July 10, 2025 • 54 mins
In this episode of Louisiana Unfiltered, Kiran Chawla and Daniel Brown look into the July 4th flash flooding of the Guadalupe River, which has now claimed over 100 lives. They look into communication failures, the need for improved warning systems, and what can be done to address such catastrophes in the future.
Chapters
05:29 Setting the Scene: The Flood Details
14:43 The Camp Experience 16:02 Past Disasters
23:57 The Impact of Warnings
25:08 System Failures and Realizations
47:43 The Climate Conversation
50:55 The Path Ahead
For information on resources to donate to help those affected by the texas floods click here:
https://unfilteredwithkiran.com/texas-hill-country-flash-floods-leave-100-dead-hundreds-missing-how-to-help/
Local Sponsors for this episode include:
Neighbors Federal Credit Union:
Another Chance Bail Bonds:
Dudley DeBosier Injury Lawyers
Sound and Editing for this audio podcast by Envision Podcast Production:
Chapters
05:29 Setting the Scene: The Flood Details
14:43 The Camp Experience 16:02 Past Disasters
23:57 The Impact of Warnings
25:08 System Failures and Realizations
47:43 The Climate Conversation
50:55 The Path Ahead
For information on resources to donate to help those affected by the texas floods click here:
https://unfilteredwithkiran.com/texas-hill-country-flash-floods-leave-100-dead-hundreds-missing-how-to-help/
Local Sponsors for this episode include:
Neighbors Federal Credit Union:
Another Chance Bail Bonds:
Dudley DeBosier Injury Lawyers
Sound and Editing for this audio podcast by Envision Podcast Production:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is sponsored by Deli de Boja, injury lawyers
fighting for those who've been hurt and deserved to be heard,
from crashes on the road to injuries on the job.
Our team is here to protect your rights and get results.
You focus on healing, We'll handle the rest.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Called four four four four four four to four, or.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Visit delidboja dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Responsible attorney James Pelcha Betrouge. In the early morning hours
of July fourth, the Guadalupe River in Texas rose twenty
(00:40):
six feet in just forty five minutes. Families were asleep,
Some had no cell phones, either by choice enjoying time unplugged,
or because there was no service in the remote hill country.
When the water came, it came fast, too fast, And
(01:03):
for those of us in Louisiana, the heartbreak hits hard
because we have lived it. In twenty sixteen, a slow
moving storm dumped trillions of gallons of rain over South Louisiana.
It was not a hurricane, it had no name, and
still it swallowed neighborhood's whole, wiped out entire communities. Thirteen
(01:31):
people died, tens of thousands of people lost everything, and
many of them never got a warning either. The parallels
are eerie flash flooding in places that are considered safe,
families caught off guard, rescue boats where school buses should be,
(01:55):
and now another southern state is asking this the same
questions we asked nearly a decade ago. Why did we
not see this coming? Why were people not warned? And
how do you rebuild when no one was prepared? I'm
(02:16):
Kieran Charla, and this is Louisiana unfiltered. Today. We are
diving into the rising waters in Texas and back home.
What connects these tragedies, what has or has not changed,
and what happens when nature outpaces every system built to
(02:39):
stop it. Welcome back everyone. This week we are joined
by our executive producer, Daniel Brown. Daniel, thank you for
(02:59):
joining us. This one's a tough one.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
It's a very tragic story that kind of brought it
back a lot of memories from nearly a decade ago
for a lot of people here in Louisiana. Very different
circumstances but very similar at the same time.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Yes, I guess, Daniel, let's kind of start with setting
the scene and to me, two of the worst things
in this specific case are that it's a holiday weekend,
so lots and lots of tourists and even the camp
that was going on for the holiday. But number two,
it was in the very early morning hours when a
(03:35):
lot of people were still asleep.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
They were And you know, I spent a lot of
time in Texas for part of my career, and this
is a area, the hill country of Texas.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
It literally is the heart of Texas.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
A lot of people traveled to this area, like you said,
for holidays.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
The Guadalupe River.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Is very popular for not only our vs, but tents
and hiking and all these things. And you know, one
of the things that's been getting a lot of attention
or a lot of the summer camps in the area.
There are a ton of summer camps that are all
right here. And this was all kind of like a
recipe for disaster in a lot of ways. It was
(04:17):
this perfect storm, the timing everything just to kind of
create this tragic incident with you know, more than one
hundred people losing our lives because of a flood.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
And it's like you said, Daniel, that for me, it's
so much of the PTSD And I say me, I
speak for a lot of people in South Louisiana, that
we understand it a little bit maybe better than the
rest of the country. Can I know that everybody's hearts
are pouring out, especially for those little girls, but everybody
(04:51):
right now this is the big story nationally that is unfolding.
But for Louisiana, especially South Louisiana, the bat Ridge metro area,
should I say we understand it a tad bit better
because I remember a councilwoman told me this years ago, Daniel,
that when your own feet burn, you actually understand the
pain of how much it hurts to suffer from a burn,
(05:15):
rather than just hearing it from someone that they're struggling
from the pain of a burn. And those words hold
so true that once you've lived through something, you've been there,
you get it. And in this case, a lot of
people here have been there. I know I was there,
how for the longest time. If it rained real heavy
(05:36):
still in my head, we're flooding, so and I know
we're going to dive into the comparisons, but I guess
first we want to kind of set the scene and
talk about the exact details of what all happened in
this specific flood.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
It was one hundred billion gallons of water.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
That's more than what the Niagara Falls produces in a day.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
That kind of fell in this area, and it's one
of those numbers.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
When I read it, I had to reread it a
few times because it's like one hundred billion gallons, like,
how do you kind of equate that? And it's basically
the volume of water that poured down from the rain,
and that's kind of what it is estimating. It led
to ten to twelve inches of rainfalling in just a
few hours, which is an awful lot of water. The
(06:22):
Guadalupe River rose twenty six feet in forty five minutes.
And you mentioned it happened overnight.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
This was at four in the morning, so this was
something that.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
No one really saw coming. It was literally a wall
of water that hit this specific area of Texas, and
it happened the middle of the night. It happened in
an area that doesn't have great cell phone towers, so
there's not a lot of cell phone signals and all
that kind of impacted gating warnings out it. Also, we
(06:57):
mentioned all the summer camps and stuff in the area.
A lot of these summer camps. What I've been reading
is the kids actually surrender their cell phones at the
beginning of the camp. It's an unplugged A lot of
these are like unplugged. It's meant to kind of have
kids connect and not be tied to the devices and
stuff like that. So a lot of the kids didn't
have their cell phones with them. So all of this
(07:21):
kind of combined. And this was one where you know,
there were warnings and this is you know, flash flood
Alley that's been kind of out there in the news,
and this is an.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Area that's prone to flooding. But Karen, what I.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Found interesting in I guess covering news for as long
as we have it is one of those things where
you don't think about until you think about it. But
I feel like flood watches, flood warnings, flash floods or
one of the most ignored weather alerts that we have.
I think people think that, oh, you'll have time to react,
you can kind of see it coming, you know, this
(07:58):
was one of those instances where.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
That wasn't the case.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
You know, you literally have a wall of water, one
hundred billion gallons of water coming at you in just
a few hours. You don't really see that coming. It's
one of those things where you can't really forecast, and
I know the forecasters have been getting a lot of
blame for not getting it right or missing it. And
this was forecast, but it's hard to forecast something that
(08:23):
you don't even think is fathomable at the same time,
you know in a lot of ways. So all these
things are kind of at play, and their rescuers are
still combing through the debris. This is, you know, an
area like the death toll is so massive that you
forget about all the homes and stuff that are also ravash.
(08:43):
But there are if you see any of the pictures
of the aftermath, I mean there are r vs and cars.
There's just mangled wreckage and debris kind of on the
river banks here. I was listening to an interview with
one of the rescuers who was combing through the river
looking for bodies, and they said that you could hear
(09:04):
cell phones kind of going off along the riverbeds, just
for people that just haven't been located yet. So it's
one of those things where it's hard to kind of
wrap your head around just how massive this tragedy actually is.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, and I'll even say this, it's July fourth weekend.
A lot of people do like to be on the
water near the waters in some way, shape or form,
especially in the South, we like to be on the water.
And that does if your kids aren't already at camps,
maybe you as your family have decided you're going on
the lake. You are taking your RV out. I know
(09:38):
we have a camper and we camp often, and I
prefer to be somewhere along the water. But Daniel, there
was a time lapse here, a video time lapse, of course,
and we kind of can't show it in an audio version,
but there is a video time lapse of people standing
on almost a little bridge area and with then just
(10:01):
like you said that forty five minutes, the first responders
go back a little, a little, a little, a little,
And I would love to talk to those first responders
that did they even know what was happening? Yes, they
probably saw their phones, but did it register for them
that wait, this is the river that's rising. And in
(10:21):
that time lapse, Daniel, you see that water come up
so fast. But then there was a really good visual
that's one of the outlets did to show that after
it stayed about this high, it was the river itself
that even though it wasn't coming up higher here. It
kept rising up to twenty six feet and like you said,
forty five minutes. And I know we're going to get
(10:44):
into the warnings and the breakdown of all of that,
but let's be honest, Daniel, the U and I, all
of our staff, all of our area. ALEXA speaks he
warning for your area, the cell phone ding's emergency warning.
And how often do we look at and say, oh cool,
and you go right back to cooking dinner or whatever
you're doing. But in this case, it's four o'clock in
(11:06):
the morning and you're asleep. What do you do?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
And this is an area too, that is prone to
flash flood so they're used to flooding. They're not used
to this, but they're used to flooding. So when they
get the warnings, it's not that they weren't alert or
aware or just purely ignoring it. But you know, it's
hard to fathom this happening when you're kind of used
to the worst case scenario before. You have that in
(11:34):
your head, so you feel like you and your family
are safe because this area hasn't flooded. But then something
like this happens and you're not and That's what really
reminds me of twenty sixteen. It's all the people are like, oh,
I didn't flood in eighty nine or I didn't flood
during whatever year it was, and you have this like
notion that you're safe and you're not and mother nature
(11:57):
always prevails, and you know, whether things spending time too
in Texas, hearing that I didn't appreciate until I lived there,
to be quite honest, But summer camps are literally a
way of life there.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
It's so different than Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Like these are generations of families, like their moms and
dads went to summer camps, they became camp counselors, and
now their kids are going to the same camps. And
it's a really big deal in Texas, and these are
We're talking about hundreds of campers at these camps. It's
almost kind of like what you see in the movies
(12:33):
when they have summer camp, kind of going back to
some of like the Parent Trap or you know some
of the Mary Kate, Nashley, Oldsten kind of movies where
they're at summer camp.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
That's what it is.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And I always thought that was like, oh, just for movies,
but that literally is what they have in Texas, and
it's it's such a rite of passage for so many
kids and families in this area that it truly is
part of the culture there.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
In fact, Daniel, you say that and Camp Miss mist
there were seven hundred and fifty girls at this camp.
Now you got to remember there are still some missing.
There are some who did not survive. But I saw,
speaking of what you just said as far as generational,
that former first Lady uh Bush, she went to this camp.
(13:18):
And then to add to that, uh the last time
the Guadalupe River kind of rose was nineteen eighty seven,
and I know one of the major networks, I can't
remember which one, but they actually they shared their original
story they did from then, and then they interviewed some
of the girls who were rescued from Camp Mystique. Mind you,
(13:40):
those girls by now have to be around fifty years old,
talk about PTSD. But they survived. A lot of those girls, thankfully,
were rescued. And in this case, what from what I
understand is that the one of the area where like
the eight to nine year old girls were housed was
maybe a football fields distance from the river itself. And again,
(14:04):
if you look at that time lapse, that water dent
slowly rise. It was just the wall came at you
and yeah, it's immediately going to wash away that spot first.
The girls a little bit higher may have had a
quick chance. But we're hearing the horror stories come out
that the counselors did their best to kind of get
everybody out. But how does even a counselor in that
(14:27):
quick in the seconds it took for that water to rise,
get those girls to safety.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Yeah, that's one of the things you trained for.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
It's kind of like teachers training for active shooter drills and.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Stuff like that. But when it actually happens. One of
the interesting things I saw.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
They think that a lot of the kids were saved
because a lot of the counselors, since there's so many kids,
not everyone works every single day.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
You have like days off. Some of the counselors that
have days off.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Their curfews, like one am I think is why I
heard in one of the interviews, so some of them
were just coming back to the camp as the rivers
were starting to rise. The river was starting to rise,
so they were able to kind of alert and start
moving some of these kids and getting some some waking
some of the other counselors up and getting them the action,
moving into action to kind of start moving some of
(15:15):
the kids.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
And it's it's it's it's.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Interesting that that could have been what saved even more
lies because we because there's a lot of these little
bitty cabins and stuff that were close to the river,
and a lot of them were evacuated. Obviously there was,
you know, several kids that weren't so fortunate and lucky.
But you just kind of think like, right place, right
(15:40):
time for somebody's counselors to kind of jump into action
and start.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Evacuating and moving.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
And then the camp the owner of the camp, you know,
I mean.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
He lost his life trying to save the kids.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
And I was listening to a lot of interviews with
kids that have gone to this camp, and Jenna bush
Hager was talking about she didn't go to camp, and
you mentioned her mom did, and she's but she grew
up going to summer camp and she just dropped her
kids out to a different summer camp. And she was
talking about, you know, this camp director, he's like a
second dad to a lot of these girls, and he
(16:13):
taught a lot of these girls how to fish and
how to do all these things.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
So he lost his life trying to save so many
of these these young girls. It hurts.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
It reminds me of twenty sixteen here, and I remember
Daniel that I was a reporter back then and so
many of us. As a reporter, you don't just live
in these communities. I know, I don't often. Yeah, you
do move around. You work in a city, and then
you move on. This boun Rouge is my home and
(16:51):
I've lived it, and in that moment, you're not just
a reporter. You're a resident of the community, and you're
watching your loved ones suffer. And in this case, I
guess it's like you said that you're similarity and you
have it in your head.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
And this goes back to twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I remember my family flooded in twenty sixteen, and it
was one of those things we've never flooded before. And
it's something you'll you'll be hearing a lot about the news,
But like the ones in a generation storm or the
once in every one hundred year storm kind of thing,
or one thousand year storm, that always goes back to
(17:29):
you know, I could still hear my dad, you know, Oh,
the water is going to stop. Is it's never flooded
our house, you know it's never gonna get there, and
they just you keep watching the water get closer and
closer and closer, but you have this like preconceived notion
of safety in your head, like it's never gotten that
high before, so you kind of let your guard down
a little bit until it's almost too late. And Texas
(17:50):
was so different because twenty sixteen the water rose fast,
but it didn't rise anywhere near as fast as like
this didn't Texas like it's it's it's one of those
things that's hard to wrap your head around just how
fast that water rose and how high it got.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
You mentioned it didn't just overflow the banks.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
It went up you know, of roofs like houses and
all that, so you put that into some perspective. It's
interesting because I was in Texas in twenty nineteen when
we flooded there, and it was one of those things where, again,
we've never flooded where I was located. I was working
at a TV station there and that station never flood.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
It before, so we thought we were safe.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
We had plans and motion and all that, but then
you're watching the water rise and rise and rise, and
we barely were able to evacuate because we waited so long.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Because it was one of those things where you're listening
to people.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
That have lived through other flood events in the town
and it's never gotten that high, so you're kind of
listening to them, but then you're watching the water and
then it's almost too.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Late, and then you know.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
And that's a lot of what happened here in more
significant magnitude, And I apologize.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
I guess for me, it brings back living in that
very moment of are you staying or are you going?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
The river?
Speaker 3 (19:14):
I mean, I say river, Well, yeah it was the river.
It was the a meet for us, but that it
was coming up so fast. And I still remember it
was ten thirty at night for a majority of Livingstone Parish.
That it was nighttime for people, and yeah, there are
people who go to bed by ten thirty you're in bed.
A lot of people are are sleep because the next
day for us in Louisiana, we thought we had work.
(19:36):
It was a week night, And I guess I go
back to that and I remember just having to evacuate
in the quick minute that we had. The few minutes
we had to hurry up. Do you save your life
or do you save the materialistic things? No, you just
get yourselves out and go. That's how fast it came.
(19:58):
But Daniel, that quick five minutes. I had that four
or five minutes of Okay, let me hurry up and
throw a few things in a bag because I don't
know what we're coming home to, how long we're going
to be gone. I had those four or five minutes.
These people maybe had seconds for this wall to just
come at them. And I guess that's what hurts. But
(20:20):
you got to remember, it's Louisiana. We've also been through Katrina.
I've lived that too. People say Katrina was a once
in a life time storm, lived it, worked it. Twenty
sixteen was a once in a lifetime storm, lived it
and worked it as well. And I pray there's nothing
else that happens. But I guess that's why I can
say that here in Louisiana, we understand what our Texas
(20:44):
neighbors are going through, probably better than anyone. But Daniel.
I'll also add this the stories of Louisianians jumping up
and hooking that boat to a trailer and going They
don't care they're going the rescues that come out of this,
and now what we're seeing is the donations, the drives
(21:05):
that come through. This isn't something that's going to be
done in another day or two. Louisiana is going to
be right there helping our Texan neighbors for the months
that are ahead. You're going to see the Habitat for
Humanities coming in to help aid and rebuild homes because
that's what we received in twenty and sixteen, That's what
we received in two thousand and five, and Louisianans we
(21:28):
give back.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
And you know, in twenty sixteen, there was thirteen people
who died in the flood here in Louisiana. So you know,
we're not comparing to and I think it's important that
we say that because you have more than one hundred
people dead in Texas twenty seven just at that one
camp that we talked about, Campnistic, So thirteen lives here,
(21:51):
you know that was more than you know, the camp
had more than that. So these events are not the same,
but it does bring up those like you keep saying
that the same memories and you know this is a
story too that was you know, you covered this I know,
and I felt it like Louisiana was really forgotten in
twenty sixteen because it was not a name storm. The
(22:15):
national media took them a really long time to even
kind of cover it. And then even then it was
just kind of like a blip. It wasn't like you're
seeing in Texas. But in Texas in a lot of ways,
it was kind of overlooked for a while too. Because
it happened over a holiday weekend, not a lot of
people were paying attention. The Magnitude is obviously putting the
spotlight on it this week, and rightfully so. But this,
(22:39):
this tragedy in Texas brought back some of that that
feeling of being overlooked and kind of forgotten. And you know,
it's kind of like the wildfires in California earlier this year,
like how many we've moved on two lifetimes since then.
It feels like in our own personal lives, you know,
and these people are still rebuilding and it's gonna be
the same thing in Texas.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
It was this thing here in Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
You know, it took years for families to rebuild and
stuff like that, so it's important to talk about it
from that point of view.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Too, to your point, Karen.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Because these are lives that are impacted, and while the
death tolls aren't the same and the exact storm's not
the same, there's a lot of those parallels there.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
And by no doubt, let me second what you were saying.
Am I sitting here trying to compare the two? I
guess what I'm saying is that we can understand it.
I get teary eyed because I go back to not
knowing where I'm going, what am I doing? But I'm alive.
I walked out alive. But I remember getting those calls
(23:41):
as one of our loved ones. We didn't know where
they were, We couldn't get in touch with them. That
there's no cell phone coverage. That alone is just that
emotional stress and toll of not knowing if your loved
one is alive. And in this case, you've got little girls.
I pray for those parents every night because they're What
(24:01):
do you do, Daniel, What do you even say? There's
nothing to say. There are no words that can bring
back a child, or any loved one for that matter.
But we've all heard it. Parents aren't meant to outlive
their kids.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Yeah, and you brought up of such a valid point,
and you know, this one camp is getting a lot
of attention because of the specific death toll. There were
other camps nearby that were also impacted, you know, like
I mentioned, like there are so many camps in this area,
summer camps in this area. They had some that was
kind of a boys and girls kind of camp, and
(24:37):
they had two brothers who.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
One was younger than the other by like two years
or something, so they were in different parts of the camp,
but they were both at the camp together and the
older brother was just trying to figure out how to
get to his younger brother because he didn't want to
be alone. And then you had the sisters who were
at one camp and they were found several miles down river,
like still holding hands, and they had died together holding hands, and.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
So many of these stories, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
And this other mom was recounting her daughter at the
camp and her best friend got swept away, like right
in front of her by the floodwaters, you know, and
there's nothing you can do, and it's fight or flight
kind of mentality here, and you're just trying to get
to safety, but all this has happened around you, like it's.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Hard to kind of picture.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
It literally is like a Hollywood horror movie of what
was going on with this water and the chaos and
that kind of involved these kids.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
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let's talk about those warnings. And I remember watching some
(27:06):
of these press conferences. I guess, being a reporter, you
watch it in two ways. I think, you know what
I'm saying. You watch it from the aspect of the professional,
but then you're still taking in the how big this
tragedy is. And I remember one of those press conferences
kind of like you said that the national media took
them a minute. It took them a minute to get there.
(27:28):
And then when the press conferences started happening, and this
may have been the very first one with the governor
involved and the Defense secretary was present there, but they
caught a lot of heat about the warnings and were
they actually issued. But now in the last or in
this week, should I say we have seen that they started.
(27:49):
They started earlier, but it was around one o'clock in
the morning, kind of like you said that some of
those counselors were coming in at that time. That the
first of the really serious mornings kind of kicked off. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Look, it's easy to Monday Morning quarterback this, and it's
easy to kind of go back now and look at
it and the finger pointing and the political blame game,
like you know, I, we're putting me and you were
putting that out aside. We went and found just the
pure facts about when the weather warnings kind of started,
and they started on July first. The National Weather Service
(28:25):
in San Antonio and Austin, they began highlighting the potential
for flooding as early as that Tuesday. Okay, so that
was July first. On July third, there was a floodwatch
was issued by the National Weather Service included Kerr County.
That was also where the bulk of the flooding happened.
That's where at least eighty plus the of the hundred
(28:49):
deaths happened, so the majority of them were in Kerr County,
and they highlighted the potential for up to seven inches
of rain. So that was the day before, on July third,
at six. Later that day, on July third, there was
a rare special weather discussion that emphasized wor seeing trends.
So these forecast models are constantly updating the computer models
(29:09):
are coming together. They used words in this discussion concerning
trends flash flooding likely in rainfall rates succeeding three inches
per hour, and those words are interesting because again, this
is flash flood alley. This is an area that used
to five flooding. So they were really specific on the
(29:29):
words they use, which I think is important to point out.
That was at six ten pm, at one fourteen in
the morning on July fourth, this was Friday, the flood
warning was issued for Kirk County. It was the first
official warning. It had what's considered in the National Weather Service.
It's called a considerable tag and that's used for significant
(29:51):
and potentially life threatening flash floods. And that word is
what triggers the wireless emergency alerts on mobile phone and
stuff like that. So when I say words matter, that's
why I'm pointing some of these out. That's a work
that matters. What's interesting. And we talked a little bit
about this Kieran, but it's unclear about sell coverage in
(30:13):
the area and how is impacted.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
This is a rural area.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
You have a lot of people camping, and that's another
reason why they don't know how high the death toll
is going to because they don't know exactly how many
people are in the area because it was a lot
of TICH camping and RV camping and all that.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
It wasn't just the summer camps.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
It was just recreational you know, in cabins that you
can rent and stuff like that, So they.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Don't even know how many people are in the area.
But cell phone service was impacted.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
But at one fourteen in the morning, that's when a
lot of these alerts were starting to trigger. So your
cell phones are going off in the middle of the
night and stuff like that. And we mentioned that summer
camp all the kids surrender their cell phones, so none
of the kids had cell phones, so it was only
probably the counselors and stuff like that. And even then
there's questions about how many of the counselors had cell
phones and whatnot.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
And Daniel let me even add this that I know
this from variance as well. When we're camping. You know this,
there are a lot of times a lot of these
campgrounds have zero service. I have to let you know, hey,
I'm headed back to the campground. I will not have service.
This is right along the river, and like I said,
that's where you want to be camping. And I've seen
these pictures of the camper literally swept away, but then
(31:19):
a tree finally stops them. That camper is wrapped around
that tree. If you're in your bed asleep, even if
somehow you ended up staying in that camper, that flood
water came that river water came up so fast it
was flooding, or you're dying just from the impact, and
that just adds too. We don't know what the count's
(31:40):
going to be just yet because there's no check in
required at some of these primitive campgrounds. You just go
set up your camper or your tent and you're good.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
And that's and that's that's what happened here, you know.
And you mentioned the.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
RVs that the mangled nettle. I mean, the river banks
of the Guadalupe are just lit.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
With these and it's.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Not only like littering debris, it's RVs and tents and
all these other things that are kind of there. So
that's what the rescue team are having to kind of
dig through to find the bodies, which is even more sad.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
An hour later that the National Weather Service reported that
to five inches of rain had already fallen. So this
is at about two thirty in the morning. Conditions of
Kirk County suggested that flash flooding already begun, So at
this time the area was beginning to flood. Five inches
of rain had already fallen in that area, which is
(32:37):
a lot of water. It was thirty minutes later, at
three h two in the morning a subsequent communication but
the National Weather Service was issued that a dangerous flash
flood event was unfolding in south central Kirk County.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
So this was when all hell was breaking loose.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
To be quite honest, and Daniel, going back to what
you said that words matter from everything, I understand that
warning at three o'clock that came out is a very
very very rare warning from the National Weather Service.
Speaker 4 (33:08):
Yeah, and a lot of these were rare. They're not
issued very often.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
The flash flood emergency was declared, like you said, rarely issued.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
It's the most serious alert level that the.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
National Weather Service has, So it's not like you know,
just like you mentioned, it's not one that's used a
lot in the flash flood warning system. It's reserved for
and I looked it up on the National Weather Services website.
It's reserved only for the most life threatening and catastrophic
flooding events, only a small percentage of warning recist level.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
And they were.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Even having some National Weather Service scientists neurologists go in
and find out how often it was used, and they
were having trouble because it's not.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Used very often.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Speaks volumes, that speaks volumes. The Guadaloupe this is at
So that was at four three am, at four to
twenty in the morning. This was near Hunt, Texas. The
Guadalupe River surge past this major flood stage. Major flood
stage is twenty two feet. The river crested at twenty
(34:14):
nine point four five feet at four thirty five in
the morning, so it was well above considered major flood stage.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
And the speed of magnitude.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Of the rising water is what you saw in like
the in the timeline studio and something you kind of
mentioned again, the Guadalupe River rose twenty six feet and
forty five minutes. What that's sink in that's a lot
like twenty six feet. Because you know, the Houston Chronicle
has done a great job of investigating this and they've
(34:46):
done some really great work in the camps in the
area have river gauges, and the river was not considered
any remotely high. It wasn't even at an alarming level.
It wasn't even at a level that would draw kind
of look, so that's how fast this water rose and
(35:07):
how much water kind of fell in this area.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
And Daniel, we both work in media. We've got meteorologists
who are friends and having these conversations with them. The
truth is, no human being. I don't care how great
of a meteorologist you are, there is no human being
out there who could have predicted what was coming. This
is mother Nature. And a lot of our local people
(35:31):
have compared it to twenty sixteen that they had a feeling,
they knew that twenty sixteen was going to be problematic.
They had no idea what would come because you cannot
predict ahead of time. Hey, seven inches of rain are
going to fall in two hours. It's a matter of
just it literally forms over us. And prime example, Walker
(35:53):
Walker may get ten inches of rain. Well, in fact,
let's go to Texas Kerk County or Service Severe something
along those lines. I think got twenty six inches or
twenty plus inches. And then there were other parts of
town that got the seven to eight inches. But you
got to remember the river is going through multiple counties,
(36:14):
and in fact you said it Kirk County was one
of the most impacted, the most significant. But there are
death tolls coming in from six areas, six Main County.
Should I say in that specific area, but that Guadalupe River,
it's not just staying in Kirk County. It's going through
all these areas, kind of like the a Meet River
(36:35):
and going back. I guess you can compare it because
personal experience. I remember Daniel in twenty sixteen, we went
and interviewed Congressman Graves back then right along the banks
of the a Meet River, and I remember both of
us looking at it before we went live, saying, wow,
that's actually pretty high. But I'm standing in somebody's backyard.
The river was fine at that very moment. It was
(36:58):
that night that we call it a night for the day.
We had been reporting all day. We went back, we
thought we were about to go to bed, and that's
when everything happened. That the river rose from where we
were standing to well over the height of that house
in the backyard that I did that interview at.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, meteorologists gets such a bad rep I mean, they
are forecasting the future, and you know, in my opinion,
only God can kind of do that, right, It's hard.
They knew it was going to be a flooding event.
They warned a flooding event several days in advance. They
did not warn to this magnitude. But again, you have
(37:38):
moisture from the Pacific, moisture from the Gulf, and then
you had remnants of a hurricane that hit our tropical
storm that hit Mexico days before that just kind of
all you know, assembled over this one area. It's kind
of hard to kind of forecast that happening. It just
it really is. And you know, hearing we spent a
(37:59):
lot of talking about the cell phone warnings. What's so interesting,
and this is where change is going to happen, and
we saw a lot of change after twenty sixteen in
this area.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
There are parts.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Of the of the Guadalupe that flooded that where some
of the RVs and intents are that have these warning
system It's basically like sirens or horns that kind of
sound to kind of alert people. And they had them
in different parts of the Guadalupe River. They did not
have them in Kerr County. Where the bulk of the
(38:33):
tragedy happened. And I mentioned the Houston Chronicle doing a
lot of investigating. This was one of the investigations they did.
And this is one where they've been fighting for eight
years for a flood warning system in this specific area
and it comes down to basically dollars and they didn't
(38:53):
have the funding for it. They didn't have the million
dollars that it was going to cost for this warning system.
Warning system ever became a reality, and you know, now
the Texas session is about to start later this month,
and that's obviously going to be something that wallmakers are
gonna have to to decide and find the funding for.
(39:16):
But that's one of the system failures.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Here, and it's a major system failure.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
And the other thing in you're a camper and and
I don't know if you have one of these, but
you know one of the National Weather Service radios or
that's why those are so important because even if you
don't have cell phone service, these radios will kind of
go off with warnings. You know, I can still hear
Ja Crimes preaching about these weather radios and having them
(39:43):
and why they're so important because they're battery operate it.
They're not reliable, reliant to on cell phone signal and
stuff like that, and they will alert you.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
So if you're in a remote area or camping, or even.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
If you're in your house and you lose power or
your cell phone dies, you'll still get weather alerts, you know.
And we talk about hurricanes. Hurricanes you see coming days
ahead of time. Even tornadoes. Now you have a little
bit of warning. I mean, you know, maybe not exactly
where the tornado is going to be, but you know
the atmosphere is ripe for a tornado. This flooding, you
(40:16):
knew about it. Again, you didn't know how bad it
was going to be. And that's why those weather radios
are just so important to have, you know, and it
could have saved so many lives just having the warning
system where or having those radios come to nearby.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Well, and Daniel kind I want to add two points
to what all you just said. It kind of goes
back a little bit just to ted that the I know,
there's in the day and age we live in, rumors
get started really really really quickly that the National Weather
Service wasn't prepared. They actually had brought in extra staff
(40:53):
to work this because that's how worried they were about this. Again,
it happened overnight though, and that's the part that's going
to be really difficult. The other thing, Daniel is we
semi discussed it already, but there is there's a certain
amount of fatigue when it comes to these warnings and
watches that, like we already said, we look at it, Oh,
(41:17):
that's not us. But I wonder how many people at
that three four o'clock alert that did go out that
requires the cell phone alert for people who had a
phone number one and number two actually had service to
receive it. How many of those people probably looked at
it and said, oh, okay, I'm going back to sleep. Yeah,
And that's if you had the phone and had service.
(41:38):
There were so many others. You're in a remote location,
you didn't get service. I mean, you didn't get the alert.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Talking about you've never flood it before.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
You get these, but you still don't think it's going
to happen to you kind of thing. And that's an
important point, you know, And it's also whether warnings are
so hard And here we've talked about this for other
kind of things about disaster prep. You know, we we
live in an area that has like a lot of plants,
so if there's a plant explosion or emission of something dangerous.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
You know, the time it takes to trigger these alerts sometimes.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Is not a lot of time, and it takes time
to get these out, and it goes back to these
weather alerts, and there was some I was reading some
discussions online between some meteorologists that we're just talking about it,
and to trigger these alerts is a process. It's it's
not just someone typing it in and clicking a button.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
It's it's a discussion.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
It's a process because we talked about the language that
was used is so specific and what it triggered and
all that.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
So you want to be careful because.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
You don't want to cry wolf too many times and
not happen, because then people and we see this in
hurricanes all the time, that that don't heed the evacuation
warnings or don't heed how bad the storm is.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
All of the other storm was worse.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Than this one, so we'll be fine kind of thing.
It's kind of like the flood things. You know, we've
had bad foot before, Slash Finaley.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
We're used to that.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
There's a way of life here and then something like
this happens and you're you're kind of caught off guard,
and and these alerts are kind of part of that.
It's it's not just you know, hitting enter on a keyboard.
It's it's it's a lot that goes into it. And
I think every time these happened, I wish more cities
(43:21):
and officials would kind of take a look at their
emergency preparations and and what does work and what does
not work, you know. And Kirk County did have an
alert that you could sign up for Coreage what was called,
but you had to go in and actually sign up
for it. In a lot of areas in Louisiana had
(43:41):
similar kind of things that cities can afford them.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
There's smaller communities that can't.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Afford that though, you know that they can't afford the
technology and the upkeep and and all the subscription that
comes to kind of do this. But but there's so
many of these things that could save lives, you know,
And I think about that, you know, I think about
when something does happen on a plant, or if there
is a flood or a tornado or hurricane, and these
(44:08):
things happen, like, how are you going to get information,
Who's going to tell me and who's responsible for that?
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Well? And I go back and compare it. I remember
when I was working in Marksville drawing a blank which
parish that is oiled, Yes, in a Oil's parish, and
we were doing live shots right at noon, and the
very first time it kicked off, it scared me and
I didn't know what to do. But they test their sirens,
(44:37):
their emergency sirens at noon every Friday. And in my head,
I'm thinking, why does Oils Parish need sirens? I still
don't know that answer, but maybe if Klerk County had
something similar, I would have woke up to that. And
again I put myself in these people's shoes that if
I was camping along the river that at four o'clock
(44:58):
in the morning, if I'm hearing a siren go going off,
I'm waking up to that sock.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
River did sound and did alert people? So they do work,
you know.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Yes, yeah, yeah, so to me, And this is Kieran
Challoe talking. This is not the reporter in me saying this.
I personally just feel something along those lines. I get it.
A lot of cities don't have the money, the jurisdictions
don't have the money, but maybe it's time for our federal, local,
state officials to sit down and how much what value
(45:31):
do you put on one human life? And maybe that
could have saved something. And like you said, Daniel, we're
all sitting here Monday morning quarterbacking and I don't know
things do need to change? And I guess that leads
us into the next thing. What has changed, what hasn't changed,
and maybe what changes do need to come.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
The female response has gotten much better and we've seen
that dramatically since Katrino, and you know, so many people
were desperate for federal assistance and help and it took
days and weeks to come. You know, disaster sins have
learned a lot from Katrina. We learned something from every disaster.
You know, Texas learned a lot from Harvey. This disaster
(46:18):
will now be worse than what Harvey calls as far
as destruction and death toll, So you learn a lot
from that. The federal response was really quick to get
aid in. The state response was really quick. I think
the state of Texas learned a lot from Harvey as well,
just like Louisian learned a lot from Katrina. So I
feel like the response to get boots on the ground
(46:40):
and get resources into areas has improved tenfold dramatically since Katrina.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
I'll agree with that, and I'll even say that technology
has improved a lot since these floods, since Katrina, since
the twenty sixteen flood or even Harvey.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
We didn't have social media then, you know, social media
really puts the pressure on getting some of these responses
into cities and talents quicker. It also allows stories to
come out, so you can kind of tug on the
heartstrings of how you're impacted, and that's how dollars kind
of get flowing in to kind of help and nonprofits
(47:22):
and charities and all that kind of stuff. So that
part did, and you know, the governor and lieutenant government
Texas said that they're committed to finding the funding to
kind of get these warning systems up. So, you know,
I mentioned their sessions about to start, so it'll be
interesting to kind of.
Speaker 4 (47:38):
See how that was. But this was something that nobody's
saw coming, you know, so it.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Does take time to activate resources and get things moving.
But they did have helicopters and air really quick looking
for survivors, and you know, the Coastguard was quick to
kind of jump into action to save people. So I
feel like the response times are just for every time
we have a disaster of some sort, they dramatically improve.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
I will absolutely agree with that, But I'll say this, Daniel,
It's kind of like I said that Katrina was a
once in a lifetime storm, So that means in my
lifetime I should not have had any other storms. Twenty
sixteen was a once in a lifetime storm. Okay, well,
let's two right there. So we keep hearing, hey, once
(48:24):
in a thousand year flood, once in a one hundred
year flood, once in a lifetime. But are these happening
more often now?
Speaker 4 (48:32):
It feels like they are.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
And you have a lot of scientists and this this
come brings up the debate about, you know, climate change
and the impact that's having on our weather. You know,
you don't have to buy into the politics of global
warming or climate change to see that there is climate
change happening. You can disagree about the reasonings, you can
(48:55):
disagree about the politics of it, but it's hard to
disagree with climate changes happening. We're seeing these events happen
more and more often. You know, the climents that we're
used to are different. They're changing, so you are hearing
about these more often. And look, I'm a believer in science.
I just am, and I go back to people that
(49:17):
I trust, Jay Grimes being one of them, and it's.
Speaker 4 (49:22):
You hear him talk about it, and it just makes sense. Right.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
It's the argument about it doesn't make sense, but the
fact that it's happening does. And it's hard to kind
of ignore everything happened around you to kind of see that.
Speaker 3 (49:37):
Yep. And Jay Grimes, Janiel, I'm just gonna for a
quick second plug him. He's a name in South Louisiana
that when Jay Grime speaks up, when his sleeves are
rolled up, Louisiana listens. So the fact that he says
that it carries a lot of weight, and just like
you said, the way he explains it does. It makes
(49:57):
a lot of sense. And times are changing, the climates
are changing. But yes, not to get into the political
side of it, but it does. It gets you questioning.
There are hurricanes that are sometimes coming in stronger than
we've ever even seen before, and these torrential rains that
(50:17):
bring these massive floods that we have never seen before.
But I'll say this. At the end of the day.
My prayer is that I hope we all, as a country,
as a world, even are watching this and take away
some lessons that how to prevent this forever happening again
in our communities, not just in Texas. But I don't
(50:40):
care if it's a Rhode Island, I don't care if
it's in Europe, wherever it might be. But something is
learned from this to prevent it from happening in your
communities because Mother Nature is going to do what Mother
Nature wants to do, and Mother Nature does not care
where or when that happens. And then I guess the
(51:02):
last thing that I'll even add on this is my
prayers continue for all those people. You saw the raw
emotion that it brings out in me. Nine years later,
I didn't watch my best friend die in front of
my own eyes. You may not. As a human being,
we can't remember what we did yesterday. Let's be honest.
(51:25):
The truth is, and we're living in such a fast
paced world that you can't remember what you did yesterday,
But we all remember where we were September eleventh. You
remember exactly where you were. Katrina twenty sixteen. I remember
it like it was yesterday, every second that happened. These
people who lived this flood will never ever forget it,
(51:45):
and you will never get that image out of your
mind of watching your sister, your best friend, you're whomever
die in front of your own eyes. And I pray
that there's some healing those parents who have lost their kids.
My prayers will continue for those families.
Speaker 4 (52:04):
And just.
Speaker 3 (52:06):
Closures not the right word, Daniel. I always say that
that you can't ever close that book. You have to
live with that forever now. But I pray that they
are able to even just begin the process to move on.
And I'll even go further. Floods they don't just take homes.
They take peace of mind, they take normalcy. And for
(52:28):
families in Texas right now, just like so many in
Louisiana in twenty sixteen, every single thing changed in an instant.
The water it moved too fast, the warnings came too late,
and now they're left with the same questions we once asked,
(52:50):
where do we go now? Who's going to help us?
So if you're looking for a way to help, we're
encouraging you to support verified organizations doing real on the
groundwork in Texas. There are groups that get resources to
the right places quickly and with integrity, and you can
(53:12):
find a list of vetted relief efforts in the show
notes and on our website. Be extremely careful of fake
organizations and where you donate your money. We ask you
to share this episode, leave a review, subscribe so these
conversations continue to reach the people who need them. It
(53:33):
costs nothing, but it keeps these stories alive. Daniel, thank
you for joining us. To our listeners, thank you for
joining us. Thank you for listening to Louisiana Unfiltered. I'm
Karen Challa. We'll see you next week.
This episode is sponsored by Deli de Boja, injury lawyers
fighting for those who've been hurt and deserved to be heard,
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Our team is here to protect your rights and get results.
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Speaker 2 (00:13):
Called four four four four four four to four, or.
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Visit delidboja dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Responsible attorney James Pelcha Betrouge. In the early morning hours
of July fourth, the Guadalupe River in Texas rose twenty
(00:40):
six feet in just forty five minutes. Families were asleep,
Some had no cell phones, either by choice enjoying time unplugged,
or because there was no service in the remote hill country.
When the water came, it came fast, too fast, And
(01:03):
for those of us in Louisiana, the heartbreak hits hard
because we have lived it. In twenty sixteen, a slow
moving storm dumped trillions of gallons of rain over South Louisiana.
It was not a hurricane, it had no name, and
still it swallowed neighborhood's whole, wiped out entire communities. Thirteen
(01:31):
people died, tens of thousands of people lost everything, and
many of them never got a warning either. The parallels
are eerie flash flooding in places that are considered safe,
families caught off guard, rescue boats where school buses should be,
(01:55):
and now another southern state is asking this the same
questions we asked nearly a decade ago. Why did we
not see this coming? Why were people not warned? And
how do you rebuild when no one was prepared? I'm
(02:16):
Kieran Charla, and this is Louisiana unfiltered. Today. We are
diving into the rising waters in Texas and back home.
What connects these tragedies, what has or has not changed,
and what happens when nature outpaces every system built to
(02:39):
stop it. Welcome back everyone. This week we are joined
by our executive producer, Daniel Brown. Daniel, thank you for
(02:59):
joining us. This one's a tough one.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
It's a very tragic story that kind of brought it
back a lot of memories from nearly a decade ago
for a lot of people here in Louisiana. Very different
circumstances but very similar at the same time.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Yes, I guess, Daniel, let's kind of start with setting
the scene and to me, two of the worst things
in this specific case are that it's a holiday weekend,
so lots and lots of tourists and even the camp
that was going on for the holiday. But number two,
it was in the very early morning hours when a
(03:35):
lot of people were still asleep.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
They were And you know, I spent a lot of
time in Texas for part of my career, and this
is a area, the hill country of Texas.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
It literally is the heart of Texas.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
A lot of people traveled to this area, like you said,
for holidays.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
The Guadalupe River.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Is very popular for not only our vs, but tents
and hiking and all these things. And you know, one
of the things that's been getting a lot of attention
or a lot of the summer camps in the area.
There are a ton of summer camps that are all
right here. And this was all kind of like a
recipe for disaster in a lot of ways. It was
(04:17):
this perfect storm, the timing everything just to kind of
create this tragic incident with you know, more than one
hundred people losing our lives because of a flood.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
And it's like you said, Daniel, that for me, it's
so much of the PTSD And I say me, I
speak for a lot of people in South Louisiana, that
we understand it a little bit maybe better than the
rest of the country. Can I know that everybody's hearts
are pouring out, especially for those little girls, but everybody
(04:51):
right now this is the big story nationally that is unfolding.
But for Louisiana, especially South Louisiana, the bat Ridge metro area,
should I say we understand it a tad bit better
because I remember a councilwoman told me this years ago, Daniel,
that when your own feet burn, you actually understand the
pain of how much it hurts to suffer from a burn,
(05:15):
rather than just hearing it from someone that they're struggling
from the pain of a burn. And those words hold
so true that once you've lived through something, you've been there,
you get it. And in this case, a lot of
people here have been there. I know I was there,
how for the longest time. If it rained real heavy
(05:36):
still in my head, we're flooding, so and I know
we're going to dive into the comparisons, but I guess
first we want to kind of set the scene and
talk about the exact details of what all happened in
this specific flood.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
It was one hundred billion gallons of water.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
That's more than what the Niagara Falls produces in a day.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
That kind of fell in this area, and it's one
of those numbers.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
When I read it, I had to reread it a
few times because it's like one hundred billion gallons, like,
how do you kind of equate that? And it's basically
the volume of water that poured down from the rain,
and that's kind of what it is estimating. It led
to ten to twelve inches of rainfalling in just a
few hours, which is an awful lot of water. The
(06:22):
Guadalupe River rose twenty six feet in forty five minutes.
And you mentioned it happened overnight.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
This was at four in the morning, so this was
something that.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
No one really saw coming. It was literally a wall
of water that hit this specific area of Texas, and
it happened the middle of the night. It happened in
an area that doesn't have great cell phone towers, so
there's not a lot of cell phone signals and all
that kind of impacted gating warnings out it. Also, we
(06:57):
mentioned all the summer camps and stuff in the area.
A lot of these summer camps. What I've been reading
is the kids actually surrender their cell phones at the
beginning of the camp. It's an unplugged A lot of
these are like unplugged. It's meant to kind of have
kids connect and not be tied to the devices and
stuff like that. So a lot of the kids didn't
have their cell phones with them. So all of this
(07:21):
kind of combined. And this was one where you know,
there were warnings and this is you know, flash flood
Alley that's been kind of out there in the news,
and this is an.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Area that's prone to flooding. But Karen, what I.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Found interesting in I guess covering news for as long
as we have it is one of those things where
you don't think about until you think about it. But
I feel like flood watches, flood warnings, flash floods or
one of the most ignored weather alerts that we have.
I think people think that, oh, you'll have time to react,
you can kind of see it coming, you know, this
(07:58):
was one of those instances where.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
That wasn't the case.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
You know, you literally have a wall of water, one
hundred billion gallons of water coming at you in just
a few hours. You don't really see that coming. It's
one of those things where you can't really forecast, and
I know the forecasters have been getting a lot of
blame for not getting it right or missing it. And
this was forecast, but it's hard to forecast something that
(08:23):
you don't even think is fathomable at the same time,
you know in a lot of ways. So all these
things are kind of at play, and their rescuers are
still combing through the debris. This is, you know, an
area like the death toll is so massive that you
forget about all the homes and stuff that are also ravash.
(08:43):
But there are if you see any of the pictures
of the aftermath, I mean there are r vs and cars.
There's just mangled wreckage and debris kind of on the
river banks here. I was listening to an interview with
one of the rescuers who was combing through the river
looking for bodies, and they said that you could hear
(09:04):
cell phones kind of going off along the riverbeds, just
for people that just haven't been located yet. So it's
one of those things where it's hard to kind of
wrap your head around just how massive this tragedy actually is.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, and I'll even say this, it's July fourth weekend.
A lot of people do like to be on the
water near the waters in some way, shape or form,
especially in the South, we like to be on the water.
And that does if your kids aren't already at camps,
maybe you as your family have decided you're going on
the lake. You are taking your RV out. I know
(09:38):
we have a camper and we camp often, and I
prefer to be somewhere along the water. But Daniel, there
was a time lapse here, a video time lapse, of course,
and we kind of can't show it in an audio version,
but there is a video time lapse of people standing
on almost a little bridge area and with then just
(10:01):
like you said that forty five minutes, the first responders
go back a little, a little, a little, a little,
And I would love to talk to those first responders
that did they even know what was happening? Yes, they
probably saw their phones, but did it register for them
that wait, this is the river that's rising. And in
(10:21):
that time lapse, Daniel, you see that water come up
so fast. But then there was a really good visual
that's one of the outlets did to show that after
it stayed about this high, it was the river itself
that even though it wasn't coming up higher here. It
kept rising up to twenty six feet and like you said,
forty five minutes. And I know we're going to get
(10:44):
into the warnings and the breakdown of all of that,
but let's be honest, Daniel, the U and I, all
of our staff, all of our area. ALEXA speaks he
warning for your area, the cell phone ding's emergency warning.
And how often do we look at and say, oh cool,
and you go right back to cooking dinner or whatever
you're doing. But in this case, it's four o'clock in
(11:06):
the morning and you're asleep. What do you do?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
And this is an area too, that is prone to
flash flood so they're used to flooding. They're not used
to this, but they're used to flooding. So when they
get the warnings, it's not that they weren't alert or
aware or just purely ignoring it. But you know, it's
hard to fathom this happening when you're kind of used
to the worst case scenario before. You have that in
(11:34):
your head, so you feel like you and your family
are safe because this area hasn't flooded. But then something
like this happens and you're not and That's what really
reminds me of twenty sixteen. It's all the people are like, oh,
I didn't flood in eighty nine or I didn't flood
during whatever year it was, and you have this like
notion that you're safe and you're not and mother nature
(11:57):
always prevails, and you know, whether things spending time too
in Texas, hearing that I didn't appreciate until I lived there,
to be quite honest, But summer camps are literally a
way of life there.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
It's so different than Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Like these are generations of families, like their moms and
dads went to summer camps, they became camp counselors, and
now their kids are going to the same camps. And
it's a really big deal in Texas, and these are
We're talking about hundreds of campers at these camps. It's
almost kind of like what you see in the movies
(12:33):
when they have summer camp, kind of going back to
some of like the Parent Trap or you know some
of the Mary Kate, Nashley, Oldsten kind of movies where
they're at summer camp.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
That's what it is.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And I always thought that was like, oh, just for movies,
but that literally is what they have in Texas, and
it's it's such a rite of passage for so many
kids and families in this area that it truly is
part of the culture there.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
In fact, Daniel, you say that and Camp Miss mist
there were seven hundred and fifty girls at this camp.
Now you got to remember there are still some missing.
There are some who did not survive. But I saw,
speaking of what you just said as far as generational,
that former first Lady uh Bush, she went to this camp.
(13:18):
And then to add to that, uh the last time
the Guadalupe River kind of rose was nineteen eighty seven,
and I know one of the major networks, I can't
remember which one, but they actually they shared their original
story they did from then, and then they interviewed some
of the girls who were rescued from Camp Mystique. Mind you,
(13:40):
those girls by now have to be around fifty years old,
talk about PTSD. But they survived. A lot of those girls, thankfully,
were rescued. And in this case, what from what I
understand is that the one of the area where like
the eight to nine year old girls were housed was
maybe a football fields distance from the river itself. And again,
(14:04):
if you look at that time lapse, that water dent
slowly rise. It was just the wall came at you
and yeah, it's immediately going to wash away that spot first.
The girls a little bit higher may have had a
quick chance. But we're hearing the horror stories come out
that the counselors did their best to kind of get
everybody out. But how does even a counselor in that
(14:27):
quick in the seconds it took for that water to rise,
get those girls to safety.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Yeah, that's one of the things you trained for.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
It's kind of like teachers training for active shooter drills and.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Stuff like that. But when it actually happens. One of
the interesting things I saw.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
They think that a lot of the kids were saved
because a lot of the counselors, since there's so many kids,
not everyone works every single day.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
You have like days off. Some of the counselors that
have days off.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Their curfews, like one am I think is why I
heard in one of the interviews, so some of them
were just coming back to the camp as the rivers
were starting to rise. The river was starting to rise,
so they were able to kind of alert and start
moving some of these kids and getting some some waking
some of the other counselors up and getting them the action,
moving into action to kind of start moving some of
(15:15):
the kids.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
And it's it's it's it's.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Interesting that that could have been what saved even more
lies because we because there's a lot of these little
bitty cabins and stuff that were close to the river,
and a lot of them were evacuated. Obviously there was,
you know, several kids that weren't so fortunate and lucky.
But you just kind of think like, right place, right
(15:40):
time for somebody's counselors to kind of jump into action
and start.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Evacuating and moving.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
And then the camp the owner of the camp, you know,
I mean.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
He lost his life trying to save the kids.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
And I was listening to a lot of interviews with
kids that have gone to this camp, and Jenna bush
Hager was talking about she didn't go to camp, and
you mentioned her mom did, and she's but she grew
up going to summer camp and she just dropped her
kids out to a different summer camp. And she was
talking about, you know, this camp director, he's like a
second dad to a lot of these girls, and he
(16:13):
taught a lot of these girls how to fish and
how to do all these things.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
So he lost his life trying to save so many
of these these young girls. It hurts.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
It reminds me of twenty sixteen here, and I remember
Daniel that I was a reporter back then and so
many of us. As a reporter, you don't just live
in these communities. I know, I don't often. Yeah, you
do move around. You work in a city, and then
you move on. This boun Rouge is my home and
(16:51):
I've lived it, and in that moment, you're not just
a reporter. You're a resident of the community, and you're
watching your loved ones suffer. And in this case, I
guess it's like you said that you're similarity and you
have it in your head.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
And this goes back to twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I remember my family flooded in twenty sixteen, and it
was one of those things we've never flooded before. And
it's something you'll you'll be hearing a lot about the news,
But like the ones in a generation storm or the
once in every one hundred year storm kind of thing,
or one thousand year storm, that always goes back to
(17:29):
you know, I could still hear my dad, you know, Oh,
the water is going to stop. Is it's never flooded
our house, you know it's never gonna get there, and
they just you keep watching the water get closer and
closer and closer, but you have this like preconceived notion
of safety in your head, like it's never gotten that
high before, so you kind of let your guard down
a little bit until it's almost too late. And Texas
(17:50):
was so different because twenty sixteen the water rose fast,
but it didn't rise anywhere near as fast as like
this didn't Texas like it's it's it's one of those
things that's hard to wrap your head around just how
fast that water rose and how high it got.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
You mentioned it didn't just overflow the banks.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
It went up you know, of roofs like houses and
all that, so you put that into some perspective. It's
interesting because I was in Texas in twenty nineteen when
we flooded there, and it was one of those things where, again,
we've never flooded where I was located. I was working
at a TV station there and that station never flood.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
It before, so we thought we were safe.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
We had plans and motion and all that, but then
you're watching the water rise and rise and rise, and
we barely were able to evacuate because we waited so long.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Because it was one of those things where you're listening
to people.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
That have lived through other flood events in the town
and it's never gotten that high, so you're kind of
listening to them, but then you're watching the water and
then it's almost too.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Late, and then you know.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
And that's a lot of what happened here in more
significant magnitude, And I apologize.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
I guess for me, it brings back living in that
very moment of are you staying or are you going?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
The river?
Speaker 3 (19:14):
I mean, I say river, Well, yeah it was the river.
It was the a meet for us, but that it
was coming up so fast. And I still remember it
was ten thirty at night for a majority of Livingstone Parish.
That it was nighttime for people, and yeah, there are
people who go to bed by ten thirty you're in bed.
A lot of people are are sleep because the next
day for us in Louisiana, we thought we had work.
(19:36):
It was a week night, And I guess I go
back to that and I remember just having to evacuate
in the quick minute that we had. The few minutes
we had to hurry up. Do you save your life
or do you save the materialistic things? No, you just
get yourselves out and go. That's how fast it came.
(19:58):
But Daniel, that quick five minutes. I had that four
or five minutes of Okay, let me hurry up and
throw a few things in a bag because I don't
know what we're coming home to, how long we're going
to be gone. I had those four or five minutes.
These people maybe had seconds for this wall to just
come at them. And I guess that's what hurts. But
(20:20):
you got to remember, it's Louisiana. We've also been through Katrina.
I've lived that too. People say Katrina was a once
in a life time storm, lived it, worked it. Twenty
sixteen was a once in a lifetime storm, lived it
and worked it as well. And I pray there's nothing
else that happens. But I guess that's why I can
say that here in Louisiana, we understand what our Texas
(20:44):
neighbors are going through, probably better than anyone. But Daniel.
I'll also add this the stories of Louisianians jumping up
and hooking that boat to a trailer and going They
don't care they're going the rescues that come out of this,
and now what we're seeing is the donations, the drives
(21:05):
that come through. This isn't something that's going to be
done in another day or two. Louisiana is going to
be right there helping our Texan neighbors for the months
that are ahead. You're going to see the Habitat for
Humanities coming in to help aid and rebuild homes because
that's what we received in twenty and sixteen, That's what
we received in two thousand and five, and Louisianans we
(21:28):
give back.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
And you know, in twenty sixteen, there was thirteen people
who died in the flood here in Louisiana. So you know,
we're not comparing to and I think it's important that
we say that because you have more than one hundred
people dead in Texas twenty seven just at that one
camp that we talked about, Campnistic, So thirteen lives here,
(21:51):
you know that was more than you know, the camp
had more than that. So these events are not the same,
but it does bring up those like you keep saying
that the same memories and you know this is a
story too that was you know, you covered this I know,
and I felt it like Louisiana was really forgotten in
twenty sixteen because it was not a name storm. The
(22:15):
national media took them a really long time to even
kind of cover it. And then even then it was
just kind of like a blip. It wasn't like you're
seeing in Texas. But in Texas in a lot of ways,
it was kind of overlooked for a while too. Because
it happened over a holiday weekend, not a lot of
people were paying attention. The Magnitude is obviously putting the
spotlight on it this week, and rightfully so. But this,
(22:39):
this tragedy in Texas brought back some of that that
feeling of being overlooked and kind of forgotten. And you know,
it's kind of like the wildfires in California earlier this year,
like how many we've moved on two lifetimes since then.
It feels like in our own personal lives, you know,
and these people are still rebuilding and it's gonna be
the same thing in Texas.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
It was this thing here in Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
You know, it took years for families to rebuild and
stuff like that, so it's important to talk about it
from that point of view.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Too, to your point, Karen.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Because these are lives that are impacted, and while the
death tolls aren't the same and the exact storm's not
the same, there's a lot of those parallels there.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
And by no doubt, let me second what you were saying.
Am I sitting here trying to compare the two? I
guess what I'm saying is that we can understand it.
I get teary eyed because I go back to not
knowing where I'm going, what am I doing? But I'm alive.
I walked out alive. But I remember getting those calls
(23:41):
as one of our loved ones. We didn't know where
they were, We couldn't get in touch with them. That
there's no cell phone coverage. That alone is just that
emotional stress and toll of not knowing if your loved
one is alive. And in this case, you've got little girls.
I pray for those parents every night because they're What
(24:01):
do you do, Daniel, What do you even say? There's
nothing to say. There are no words that can bring
back a child, or any loved one for that matter.
But we've all heard it. Parents aren't meant to outlive
their kids.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Yeah, and you brought up of such a valid point,
and you know, this one camp is getting a lot
of attention because of the specific death toll. There were
other camps nearby that were also impacted, you know, like
I mentioned, like there are so many camps in this area,
summer camps in this area. They had some that was
kind of a boys and girls kind of camp, and
(24:37):
they had two brothers who.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
One was younger than the other by like two years
or something, so they were in different parts of the camp,
but they were both at the camp together and the
older brother was just trying to figure out how to
get to his younger brother because he didn't want to
be alone. And then you had the sisters who were
at one camp and they were found several miles down river,
like still holding hands, and they had died together holding hands, and.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
So many of these stories, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
And this other mom was recounting her daughter at the
camp and her best friend got swept away, like right
in front of her by the floodwaters, you know, and
there's nothing you can do, and it's fight or flight
kind of mentality here, and you're just trying to get
to safety, but all this has happened around you, like it's.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Hard to kind of picture.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
It literally is like a Hollywood horror movie of what
was going on with this water and the chaos and
that kind of involved these kids.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
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three eight one zero zero seven seven. I guess, Daniel,
let's talk about those warnings. And I remember watching some
(27:06):
of these press conferences. I guess, being a reporter, you
watch it in two ways. I think, you know what
I'm saying. You watch it from the aspect of the professional,
but then you're still taking in the how big this
tragedy is. And I remember one of those press conferences
kind of like you said that the national media took
them a minute. It took them a minute to get there.
(27:28):
And then when the press conferences started happening, and this
may have been the very first one with the governor
involved and the Defense secretary was present there, but they
caught a lot of heat about the warnings and were
they actually issued. But now in the last or in
this week, should I say we have seen that they started.
(27:49):
They started earlier, but it was around one o'clock in
the morning, kind of like you said that some of
those counselors were coming in at that time. That the
first of the really serious mornings kind of kicked off. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Look, it's easy to Monday Morning quarterback this, and it's
easy to kind of go back now and look at
it and the finger pointing and the political blame game,
like you know, I, we're putting me and you were
putting that out aside. We went and found just the
pure facts about when the weather warnings kind of started,
and they started on July first. The National Weather Service
(28:25):
in San Antonio and Austin, they began highlighting the potential
for flooding as early as that Tuesday. Okay, so that
was July first. On July third, there was a floodwatch
was issued by the National Weather Service included Kerr County.
That was also where the bulk of the flooding happened.
That's where at least eighty plus the of the hundred
(28:49):
deaths happened, so the majority of them were in Kerr County,
and they highlighted the potential for up to seven inches
of rain. So that was the day before, on July third,
at six. Later that day, on July third, there was
a rare special weather discussion that emphasized wor seeing trends.
So these forecast models are constantly updating the computer models
(29:09):
are coming together. They used words in this discussion concerning
trends flash flooding likely in rainfall rates succeeding three inches
per hour, and those words are interesting because again, this
is flash flood alley. This is an area that used
to five flooding. So they were really specific on the
(29:29):
words they use, which I think is important to point out.
That was at six ten pm, at one fourteen in
the morning on July fourth, this was Friday, the flood
warning was issued for Kirk County. It was the first
official warning. It had what's considered in the National Weather Service.
It's called a considerable tag and that's used for significant
(29:51):
and potentially life threatening flash floods. And that word is
what triggers the wireless emergency alerts on mobile phone and
stuff like that. So when I say words matter, that's
why I'm pointing some of these out. That's a work
that matters. What's interesting. And we talked a little bit
about this Kieran, but it's unclear about sell coverage in
(30:13):
the area and how is impacted.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
This is a rural area.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
You have a lot of people camping, and that's another
reason why they don't know how high the death toll
is going to because they don't know exactly how many
people are in the area because it was a lot
of TICH camping and RV camping and all that.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
It wasn't just the summer camps.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
It was just recreational you know, in cabins that you
can rent and stuff like that, So they.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Don't even know how many people are in the area.
But cell phone service was impacted.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
But at one fourteen in the morning, that's when a
lot of these alerts were starting to trigger. So your
cell phones are going off in the middle of the
night and stuff like that. And we mentioned that summer
camp all the kids surrender their cell phones, so none
of the kids had cell phones, so it was only
probably the counselors and stuff like that. And even then
there's questions about how many of the counselors had cell
phones and whatnot.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
And Daniel let me even add this that I know
this from variance as well. When we're camping. You know this,
there are a lot of times a lot of these
campgrounds have zero service. I have to let you know, hey,
I'm headed back to the campground. I will not have service.
This is right along the river, and like I said,
that's where you want to be camping. And I've seen
these pictures of the camper literally swept away, but then
(31:19):
a tree finally stops them. That camper is wrapped around
that tree. If you're in your bed asleep, even if
somehow you ended up staying in that camper, that flood
water came that river water came up so fast it
was flooding, or you're dying just from the impact, and
that just adds too. We don't know what the count's
(31:40):
going to be just yet because there's no check in
required at some of these primitive campgrounds. You just go
set up your camper or your tent and you're good.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
And that's and that's that's what happened here, you know.
And you mentioned the.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
RVs that the mangled nettle. I mean, the river banks
of the Guadalupe are just lit.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
With these and it's.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Not only like littering debris, it's RVs and tents and
all these other things that are kind of there. So
that's what the rescue team are having to kind of
dig through to find the bodies, which is even more sad.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
An hour later that the National Weather Service reported that
to five inches of rain had already fallen. So this
is at about two thirty in the morning. Conditions of
Kirk County suggested that flash flooding already begun, So at
this time the area was beginning to flood. Five inches
of rain had already fallen in that area, which is
(32:37):
a lot of water. It was thirty minutes later, at
three h two in the morning a subsequent communication but
the National Weather Service was issued that a dangerous flash
flood event was unfolding in south central Kirk County.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
So this was when all hell was breaking loose.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
To be quite honest, and Daniel, going back to what
you said that words matter from everything, I understand that
warning at three o'clock that came out is a very
very very rare warning from the National Weather Service.
Speaker 4 (33:08):
Yeah, and a lot of these were rare. They're not
issued very often.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
The flash flood emergency was declared, like you said, rarely issued.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
It's the most serious alert level that the.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
National Weather Service has, So it's not like you know,
just like you mentioned, it's not one that's used a
lot in the flash flood warning system. It's reserved for
and I looked it up on the National Weather Services website.
It's reserved only for the most life threatening and catastrophic
flooding events, only a small percentage of warning recist level.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
And they were.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Even having some National Weather Service scientists neurologists go in
and find out how often it was used, and they
were having trouble because it's not.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Used very often.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Speaks volumes, that speaks volumes. The Guadaloupe this is at
So that was at four three am, at four to
twenty in the morning. This was near Hunt, Texas. The
Guadalupe River surge past this major flood stage. Major flood
stage is twenty two feet. The river crested at twenty
(34:14):
nine point four five feet at four thirty five in
the morning, so it was well above considered major flood stage.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
And the speed of magnitude.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Of the rising water is what you saw in like
the in the timeline studio and something you kind of
mentioned again, the Guadalupe River rose twenty six feet and
forty five minutes. What that's sink in that's a lot
like twenty six feet. Because you know, the Houston Chronicle
has done a great job of investigating this and they've
(34:46):
done some really great work in the camps in the
area have river gauges, and the river was not considered
any remotely high. It wasn't even at an alarming level.
It wasn't even at a level that would draw kind
of look, so that's how fast this water rose and
(35:07):
how much water kind of fell in this area.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
And Daniel, we both work in media. We've got meteorologists
who are friends and having these conversations with them. The
truth is, no human being. I don't care how great
of a meteorologist you are, there is no human being
out there who could have predicted what was coming. This
is mother Nature. And a lot of our local people
(35:31):
have compared it to twenty sixteen that they had a feeling,
they knew that twenty sixteen was going to be problematic.
They had no idea what would come because you cannot
predict ahead of time. Hey, seven inches of rain are
going to fall in two hours. It's a matter of
just it literally forms over us. And prime example, Walker
(35:53):
Walker may get ten inches of rain. Well, in fact,
let's go to Texas Kerk County or Service Severe something
along those lines. I think got twenty six inches or
twenty plus inches. And then there were other parts of
town that got the seven to eight inches. But you
got to remember the river is going through multiple counties,
(36:14):
and in fact you said it Kirk County was one
of the most impacted, the most significant. But there are
death tolls coming in from six areas, six Main County.
Should I say in that specific area, but that Guadalupe River,
it's not just staying in Kirk County. It's going through
all these areas, kind of like the a Meet River
(36:35):
and going back. I guess you can compare it because
personal experience. I remember Daniel in twenty sixteen, we went
and interviewed Congressman Graves back then right along the banks
of the a Meet River, and I remember both of
us looking at it before we went live, saying, wow,
that's actually pretty high. But I'm standing in somebody's backyard.
The river was fine at that very moment. It was
(36:58):
that night that we call it a night for the day.
We had been reporting all day. We went back, we
thought we were about to go to bed, and that's
when everything happened. That the river rose from where we
were standing to well over the height of that house
in the backyard that I did that interview at.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, meteorologists gets such a bad rep I mean, they
are forecasting the future, and you know, in my opinion,
only God can kind of do that, right, It's hard.
They knew it was going to be a flooding event.
They warned a flooding event several days in advance. They
did not warn to this magnitude. But again, you have
(37:38):
moisture from the Pacific, moisture from the Gulf, and then
you had remnants of a hurricane that hit our tropical
storm that hit Mexico days before that just kind of
all you know, assembled over this one area. It's kind
of hard to kind of forecast that happening. It just
it really is. And you know, hearing we spent a
(37:59):
lot of talking about the cell phone warnings. What's so interesting,
and this is where change is going to happen, and
we saw a lot of change after twenty sixteen in
this area.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
There are parts.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Of the of the Guadalupe that flooded that where some
of the RVs and intents are that have these warning
system It's basically like sirens or horns that kind of
sound to kind of alert people. And they had them
in different parts of the Guadalupe River. They did not
have them in Kerr County. Where the bulk of the
(38:33):
tragedy happened. And I mentioned the Houston Chronicle doing a
lot of investigating. This was one of the investigations they did.
And this is one where they've been fighting for eight
years for a flood warning system in this specific area
and it comes down to basically dollars and they didn't
(38:53):
have the funding for it. They didn't have the million
dollars that it was going to cost for this warning system.
Warning system ever became a reality, and you know, now
the Texas session is about to start later this month,
and that's obviously going to be something that wallmakers are
gonna have to to decide and find the funding for.
(39:16):
But that's one of the system failures.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Here, and it's a major system failure.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
And the other thing in you're a camper and and
I don't know if you have one of these, but
you know one of the National Weather Service radios or
that's why those are so important because even if you
don't have cell phone service, these radios will kind of
go off with warnings. You know, I can still hear
Ja Crimes preaching about these weather radios and having them
(39:43):
and why they're so important because they're battery operate it.
They're not reliable, reliant to on cell phone signal and
stuff like that, and they will alert you.
Speaker 4 (39:52):
So if you're in a remote area or camping, or even.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
If you're in your house and you lose power or
your cell phone dies, you'll still get weather alerts, you know.
And we talk about hurricanes. Hurricanes you see coming days
ahead of time. Even tornadoes. Now you have a little
bit of warning. I mean, you know, maybe not exactly
where the tornado is going to be, but you know
the atmosphere is ripe for a tornado. This flooding, you
(40:16):
knew about it. Again, you didn't know how bad it
was going to be. And that's why those weather radios
are just so important to have, you know, and it
could have saved so many lives just having the warning
system where or having those radios come to nearby.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Well, and Daniel kind I want to add two points
to what all you just said. It kind of goes
back a little bit just to ted that the I know,
there's in the day and age we live in, rumors
get started really really really quickly that the National Weather
Service wasn't prepared. They actually had brought in extra staff
(40:53):
to work this because that's how worried they were about this. Again,
it happened overnight though, and that's the part that's going
to be really difficult. The other thing, Daniel is we
semi discussed it already, but there is there's a certain
amount of fatigue when it comes to these warnings and
watches that, like we already said, we look at it, Oh,
(41:17):
that's not us. But I wonder how many people at
that three four o'clock alert that did go out that
requires the cell phone alert for people who had a
phone number one and number two actually had service to
receive it. How many of those people probably looked at
it and said, oh, okay, I'm going back to sleep. Yeah,
And that's if you had the phone and had service.
(41:38):
There were so many others. You're in a remote location,
you didn't get service. I mean, you didn't get the alert.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Talking about you've never flood it before.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
You get these, but you still don't think it's going
to happen to you kind of thing. And that's an
important point, you know, And it's also whether warnings are
so hard And here we've talked about this for other
kind of things about disaster prep. You know, we we
live in an area that has like a lot of plants,
so if there's a plant explosion or emission of something dangerous.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
You know, the time it takes to trigger these alerts sometimes.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Is not a lot of time, and it takes time
to get these out, and it goes back to these
weather alerts, and there was some I was reading some
discussions online between some meteorologists that we're just talking about it,
and to trigger these alerts is a process. It's it's
not just someone typing it in and clicking a button.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
It's it's a discussion.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
It's a process because we talked about the language that
was used is so specific and what it triggered and
all that.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
So you want to be careful because.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
You don't want to cry wolf too many times and
not happen, because then people and we see this in
hurricanes all the time, that that don't heed the evacuation
warnings or don't heed how bad the storm is.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
All of the other storm was worse.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Than this one, so we'll be fine kind of thing.
It's kind of like the flood things. You know, we've
had bad foot before, Slash Finaley.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
We're used to that.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
There's a way of life here and then something like
this happens and you're you're kind of caught off guard,
and and these alerts are kind of part of that.
It's it's not just you know, hitting enter on a keyboard.
It's it's it's a lot that goes into it. And
I think every time these happened, I wish more cities
(43:21):
and officials would kind of take a look at their
emergency preparations and and what does work and what does
not work, you know. And Kirk County did have an
alert that you could sign up for Coreage what was called,
but you had to go in and actually sign up
for it. In a lot of areas in Louisiana had
(43:41):
similar kind of things that cities can afford them.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
There's smaller communities that can't.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Afford that though, you know that they can't afford the
technology and the upkeep and and all the subscription that
comes to kind of do this. But but there's so
many of these things that could save lives, you know,
And I think about that, you know, I think about
when something does happen on a plant, or if there
is a flood or a tornado or hurricane, and these
(44:08):
things happen, like, how are you going to get information,
Who's going to tell me and who's responsible for that?
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Well? And I go back and compare it. I remember
when I was working in Marksville drawing a blank which
parish that is oiled, Yes, in a Oil's parish, and
we were doing live shots right at noon, and the
very first time it kicked off, it scared me and
I didn't know what to do. But they test their sirens,
(44:37):
their emergency sirens at noon every Friday. And in my head,
I'm thinking, why does Oils Parish need sirens? I still
don't know that answer, but maybe if Klerk County had
something similar, I would have woke up to that. And
again I put myself in these people's shoes that if
I was camping along the river that at four o'clock
(44:58):
in the morning, if I'm hearing a siren go going off,
I'm waking up to that sock.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
River did sound and did alert people? So they do work,
you know.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Yes, yeah, yeah, so to me, And this is Kieran
Challoe talking. This is not the reporter in me saying this.
I personally just feel something along those lines. I get it.
A lot of cities don't have the money, the jurisdictions
don't have the money, but maybe it's time for our federal, local,
state officials to sit down and how much what value
(45:31):
do you put on one human life? And maybe that
could have saved something. And like you said, Daniel, we're
all sitting here Monday morning quarterbacking and I don't know
things do need to change? And I guess that leads
us into the next thing. What has changed, what hasn't changed,
and maybe what changes do need to come.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
The female response has gotten much better and we've seen
that dramatically since Katrino, and you know, so many people
were desperate for federal assistance and help and it took
days and weeks to come. You know, disaster sins have
learned a lot from Katrina. We learned something from every disaster.
You know, Texas learned a lot from Harvey. This disaster
(46:18):
will now be worse than what Harvey calls as far
as destruction and death toll, So you learn a lot
from that. The federal response was really quick to get
aid in. The state response was really quick. I think
the state of Texas learned a lot from Harvey as well,
just like Louisian learned a lot from Katrina. So I
feel like the response to get boots on the ground
(46:40):
and get resources into areas has improved tenfold dramatically since Katrina.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
I'll agree with that, and I'll even say that technology
has improved a lot since these floods, since Katrina, since
the twenty sixteen flood or even Harvey.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
We didn't have social media then, you know, social media
really puts the pressure on getting some of these responses
into cities and talents quicker. It also allows stories to
come out, so you can kind of tug on the
heartstrings of how you're impacted, and that's how dollars kind
of get flowing in to kind of help and nonprofits
(47:22):
and charities and all that kind of stuff. So that
part did, and you know, the governor and lieutenant government
Texas said that they're committed to finding the funding to
kind of get these warning systems up. So, you know,
I mentioned their sessions about to start, so it'll be
interesting to kind of.
Speaker 4 (47:38):
See how that was. But this was something that nobody's
saw coming, you know, so it.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Does take time to activate resources and get things moving.
But they did have helicopters and air really quick looking
for survivors, and you know, the Coastguard was quick to
kind of jump into action to save people. So I
feel like the response times are just for every time
we have a disaster of some sort, they dramatically improve.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
I will absolutely agree with that, But I'll say this, Daniel,
It's kind of like I said that Katrina was a
once in a lifetime storm, So that means in my
lifetime I should not have had any other storms. Twenty
sixteen was a once in a lifetime storm. Okay, well,
let's two right there. So we keep hearing, hey, once
(48:24):
in a thousand year flood, once in a one hundred
year flood, once in a lifetime. But are these happening
more often now?
Speaker 4 (48:32):
It feels like they are.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
And you have a lot of scientists and this this
come brings up the debate about, you know, climate change
and the impact that's having on our weather. You know,
you don't have to buy into the politics of global
warming or climate change to see that there is climate
change happening. You can disagree about the reasonings, you can
(48:55):
disagree about the politics of it, but it's hard to
disagree with climate changes happening. We're seeing these events happen
more and more often. You know, the climents that we're
used to are different. They're changing, so you are hearing
about these more often. And look, I'm a believer in science.
I just am, and I go back to people that
(49:17):
I trust, Jay Grimes being one of them, and it's.
Speaker 4 (49:22):
You hear him talk about it, and it just makes sense. Right.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
It's the argument about it doesn't make sense, but the
fact that it's happening does. And it's hard to kind
of ignore everything happened around you to kind of see that.
Speaker 3 (49:37):
Yep. And Jay Grimes, Janiel, I'm just gonna for a
quick second plug him. He's a name in South Louisiana
that when Jay Grime speaks up, when his sleeves are
rolled up, Louisiana listens. So the fact that he says
that it carries a lot of weight, and just like
you said, the way he explains it does. It makes
(49:57):
a lot of sense. And times are changing, the climates
are changing. But yes, not to get into the political
side of it, but it does. It gets you questioning.
There are hurricanes that are sometimes coming in stronger than
we've ever even seen before, and these torrential rains that
(50:17):
bring these massive floods that we have never seen before.
But I'll say this. At the end of the day.
My prayer is that I hope we all, as a country,
as a world, even are watching this and take away
some lessons that how to prevent this forever happening again
in our communities, not just in Texas. But I don't
(50:40):
care if it's a Rhode Island, I don't care if
it's in Europe, wherever it might be. But something is
learned from this to prevent it from happening in your
communities because Mother Nature is going to do what Mother
Nature wants to do, and Mother Nature does not care
where or when that happens. And then I guess the
(51:02):
last thing that I'll even add on this is my
prayers continue for all those people. You saw the raw
emotion that it brings out in me. Nine years later,
I didn't watch my best friend die in front of
my own eyes. You may not. As a human being,
we can't remember what we did yesterday. Let's be honest.
(51:25):
The truth is, and we're living in such a fast
paced world that you can't remember what you did yesterday,
But we all remember where we were September eleventh. You
remember exactly where you were. Katrina twenty sixteen. I remember
it like it was yesterday, every second that happened. These
people who lived this flood will never ever forget it,
(51:45):
and you will never get that image out of your
mind of watching your sister, your best friend, you're whomever
die in front of your own eyes. And I pray
that there's some healing those parents who have lost their kids.
My prayers will continue for those families.
Speaker 4 (52:04):
And just.
Speaker 3 (52:06):
Closures not the right word, Daniel. I always say that
that you can't ever close that book. You have to
live with that forever now. But I pray that they
are able to even just begin the process to move on.
And I'll even go further. Floods they don't just take homes.
They take peace of mind, they take normalcy. And for
(52:28):
families in Texas right now, just like so many in
Louisiana in twenty sixteen, every single thing changed in an instant.
The water it moved too fast, the warnings came too late,
and now they're left with the same questions we once asked,
(52:50):
where do we go now? Who's going to help us?
So if you're looking for a way to help, we're
encouraging you to support verified organizations doing real on the
groundwork in Texas. There are groups that get resources to
the right places quickly and with integrity, and you can
(53:12):
find a list of vetted relief efforts in the show
notes and on our website. Be extremely careful of fake
organizations and where you donate your money. We ask you
to share this episode, leave a review, subscribe so these
conversations continue to reach the people who need them. It
(53:33):
costs nothing, but it keeps these stories alive. Daniel, thank
you for joining us. To our listeners, thank you for
joining us. Thank you for listening to Louisiana Unfiltered. I'm
Karen Challa. We'll see you next week.
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