Texas Floods - The Latest

NBC News Radio National Correspondent Rory O'Neill joins us to discuss the latest as famiies are losing hope that they will find any more survivors of the Texas flooding. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
As we have been mentioning, they are still calling it
rescue efforts, although hope is fading back to the latest
following those floods in Texas. Rory O'Neil, NBC News Radio
National correspondent with us. Rory, thanks for doing this today.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Sure, good morning, Steve.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Talk to us about that word, that word hope.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yeah, that's a difficult conversation to have, honestly, to try
to explain to parents of these ten missing girls from
Camp Mystic that you're not hopeful anymore, that you're just
now looking forward to recover victims, not to find young
girls alive, and that transition is happening, just realistically speaking
at this point, considering it has been days since this flood,

(00:44):
we do know that the confirmed death count is over
one hundred now twenty four still missing, as I said,
including ten of the girls from Camp Mystic and one
of their counselors.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
There has been a lot said about some prevention, early warning,
and about how this things seem to overrun even those
in the weather business with predictions. Anything new about that.
Apparently it is a pretty deadly area to begin with.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Right It's known as a flash flood alley. Apparently and
let me just make clear these are good questions to ask.
What's wrong is when you jump to politics right after right.
So let's go ahead and look at the issue and
just address the problem. We don't need to go into
funding budget left right, la la la, Let's just try
to fix this right. And as you said, this is

(01:31):
known as flash flood Alley. We've seen deadly floods on
this Guadalupe River in the past, usually about one a decade,
nothing to this scale, however, that's what's different. But nineteen
eighty seven, July seventeenth, we saw one of these flash
floods killed ten campers, I mean. And we've seen floods
like this about once a decade, and actually we're probably

(01:52):
seen them a bit more frequently in the most recent years.
So we do have to look into should there be sirens,
should we beef up the staffing the computers, the satellites
for the National Weather Service? So what else can be
done to alert people, to get the messages out there
regardless of the time of day, And how do we
make those messages effective? So many of us just turn

(02:14):
off the phone, ignore the stuff, turn off the silence it,
you know, try to unsubscribe from whatever it is. But
how do we make that messaging impactful? Is the new question?

Speaker 3 (02:23):
And Roy, that's where I wanted to go because when
you watch like documentaries about tornado alley and different things,
people are so used to and we can't get our
head around this. Are so used to hearing tornado sirens
because there's so many of them, and the same for
what you're talking about. I'm sure in this area with
the flash floods, and so, how do you determine or
do a degree of level like we saw, because I

(02:46):
mean it literally raised what twenty feet in a matter
of hours the water. It was unthinkable.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, less than an hour, about forty minutes it's for
this twenty feet of water to suddenly show up in Curveville.
So yeah, it's funny. Live right by a high school
that has all the athletic fields. They have a lightning
siren that goes off. Well, it's Central Florida is the
lightning capital of North America. Right. If that siren doesn't
go off ten times a day, you know in the summertime,

(03:13):
it's just it's constant, so you sort of don't even
pay attention to it. It becomes background noise, and that's
what we're trying to figure out a way to alert
people and also to cover more specific areas. So sometimes
it's well it's in my county. Well my county is
the size of Connecticut. You know, like what good does
that do me? Because I want to know about what's
happening where I am. So does that mean we need

(03:34):
more investments in this stuff? You know? Do we need
to improve the communication? And you know, at what end
of the process is that the information at the beginning
or getting improvement

Speaker 1 (03:44):
That is Rory O'Neil, NBC News Radio National Correspondent, Thank you,
Thanks guys,