Texas officials face scrutiny over response to catastrophic and deadly flooding
Source: AP
Updated 8:31 PM EDT, July 5, 2025
KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Before heading to bed before the Fourth of July holiday, Christopher Flowers checked the weather while staying at a friend’s house along the Guadalupe River. Nothing in the forecast alarmed him.
Hours later, he was rushing to safety: He woke up in darkness to electrical sockets popping and ankle-deep water. Quickly, his family scrambled nine people into the attic. Phones buzzed with alerts, Flowers recalled Saturday, but he did not remember when in the chaos they started. “What they need they need is some kind of external system, like a tornado warning that tells people to get out now,” Flowers, 44, said.
The destructive fast-moving waters that began before sunrise Friday in the Texas Hill Country killed at least 43 people in Kerr County, authorities said Saturday, and an unknown number of people remained missing. Those still unaccounted for included 27 girls from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along a river in Kerr County where most of the dead were recovered.
But as authorities launch one of the largest search-and-rescue efforts in recent Texas history, they have come under intensifying scrutiny over preparations and why residents and youth summer camps that are dotted along the river were not alerted sooner or told to evacuate.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/texas-floods-hill-country-weather-warnings-238d4325bb58f0b410015f74684738b6
The NWS DOES have that - it's called a "Flash Flood Emergency" and that goes out over the EAS (Emergency Alert System) to all broadcast outlets and cell phones (at least those equipped with the capability - most models do have that capability nowadays).
Apparently FFEs WERE sent out - at least in the Austin metro area and I expect in all of the areas that were impacted. You do have an issue where those "off the grid" and/or any without a cell phone and/or a NOAA weather radio, would not get the alert.
Of course, Muskrat and DOGE took a chainsaw to the NWS and NOAA for ideological reasons, so many bets are off.
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But, seems to me, this kind of calamity DEMANDS a nationwide slate of laws. The tragic loss of so many precious kids can’t be allowed to happen again - if AT ALL possible. All those families! They’ll never be the same again. They’ll have to bear this deep personal wound for the rest of their lives.
YES, DAMMIT! A slate of laws to prevent (or at least head off) another disaster like this. For Texas TOO! Too damn bad if they don’t like it or “we don’t do things like that in Texas”. Those sweet precious children are GONE. Just GONE. Forever. They’ll never fall in love. They’ll never grow up and maybe do some truly great things. They’ll never start families of their own, or learn coping mechanisms for tough times and/or occurrences. They died before they even got a chance to LIVE. Death is FOREVER!
And for anyone who may be in denial or who might want to refer to all the years where this never happened and everything was always just fine, and this was just an unfortunate anomaly, well, how ‘bout what ACTUALLY HAPPENED, to THEM? Right THERE???
The ONLY thing the rest of us can even try to do is to take steps that can prevent future tragedies like this. I bet every one of those grieving moms and dads and siblings are being forced to deal with that, right now. I don’t know any of those people, but my heart is broken thinking about what all those survivors are forced to face, right now - and all the way down the proverbial “road ahead”.
They let children die in Uvalde,TX and now it looks like 27 girls at a camp have been claimed by the storm.
some are automatically enabled and you may have to disable ones that you don't want (I had been getting a billion Amber Alerts and had to turn that off).
And the FFEs usually go out via an EAS so those would also appear on TV (often as a banner that runs along the bottom of a program being aired) and radio stations (where it will break in with the familiar "tones" ).
Some more general info (for the thread) - https://www.ready.gov/alerts
I have been signed up with Ready.gov and locally here - ReadyPhiladelphia for some time, so that I can get texts (and also get actual calls through a service they have - "CodeRED", which can go to both cell and landlines with an automated message).
I know during storms here, it can be insane with the weather radio blaring, cell phones ringing, as well as texts and emails pouring in! 
I went to a 2-week overnight Girl Scout camp 3 different summers when I was in the scouts and the camp had a good sized creek (not a river though) that ran through it.
Many of these "comprehensive" camps do this because they offer some type of "boating" activity (we had rowboats but there was also canoeing available at the camp too and I think those activities were part of earning a badge). I expect some camps also offer kayaking as well and high-end ones might have sculling.
But what happened to that camp was that it got hit bad with flooding when Hurricane Agnes came through the area in '72 (the camp is in Eastern PA not far from Philly) and flooded the entire site -
When I had returned there, I saw the damage - a rope bridge completely upended and many trees downed in the woods where the creek ran.
When the weather "behaves", the water is serene. But in this era of climate change and more extreme weather events, all bets are off. They often dubbed stuff like this a "once in a century" event but they are unfortunately now happening far more frequently. 
This was Inevitable and totally predicted. 
