Did the NWS drop the ball?

Rory O'Neill has the latest on the flooding in Texas

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Over to the Legacy Retirement Group dot com phone line,

(00:02):
where we find NBC News Radio Rory O'Neill. Rory continuing
to update the Texas flooding story and the numbers going up, Rory,
one hundred and ten plus deaths, over one hundred seventy
still missing. What's the latest in central Texas well?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Right, And that was the big surprise yesterday when the
governor announced such a spike and the number of people
listed as missing. You know, yesterday morning, at the same time,
we were talking about twenty three people listed as missing,
and as you said, now across that sixth County area,
it's more like one hundred and seventy are missing, and
many suspect that number will even rise. Remember this was

(00:38):
happening on July fourth weekend. This part of the Guadalupe
River is obviously popular for campgrounds but also for vacationing,
so you have a lot of RVs that would be there.
You had a lot of people renting houses there for
the long weekend, So a lot of people were in
that area along that river just for the holiday and

(00:59):
because they may have come from San Antonio to spend
the weekend there. For instance, it's taken a while to
find out exactly who's reported as missing, so sadly that
may be one of the factors in increasing this number.
And of course a lot more people now as the
search and rescue or search and recovery operation grinds on,
there are just more people asking how did this happen?

(01:21):
Was there a ball that was dropped? And look, it's
a long summer ahead. How do we make sure this
doesn't happen again.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah, they call it flash flood alley. This is not
a new phenomenon. It just happens to have spiked up
a little bit this year and gotten this attention due
to the devastating loss of life there. But yeah, there
are folks that are questioning the National Weather Service and
whether they were able to get the warnings out. And
I'm looking at a timeline of what they were actually
able to issue, and it seems to me that they

(01:48):
did their job. I mean, what are people saying that
are being critical of the warning system here?

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Well? Right, And this is where the finger pointing begins,
because to your point, it looks like the National Weather
Service did what it needs to do and has historically done.
I know there are questions about staffing and who got
who took retirement, all that stuff. But it seems that
the National Weather Service alerts went out as normal. But
what happened with that information? How was that information used

(02:14):
by local emergency managers, by the state, by the county.
What did they do to make sure that people in
this area got that alert? You know, all these alerts
really are telling people if they're information for people to
take action, and if it's cloud in this whole, it's
a watch, it's a warning, it's an alert. What does
that mean? People want to know? What do I have

(02:34):
to do? And if it tells If I got a
message that said a thirty foot wall of water is coming,
get out, I get out. But when you just tell me, oh,
in these six counties there's a risk of a flash flood,
Like what am I supposed to do? And I think
that's where the disconnect is.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
I think that's a good point. You mentioned all the
different levels of warning, and people do develop warning fatigue,
assuming that the worst won't happen to them, or it
won't affect them, or won't hit here, and you kind
of blow off those warnings. The other problem, does this
happen in the middle of the night, the wee hours
of the morning, when awareness is going to be limited.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Well, right, and you know, and then does this affect me? Right?
I just said I'm on vacation along the river. I
don't know what the county is, where the which is
the line? How does this affect me where I am
right now? So that's again another disconnect that can happen
with people who may be unfamiliar with the area.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
My humble opinion is they need sort of tornado warning
style sirens installed in these flood prone areas that will
wake you up out of a dead sleep and say, hey,
something's bad happening, Get out of bed and go get
some shelter or some word safe. So just my humble pick,
go ahead.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, better monitoring of the water levels in the river.
I think there're only five water monitors. It's good. That's
a very expensive investment, but.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
It seems to be now it would be very much
worth it. Rory, great stuff this morning.