, we individually take responsibility to know what is going on around us and act accordingly. You live close to a river that is prone to flash floods - you watch the weather more closely than I do that lives 50 ft higher elevation.
Re:the problem is being numb to disasters (Score:4, Funny)
This reminds me of the movie Independence Day where Will Smith wakes up when the ground shakes and tells his wife there's an earthquake only for her to reply "It's not even a four pointer, go back to sleep".
I was bemused, if the earth moved even slightly where I live I'd be freaking the fuck out!
Re: (Score:2)
After awhile you become like Will's wife. When I first moved there it did freak me out. But Cal has pretty good building standards for quakes and so a 4 or even a 5 was a big snooze for me by the time I left. I'd probably been thru over a dozen of those by the time I left and zero damage from small ones. I did move very quickly for the one that collapsed the bay bridge. That one got my attention. The initial jolt tells you if it is seek cover NOW or go back to sleep.
Re: (Score:2)
Camp Mystic had flooded before, this wasn't the first time. And the area in question had decided that flood warning was "too costly" in the past.
I agree with you, in principal, if they've had floods before and that wasn't enough to scare them in to paying attention then I don't think that there is any direct solution to the problem. It's the families that sent their kids that I feel like we could help with. Maybe insurance should be denied after flooding, we already spend tons of money insuring peop
Re: (Score:2)
Numb to emergency alerts. After the [1]WEA [wikipedia.org] system went live, the first one I got was from a Medicare broker: "Call now with your Zip Code and make sure you are getting everything you are entitled to." (The dog whistle for all retired people.)
Amber Alerts are next on my list. Solve your child custody fights on your own time. The recent Travis Decker case (killed his three daughters) illustrated how useless the alert system was. Because they don't issue them for planned visitation. This one also falls into the
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Emergency_Alerts
Try this instead... (Score:2)
> messages like "move to higher ground" are meaningless without context
Instead of "move to higher ground", try "Get the f**k away from the Guadalupe River RIGHT NOW!"
They took the cell phones (Score:2)
Well, they didn't really take them, but rather didn't allow the campers on the Guadalupe River have them. From what I've heard, the counsellors didn't even have their cell phones. This is the problem with the idea of taking everyone's phone away at a school or something. These days, cell phones are basically essential. Yes, they are annoying, and the Amber, Silver, and Blue alerts are cast over an insane area and that needs to be fixed. There also needs to be a way to turn the various ones off. And in this
Re: (Score:3)
> From what I've heard, the counsellors didn't even have their cell phones. This is the problem with the idea of taking everyone's phone away at a school or something.
They didn't have their cell phones because there is no cell service in that area. The camp is over 20 minutes away from the closest town (population 1,787) by car.
Re: They took the cell phones (Score:2)
Weather radios are a thing. They can sound alerts and often work in areas where cell coverage may be limited. Putting one in the cabin where some of the staff sleep could have prevented this as well. This was lack of planning on the part of the camp.
Less sympathetic (Score:3)
The camps had hundreds of children's lives in their hands, and were in an area known for flooding.
They should have pro-actively been reaching out to the NWS and getting forecasts, they should have ensured that they could get alerts even if there was excess chatter, and they should have acted upon the earlier warnings even if there was uncertainty.
If negligence played a role in so many young deaths I hope the organizers involved rot in jail
We seem to be blaming the lack of warnings but to my mind it is the lack of will to act, not taking the early warnings seriously enough.It's not as if a 30 minute warning of a flood like that is much use, I saw the video and the roads were submerged with fast-moving water in minutes. The warnings that should have been heeded were days before and I suspect the camp organizers will have been aware of them or at the very least the sheriff could have driven out to the camp and told them first hand. Waiting to act until you get a message that disaster is imminent is not a viable strategy
Re: (Score:3)
It was a Christian camp. What level of rational, evidence-based, scientific reasoning and emergency planning are you expecting from its adults? Poor children.
alerts (Score:2)
Its early in morning, everyone is a sleep. Rains happened and river rover in less than an hour.. No one was up to hear an alarm. and give the short time. Even if someone was how was they going to get everyone up and everyone moved? Cell alerts are not localized enough. I turned off amber alerts for this reason, I dont want a 3am call for a missing child 40 miles away when I am asleep. Those alerts should come in if your outside your home, moving and near the location.
First responder/trainer perspective (Score:3)
I spent a dozen years as a certified trainer for first responders/incident commanders and still am one sometimes. Let me break my comments into micro and macro.
Micro: the recent Kerrville incident. The NWS did its job and did it in a timely manner -- despite reckless cuts by Trump/DOGE/etc. The issued an urgent flash flood warning at 1:26 AM, which should have been taken very seriously because that area has a long history of flash flooding. Local officials should have woken everyone up any way they could: tornado sirens, local and state police cars with full sirens and lights, fire trucks, civilian pickup trucks with horns, anything, everything. If possible they should have brought in a helicopter with a loudspeaker.
The river was already rising at that point, but slowly, and rose only moderately (per the USGS gauge, linked below) until 5:15 AM. That's when the flow went exponential. So they had the better part of 4 hours to wake people up and get them moving away from the river. That includes the girls camp that's been so often discussed: local officials knew it was there and knew it was full. And yet they didn't even manage to send a squad car over there to wake up everyone. If they'd done that, those girls could have WALKED to safety in the time they had available. (And of course if there were buses or other vehicles, it'd have been faster.)
Here's the gauge -- note that the left-hand vertical axis is logarithmic. [1]Guadalupe Rv at Kerrville, TX – 08166200 [usgs.gov]
Every responsible locality has plans for this, doubly so if it's something that's happened before -- which in this case, it has. While there's always some improvisation in emergency response, most of this should have come down to "pull out the red binder, open to page 1, and start working through the checklist -- you know, the one we've rehearsed every 4 months for the last 6 years." Every person should already know what they're going to do, like "wake up every school bus drivers, tell them to drive to the X high school, start the buses, and head to their assigned locations to pick up people" or "get someone on the bridge upstream with a spotlight on the river so that we can see the flood coming before it gets here and registers on the gauge". The incident commander should supervise all of this pre-planned activity, making on-the-fly modifications as necessary...and if the plan is a good one, and if it's been kept updated, and if it's been rehearsed well, then there shouldn't be too much improvisation needed.
This by no means guarantees success. Things go wrong, equipment breaks, miscommunications happen. But it gives the best chance, and if even half of this had happened in Kerrville, it would have saved a lot of lives.
Macro: There is never money or time for disaster preparation, avoidance, training, mitigation. There is usually money for disaster cleanup. Oh, and there are "thoughts and prayers", which are (a) useless and (b) an attempt by the cheap, lazy, and incompetent to excuse their complicity in all the death and destruction that just happened. We don't need thoughts. We don't need prayers. We need science (like the NWS and NOAA do), we need data (e.g. the best forecasts they can possibly give us), we need training and equipment, we need plans, we need cooperation, we need clear messaging, and we need the money required to do all these things. Give us that and we have a fighting chance -- and our historical record when given that chance is damn good. Deny us that and you're going to get Kerrville on a regular basis. (Doubly so given global warming and its effect on locally-intensified weather events.)
This is already long, but I want to ask you all to consider one more thing. Right now, as you're reading this, there are people out there who are trying to recover all the bodies. (
[2]Read the rest of this comment...
[1] https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/USGS-08166200/#dataTypeId=continuous-00060-0&startDT=2025-07-04&endDT=2025-07-04&showMedian=true
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23740146&cid=65510802
That may be true, but..... (Score:2)
Maybe America will never get such alerts "right".
However, I don't really think it is the government's responsibility to warn people every time bad shit is gonna or may happen.
Fire, flood, UFO attack, whatever.
Just how I feel about it.
That said, I have ALL government alerts on my phone turned off anyway. I'll take my chances, especially since the odds of receiving some useless alert are so much greater than receiving an alert that would matter to me and would actually take some action on.
"Brownie, You're Doing a Heckuva Job" (Score:1)
Different decade, same refrain.
Drink Bleach School of Emergency Response (Score:2)
From the people that brought us drinking bleach and sticking horse deworming tablets up your arse for a virus
They denied the emergency sirens. They fired or “retired” the meteorologists. They delayed the emergency response.
[1]https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09... [npr.org] [2]https://www.kxan.com/weather/w... [kxan.com] [3]https://edition.cnn.com/2025/0... [cnn.com]
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5461143/texas-floods-kerr-siren-warning-system
[2] https://www.kxan.com/weather/weather-blog/head-of-local-weather-warnings-takes-early-retirement-as-noaa-cuts-continue/
[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/09/politics/fema-texas-flood-noem
Re: (Score:2)
> Isn't rule #1 Don't build in a flood plain?
Some time ago that rule was replaced with "Make sure you can get someone else to pay for your mistakes".
Simple... (Score:5, Insightful)
I turn them off probably like everyone else. I was getting multiple alerts per night about some brat that's gone missing five counties over. What was I supposed to do about that or why should I care?
Re: (Score:2)
> I was getting multiple alerts per night about some brat that's gone missing five counties over. What was I supposed to do about that or why should I care?
Exactly. If the first five messages aren't going to get a person to let the kid out of their cage in the basement, the sixth message probably won't do much either.
More seriously though the harm is sending out a message isn't usually as great as the potential harm from not doing so. I'd rather get an energy alert about needing to seek immediate shelter that turns out to be wrong or a bit overblown than not getting one at all.
Re: (Score:1)
This gets into trolley arguments and made up statistics pretty fast, however my opinion is that the human mind on a motivational level can only take so many false calls to action before it decides everything associated with the warning system is people crying wolf.
I have to imagine that in terms of actionable calls to help you're more likely to improve the world by giving money to the charity suggested on the top of your cereal box.
Re: (Score:2)
> More seriously though the harm is sending out a message isn't usually as great as the potential harm from not doing so.
That can easily be wrong. If you save 1 person but cause 10,000 to switch off alerts so that they don't get them when there's an actual hurricane, you can actually do lots more harm by sending a message than by not sending it, possibly even leading to several hundred deaths. When every alert is delivered to several million people then those numbers aren't unreasonable. People must have ways to opt out of specific types and locations of alerts without opting out of all of the alerts.
Re: (Score:3)
Came here to say this, as well. The useless amber alerts (and silver/blue alerts) from 600 miles away are the number one reason I and most people I know turn them off.
The reality is that basically all amber alerts are "false alarms" in that people can't do anything with them in most situations:
- At home? Useless unless the abductor is breaking into your house with the abductee.
- At work? Basically same as above. Office workers won't see them, and retail/similar employees probably aren't allowed on their cel
S.A.M.E. (Score:2)
I read up on weather radio products after this flood news. The [1]"Specific Area Message Encoding" [wikipedia.org] protocol [2]enables [weather.gov] you to receive only those alerts that cover your immediate area. Of course, you have to have a radio that decodes those signals and you local authorities have to opt in, so it's not a cure-all. From reviews, getting the right radio and setting it up properly are non-trivial tasks.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_Area_Message_Encoding
[2] https://www.weather.gov/arx/same
Re: (Score:1)
And it's not even just amber alerts. You can get a half dozen "watch" alerts from a fast moving system *per day*.
At that level, "watch" alerts are useless. Especially since in most of texas they mean, "don't leave home or your car may be flooded out" and not "leave home- your home will be flooded out".
And the short staffing of the service in the U.S. due to Ham-handed layoffs this year did not help.
Re: (Score:2)
> Fortunately, you can usually turn of JUST amber alerts on phones
Unfortunately, they don't have a separate category for "Silver Alerts". Around here they keep sending them as "Extreme Alerts", which ought to be reserved for flash flooding and other things which put large numbers of people in danger, not just one Alzheimer's case.
Re: (Score:2)
"Around here they keep sending them as "Extreme Alerts""
Politics, unfortunately. Any attempt to reduce their classification would immediately produce howls of "It's TERRIBLE how you just want abducted children/people with dementia/police officers to DIE!"
Re: (Score:2)
About 10(?) years ago, I was at a Gabriel Iglesias show at PHX (known at the time as Talking Stick) Arena.
He had literally just asked everyone in the arena to turn off their cell phones, when every single phone in the arena went off... Amber Alert. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen.
Re: Simple... (Score:2)
On most phones you can turn off just those Amber alerts without turning off the sever weather alerts.
Re: (Score:2)
This is exactly right. The alerts are worse than worthless because they are delivered to people for whom there is no sense in them receiving them, and they cause devices to make noise at times when they should not be. There is not only zero value attached to delivering an alert to me at a time at which I am asleep as I cannot do anything about it, there is negative value because it causes me to turn off alerts so that it does not happen again. I have even received alerts for missing children who have alread
Re: (Score:1)
...when you can.
My cable provider stops all programming and streaming to broadcast Amber alerts. For crying out loud, I'm inside my house watching Game of Thrones. But yet they think I am the one that can be on the lookout for a gray Mazda?
Re: Simple... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Because someone else got the alert and recognized the vehicle pulling up to the store and just saved a life that way. Sorry it disturbed your slumber after a OT shift at your second job that you need just to pay the rent .
Fixed that for you. Your argument isn't wrong per se, but if you don't offer a more charitable account of why someone might be more than merely inconvenienced by 5 alerts in a night, you're going to be easily dismissed as missing the point. The situation is not exactly like crying wolf, since the issues are very real, but the result is the same: alert fatigue. The problem that should be addressed is: how do we ensure alerts go out to people who might actually be able to action them, and not to people who cannot? I know that's easier said than done, but like the OP said, it's hard to care about something that you can't do anything about... might as well be getting air raid warnings for Kyiv for all the difference it makes.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Hey, remember when the Retard Fuckwit Pedophile Republicans in Texas woke up the Whole Damn State, all the way from Texarkana to El Paso, because some sheriff got shot up way north of Dallas?
[1]Pepperidge Farm Remembers... [kut.org]
[1] https://www.kut.org/crime-justice/2024-10-07/millions-of-texans-woke-up-to-a-blue-alert-dps-didnt-appear-to-follow-its-own-guidelines
Re: Simple... (Score:1)
I personally turned off amber alerts, but fucking California flags all of silver, ebony and feather alerts as extreme threats to life and property, which is supposed to be "if you don't act now, good chance you're dead" not "a Native American is missing, please join us in a game of where's waldo even though you're nowhere nearby". I got sick of it happening every other week, so I literally turned all but national alerts off (even though grapheneos allows turning those off too) because national alerts are th
Re: (Score:3)
> The problem that should be addressed is: how do we ensure alerts go out to people who might actually be able to action them, and not to people who cannot?
The first step is to put tiers of alerts. Emergency alerts operate as normal, while amber alerts can be setup so that they don't awaken people but still display when the phone is checked.
This was demonstrated in Canada - the most frequent alert type received was an Amber Alert, and when it started, people had two amber alerts per child because the English
Noise Rate (Score:3, Interesting)
That illustrates the fundamental problem with these systems though: you have to keep the noise rate low i.e. the rate of alerts that are irrelevant to the user. The system is designed to send out alerts over a wide area - here in Canada I have received alerts for e.g. a fire ~100+km away - but the rate of these alerts is low, typically well under one per year which I suspect is well below people's annoyance threshold.
Using the system for things like a missing child means that you are broadcast an alert t
Re: (Score:2)
> Using the system for things like a missing child means that you are broadcast an alert to everyone in ~100km or so which makes them largely noise
You're assuming the system works the same way everywhere, but you are talking about a different country. Right now I am in awe, absolutely SHOCKED that the system would alert you to something 100km away. I couldn't imagine a country implementing a system in such a stupid way.Emergency alerts where I live can be highly localised, often to a sub 5km radius. Major toxic fire alerts? Yeah we localise those to maybe 1-2 surrounding suburbs. I've never received anything other than the 6 monthly test alert where I
Re: (Score:2)
For the missing child scenario, they cast a wide net because they want to try to cover about a 2-3 hour radius of likely travel so that someone might see a license plate. But as was pointed out, this can be useful for people actively driving or in a parking lot, not so useful when it's on a nightstand indoors at home where there's zero chance the person is going to see any license plate.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting point. Phones have the ability to know if they are in motion via gps, and accelerometers. Maybe have alerts like amber only buzz if the phone has detected motion in the past minute. As several have said, waking someone up for an amber is equivalent to pulling the pigs tail, it just pisses off the pig. I was talking to a friend and I think probably accurate. The flood at camp mystic should have used tornado sirens in the area. This is TX, and the hill country. Rains often localize in one area cau
Re: (Score:1)
And it's not just kids (won't someone think of the children)...
In Texas, we can get a half dozen "watch" alerts a day when storm systems are moving through.
That's *POINTLESS*. If your alert system is sending more than one message a day, you probably didn't set it up well.
And worse, the watches usually mean "stay at home, avoid getting caught in deep flood waters" and not "leave your home because floodwaters over your roof will be there in under 90 minutes."
Re: (Score:2)
"In Texas, we can get a half dozen "watch" alerts a day when storm systems are moving through."
This is an education problem; you should know the difference between "watch" and "warning". "Watch" is just "things are looking a bit dicey, be alert for more info." "Warning" is "bad stuff is happening, take appropriate action."
A GUI alert with no bing noise ... (Score:2)
Isn't the problem that "watch" makes the phone go bing just like "warning"?
Perhaps "watch" can bring up one GUI warning, no bing. Launch some government agency app if you want to follow in real time.
"Warning" can go bing. Maybe even go bing during sleep mode based on proximity?
Re: (Score:2)
The thing is, too many false alarms, or in this case, alarms that don't apply to you, dilute the power of alerts. If 99% of the alerts you receive, don't require you to do anything, then you're going to likely miss that 1% that do require action.
Re: (Score:2)
The alerts are supposed to be localized to the area where they can do some good. When I get an alert about something on the other side of the state at 3 A.M. It has missed the mark, unless that ever so rare silver or possibly white Honda drives through my bedroom window (which can't happen for at least 3 hours given how far away it is), there's zero chance I will see it.
Now, if they displayed the alert on the signs over the interstate, they would better target people who might actually see it.
Re: Simple... (Score:2)
Amber alerts shouldn't wake people up.
The nature of them is that people who are already awake and alert can potentially respond; but they aren't applicable to people sleeping.
The fix, for the very rare circumstance where such an alert should wake people up is to structure special alert for that.
Weather alerts, flood, tornado, etc. should be able to wake people up.
Missing kids aren't in that list.
Re: (Score:2)
But how will the Retard Pedophile Republicans scare the elderly about supposed "child abduction rings" that don't exist then???
Re: (Score:3)
Oh they'll do it anyway.
Besides, most amber alerts, when I've seen them followed up on, are more likely custody disputes than "Strange man jumps out of bush and steals kid" type thing. ie a parent is told emphatically by a Judge they're not allowed to go near one of their own children (usually for a good reason), they grab them anyway, and an amber alert is issued.
(Which is why they almost always have a full description of both adult and child, and the car they're in's license plate.)
Not suggesting these ar
Re: (Score:2)
While his comment was a bit off putting, there's a point about overuse of the system.
A child goes missing. That's unfortunate. Perhaps not as unfortunate as you might guess, it's often a custody dispute with lower risks than the alert would make you think, but still worth getting the word out.
But 150 miles away, on a nightstand where it's certain that I won't be recognizing the license plate in the alert, there's not much to expect that I'll be able to do anything helpful. Sometimes the alerts are pointles
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, the description of a mother who persuaded a judge to deny custody to a father (exactly how do you suppose she did that? I assume you're going to accuse her of sleeping with her - in the real world judges HATE giving sole custody to a single parent) as a "Karen" really helps add to the level of misogyny dripping from this post.
It's a shame because you weren't wrong about amber alerts mostly being about custody rather than strangers. But that doesn't make them invalid. A parent protecting their kid again