Tuesday, July 08, 2025

Damning


 

Also, from the New York Times

Eight years ago, in the aftermath of yet another river flood in the Texas Hill Country, officials in Kerr County debated whether more needed to be done to build a warning system along the banks of the Guadalupe River.

A series of summer camps along the river were often packed with children. For years, local officials kept them safe with a word-of-mouth system: When floodwaters started raging, upriver camp leaders warned those downriver of the water surge coming their way.

But was that enough? Officials considered supplementing the system with sirens and river gauges, along with other modern communications tools. “We can do all the water-level monitoring we want, but if we don’t get that information to the public in a timely way, then this whole thing is not worth it,” said Tom Moser, a Kerr County commissioner at the time.

In the end, little was done. When catastrophic floodwaters surged through Kerr County last week, there were no sirens or early flooding monitors. Instead, there were text alerts that came late for some residents and were dismissed or unseen by others.

  

1 comment:

John said...

Billy Graham won. He started the Christian infiltration of USA politics as a deliberate strategy and the result is a bunch of fundamentalist literalist nutjobs dictating legislation and policy.

Creationism is huge in the USA, everywhere else it is regarded as a joke. Ken Hamm would never had made it in Aus, not even the Qld Bible Belt from which he hails would tolerate his nonsense.

I don't know where this will end up. For stupidity to prosper intelligent people must remain silent but fortunately there is push back in the USA. The midterms will be the critical test. If the GOP doesn't cop a flogging the USA will sink deeper into stupidity and evil.