Author name: moderat ereport

by Jennifer Berry Hawes ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. Nine months ago, Hurricane Helene barreled up from the Gulf of Mexico and slammed into the rugged mountains of western North Carolina, dumping a foot of rain onto an already saturated landscape. More than 100 people died, most by drowning in floodwaters or being crushed by water-fueled landslides. “We had no idea it was going to do what it did,” said Jeff Howell, the now-retired emergency manager in Yancey County, North Carolina, a rural expanse that suffered the most deaths per capita. A week ago, the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry slipped up from the coast of Mexico, drawing moisture from the Gulf, then collided with another system and inundated rivers and creeks in hilly south central Texas. More than 100 people are confirmed dead, many of them children, with more missing. “We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what’s happened here — none whatsoever,” said County Judge Rob Kelly, the top elected official in Kerr County, Texas, where most of the deaths occurred. The similarities between North Carolina and Texas extend beyond the words of these two officials. In both disasters, there was a disconnect between accurate weather alerts and on-the-ground action that could have saved lives. Officials in each of those places were warned. The National Weather Service sent urgent alerts about potentially life-threatening danger hours in advance of the flash floods, leaving time to notify and try to evacuate people in harm’s way. In Texas, some local officials did just that. But others did not. Similarly, a ProPublica investigation found that when Helene hit on Sept. 27, some local officials in North Carolina issued evacuation orders. At least five counties in Helene’s path, including Yancey, did not. Howell said the enormity of the storm was far worse than anyone alive had ever seen and that he notified residents as best he could. The National Weather Service described Helene’s approach for days. It sent out increasingly dire alerts warning of dangerous flash flooding and landslides. Its staff spoke directly with local emergency managers and held webinar updates. A Facebook message the regional office posted around 1 p.m. the day before Helene hit warned of “significant to catastrophic, life-threatening flooding” in the mountains. “This will be one of the most significant weather events to happen in the western portions of the area in the modern era.” Similarly, in Texas, the weather service warned of potential for flash flooding the day before. Also that day, the state emergency management agency’s regional director had “personally contacted” county judges, mayors and others “in that area and notified them all of potential flooding,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick later said at a press conference. AccuWeather, a commercial weather forecasting service, issued the first flash flood warnings for the area at 12:44 a.m. on July 4, roughly three hours before the catastrophic flooding. A half-hour later, at 1:14 a.m., the National Weather Service sent a similar warning to two specific areas, including central Kerr County, where the Guadalupe River’s banks and hills are dotted with vacation homes, summer camps and campgrounds — many filled with July 4 vacationers slumbering in cabins and RVs. “Flash flooding is ongoing or expected to begin shortly,” the weather service alert said. Impacts could include “life threatening flash flooding of creeks and streams.” A severity descriptor on that alert sent it to weather radios and the nation’s Wireless Emergency Alerts system, which blasts weather warnings to cellphones to blare an alarm. AccuWeather’s chief meteorologist, Jonathan Porter, was dismayed to hear news later that all the children attending youth camps in Kerr County had not been ushered to higher ground despite those warnings. At Camp Mystic, a beloved century-old Christian summer camp for girls, at least 27 campers and counselors were killed. Six still haven’t been found. Its director also died, while trying to rescue children. (People at the camp said they received little to no help from the authorities, according to The New York Times.) “I was very concerned to see that campers were awoken not by someone coming to tell them to evacuate based on timely warnings issued but rather by rapidly rising water that was going up to the second level of their bunkbeds,” Porter said. In the area, known as Flash Flood Alley, Porter called this “a tragedy of the worst sort” because it appeared camps and local officials could have mobilized sooner in response to the alerts. “There was plenty of time to evacuate people to higher ground,” Porter said. “The question is, Why did that not happen?” But Dalton Rice, city manager of Kerrville, the county seat, said at a press conference the next day that “there wasn’t a lot of time” to communicate the risk to camps because the floodwaters rose so rapidly. Rice said that at 3:30 a.m. — more than two hours after the flash flood warnings began — he went jogging near the Guadalupe River to check it out but didn’t see anything concerning. But 13 miles upriver from the park where he was jogging, the river began — at 3:10 a.m. — to rise 25 feet in just two hours. At 4:03 a.m., the weather service upgraded the warning to an “emergency”— its most severe flash flood alert — with a tag of “catastrophic.” It singled out the Guadalupe River at Hunt in Kerr County: “This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!” The local sheriff said he wasn’t made aware of the flooding until 4 to 5 a.m. He has declined to say whether the local emergency manager, who is responsible for alerting the public to approaching storms, was awake when the flash flood warnings went out starting at 1 a.m. The Texas Tribune reported that Kerrville’s mayor said he wasn’t aware of the