A decade of missed opportunities: Texas couldn't find $1M for flood warning system near camps

[Jirel]

6. Not the problem. This is dreck.

OMG, they brought up that moronic claim about Comfort again. I live there, people. Not a single person was saved, even warned, by sirens in Comfort. We had 8 hours of warning, it was after daylight, everyone in town was hypervigilant because we knew what had happened upstream, and our VFD and other first responders were making sure everyone was warned multiple times PERSONALLY (and they had plenty of time with that 8 hour window). Everyone who needed to get out, who took it seriously, was out LOOOOOONG before a siren went off. If they had waited for a siren, over half the people who needed to evacuate would have been stuck - we had high water over the only road out, and then the only HIGHWAY out, well before that. Please stop promoting this ridiculous lie about our community.

As for sirens, they’re a red herring. They are set off almost in the last minute. If you know our area, you know that water rises hella fast. By the time sirens blow, it’s likely that many routes in low lying areas are not passable safely, or at all. There are SO MANY CHANNELS FOR WARNINGS up here, and they were appropriately given. Heeded, not necessarily so much. For instance, Camp Mystic had warning. That allowed them time to get 725 kids out of immediate danger, which is no small feat. I think an investigation will tell us whether they delayed action on several hours’ worth of warnings that were out there, and were not taking them as seriously as they should have been by multiple players, including the Kerrville City Manager. But the thing that got them stranded was that they had the single “highway” on the river bank and many roads leading to it covered with water - no way out early on. Yes, a very expensive, elite camp has no emergency back way out that is a high ground road. You know when a siren would have blown? About the time that those girls were already drowning. It would have been useless, especially if the camp had been waiting for that to start getting kids to high ground. It’s those warnings hours ahead of time, which we all had (thank you NOAA for having extra people on despite being underfunded, doing a nearly perfect job, and having accurate warnings out hours ahead), that need to be acted on better, and taken more seriously. There are many measures that can save lives out here, but they are measures that must be done early.

Please stop promoting armchair quarterbacks’ useless “obvious fixes.” In these communities, we know where the failure points are popping up