Do I hear a flapping sound? Could it be chickens coming home to roost?
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Or just the sound of a babbling wannabe kingâs lips?
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Thatâs a contradictory statement. They couldnât have predicted the severity of the storm but did predict the severity of the flooding!?! BS.
Weâve all noticed the rather sudden decline in weather prediction accuracy since January, folks. Quit trying to tell us to ignore our lived experience.
WTF!?! No one should be dependent on fucking Facebook for emergency weather alerts.
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I donât think that @Millie_Fink is remotely saying that itâs not a problem, as we all have seen it at work⌠I think sheâs saying in this case, predictions were put out about the risk of serious flooding from the NWS and it was state officials who dropped the ball. Both things can be trueâŚ
True, but here we are. We have to acknowledge HOW people get their information and the state should use multiple ways of getting in touch with people to share alertsâŚ
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I do the same with my phone, but thatâs about it.
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The ârisk of floodingâ is not the severity of flooding, or the severity of the storm. But youâre right, the real issue is reliance by the city and county on Facebook - thatâs nuts. Do they really think that (a) everyone is on Facebook (theyâre not) and (b) theyâre on it in the middle of the night? Why did it take over four hours for the police to repost an alert (even if it may not be their formal responsibility to do this). Why werenât they out there warning people?
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Honestly people need to cling to the nuance here. Itâs so hard too. A lot of things have gone wrong for this to happen. Some of them could definitely have been prevented but not all. The instability of DOGE and the literal coup where the government got overthrown and a party of partizan extremists took over who support assassinations of political opponents. Thatâs still real. Climate is changing and no one is making reasonable progress on addressing how we live with it best. All the things have a real effect but that doesnât mean other things canât be addressed either. Most of these things arenât even mutually exclusive. There have been many decisions locally that could have helped. There are a lot of intersecting attitudes that kill Texas children. We are all being manipulated somewhat by the information we get on the issue. And at the heart of it this is what is killing most of us in the US one way or another already.
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This is insane. Probably because Kerr County is deeply GOP. My county, Travis, is one of the few blue counties in the state. Travis has chosen to invest some of our taxes in a county level emergency alert system. You do have to sign up, but the county will send emails or texts (you choose) with emergency alerts. I received notice of possible flash flooding hours before the predictions got bad enough to trigger the NWS alerts to my cell.
The flooding along the Guadalupe, Colorado, Rio Grande, and San Gabriel rivers, as well as the flooding of all the creeks, is not a new thing. It seems to have become more common and more extreme. But it isnât new. Everywhere along the river should have measures to warn of flooding. The cabins at Camp Mystic shouldnât have been that close to the river at all.
This disaster was probably a failure on multiple levels, including county and city leaders failing to do their job and the entire set up at that camp. Those cabins simply should not have been so close to a river known for flooding.
That said, Iâm not upset the idea the cuts to NOAA could have had an impact has gained traction. Because even if that isnât the case here (and Iâm not sure that didnât play a role), those cuts will absolutely result in deaths in the years ahead.
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Wait, they use FB as a primary means of alerts? Or there are other means, but FB took longer?
Here in Oz, they use text message alerts: if your phone is connected to a tower in an affected region, youâll get a text message.
Thereâs also the Socials, but those are considered a cheap extra, something like âadds 20% and costs nearly nothing, so why wouldnât you?â
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There are National Weather Service alerts that get pushed to cell phones and include a really annoying beep. Got at least 10 of those yesterday.
But those are for immenent threat things. The severity has to get to a certain point before those go out. Kerr County has no other alert system. Just FB and maybe their websites. Other counties, like Burnett and Travis, have their own text/email alert system that notified of possible flooding hours before the NWS alerts went off. Some cities, like San Marcos, which has a river literally thru the middle, has outdoor sirens in case of flash flooding.
Kerr has nothing. Because they didnât want to spend tax money on it. Which, given the Guadalupe River is well known for flash flooding (like every river and creek in central Texas) goes through that county is just damned negligence.
Edit: got the wrong San and fixed it above. San Antonio also has a river thru the middle and are working on system that might include sirens. It is San Marcos that has sirens along the river
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Iâm going to have to disagree. The fundamental problem with using social media for any official communications is that social media has a MAJOR disinformation vulnerability. Itâs nearly impossible for any random person to know whether an âalertâ is real or faked, and once they get numbed to all the fake shit, they donât respond when the real alert comes.
Iâve said it before and Iâll keep beating the drum. It should be illegal for governments to use social media for official communications.
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That translates as "some tech bro with GOP connections wants to make the govt force you to buy wearable e-trash.
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Itâs much worse than that: Medicaid also pays for residencies. So, even those somehow able to pay for medical school will find it hard to impossible to get a seat in a residency program.
The US medical system is well and truly fucked.
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I donât know about this camp site but even just at peopleâs houses in the hill country I cannot always use a cell phone. If I donât have wifi I may not even have access to anything online through my phone for hours or overnight.
This is also a problem of people having forgotten that the old infrastructure had found all the little bugs of âwhere are people and how do we save them in an emergency.â During the storm when we lost power for so long I had to download fb to find out anything about it. I thought a lot about how when the wifi is out I have no way to contact my mother, for instance.
Weâve let poorly functioning companyâs take over and privatize emergency services and we will die for it.
We have to try to reach people where they are but we also have to be realistic about how to do that.
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Which wraps around to DOGE and how they want to âupdateâ critical systems with modern software.
âGreat, congratulations on learning Python, but the Fortran thatâs been running this critical system is absolutely bug-free and runs with 100% reliability for 40 years. So âupdatingâ it is going to introduce bugs and how many people are going to die so that you get to put this on your resume?â
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Hell⌠people need landlines still in some cases and really and a plan for boots on the ground to evacuate. Text and email services should be standardized. Some âcitiesâ here âborrowâ fire resources from the nearest resort already. Thereâs already a decadence. Organization takes money too⌠and with people so divisive what I have seen is that people in these communities are unable to come together functionally even when they are all Republicans.
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I donât think youâre wrong about social media, but thatâs what is actually happening, in part because the current government is working to privatize as much as humanely possible.
I didnât say I disagreed with that. 
Just noting something that is a fact. There are many failings of social media, the disinformation aspect being prime among them⌠but until we change the thinking on that, governments will continue to make use of it to share information.
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Here we go again.
Musk has gone off the rails?
And the funny thing about this post is how he describes the republicans.
Republicans, on the other hand, are a smooth running âmachine,â
I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely âoff the rails,â essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks. He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States - The System seems not designed for them. The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS, and we have enough of that with the Radical Left Democrats, who have lost their confidence and their minds! Republicans, on the other hand, are a smooth running âmachine,â that just passed the biggest Bill of its kind in the History of our Country. It is a Great Bill but, unfortunately for Elon, it eliminates the ridiculous Electric Vehicle (EV) Mandate, which would have forced everyone to buy an Electric Car in a short period of time. I have been strongly opposed to that from the very beginning. People are now allowed to buy whatever they want - Gasoline Powered, Hybrids (which are doing very well), or New Technologies as they come about - No more EV Mandate. I have campaigned on this for two years and, quite honestly, when Elon gave me his total and unquestioned Endorsement, I asked him whether or not he knew that I was going to terminate the EV Mandate - It was in every speech I made, and in every conversation I had. He said he had no problems with that - I was very surprised! Additionally, Elon asked that one of his close friends run NASA and, while I thought his friend was very good, I was surprised to learn that he was a blue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before. Elon probably was, also. I also thought it inappropriate that a very close friend of Elon, who was in the Space Business, run NASA, when NASA is such a big part of Elonâs corporate life. My Number One charge is to protect the American Public!
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