Deadly Texas floods prompt call for investigation : NPR

An official from Texas Department of Public Security inspects the debris on the seafront of the Mystic Camp along the banks of the Guadalupe river after a flooding spurts swept the region on Sunday July 6 in Hunt, Texas.

Julio Cortez / AP

hide

tilting legend

Julio Cortez / AP

While the number of deaths increases following catastrophic floods in the center of Texas during the holiday weekend, representative Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, says that those responsible have an in-depth investigation to discover what did not work in the warning and evacuation of residents.

Sudden floods in Texas killed at least 90 people during the weekend of July 4, most of them reported in the county of Kerr, about two hours northwest of San Antonio.

Many people from the county live along the Guadalupe river, which Rose on 26 feet in 45 minutes Early Friday morning, when heavy storms started. Since then, local officials have faced difficult questions about the reasons why people who live along the river have not been warned to evacuate.

The National Weather Service (NWS) warned against possible heavy showers on Wednesday and improved on Thursday to surveillance of floods, that is to say when the conditions make the floods possible. A flash flood warning, which means that the floods are imminent or occur, was not declared until early Friday In the morning, after almost a rain foot had already fallen.

In an interview Morning editionCastro said it is imperative that the NWS is well equipped and ready to work with local and state agencies in the face of climate change, in particular in an emergency like that of the center of Texas when sudden floods occurred quickly.

“I think we all owe this to the community there. And also, I think we owe this to the people of this country in the future to make sure that we do everything we can to prevent something like that happens,” said Castro. Earlier this year, the NWS has lost nearly 600 workers After the Trump administration ordered cuts, which some criticisms have warned would affect emergency preparation. The agency recently began to rehabilitate after the public counterpoup On staff cuts.

The Austin / San Antonio NWS local forecasting office has listed at least six vacant posts in recent days.

On Monday, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt rejected criticism that the Federal Resound Resound in Texas was partly inadequate in part to financing discounts.

“Backing President Trump for these floods is a depraved lie, and he is useless during this period of national mourning,” she said.

The Castro district, the western half of San Antonio and the county of Bexar, is still recovering sudden floods last month who killed 13 people. According to his experience, he says that Kerr’s county will need state, federal and private support to recover from the floods

Castro spoke to Leila Fadel of NPR about floods and persistent questions about the federal and state response.

The following extract was published for duration and clarity.

Leila Fadel: Just as they did in San Antonio last month, hundreds of first speakers made water resumes, they save people who are stranded in trees and stuck in submerged vehicles. Are there enough local resources available to recover from disasters like this?

Representative Joaquin Castro: The county of Kerr is not the size of the county of Bexar where San Antonio is located or the county of Harris like Houston. And so the tax base is much more limited. It is a smaller community. It will therefore be important that the governments of states and federals are very useful and favorable to resources, with money for the community to rebuild itself, to examine the alarm systems, to prevent it from happening again, to also look at the attenuation efforts.

It is tragic in both cases. Both cases in San Antonio and in Kerr County were very different. In Kerr County, you had a situation where the river increased and you had structures and housing along the river. In San Antonio, it was a very urban situation where people were mainly trapped in their vehicles with rising water in a sudden flood very quickly. But that really testifies to the importance of having the resources, including the National Weather Service, to be able to warn people very quickly and move very quickly to fight sudden floods.

Representative Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, spoke at the Capitol on January 23 in Washington.

Rod Lamkey, Jr./ap

hide

tilting legend

Rod Lamkey, Jr./ap

Fadel: One of the big questions asked to local officials, state officials and the White House is the reason why people were not warned earlier. Some of your colleagues from the Senate sent a letter to the President and to the Secretary of Commerce last month, alarmed by staff discounts at the National Weather Service and what could mean for emergency preparation. In your opinion, did these cuts play a role in preparations and warnings here?

Castro: I think it is too early to know if in this case, it did, but I think there should be a complete survey, not only of any type of federal failure, but also of state and local, of course. I think we all owe this to the community there. And also, I think we owe this to the people of this country in the future to make sure that we do everything we can to prevent something like that to happen again.

But I think that it also testifies to the importance of the National Weather Service, that you have complete and robust staff who can work with state and local agencies to warn people. Because you are dealing with a short period of time, with a sudden flood, where you have to send the message to people right away. This means that you need the personnel in place, you need local government to help people to warn people, then you need a way to help people evacuate very quickly. And at the moment, we still have an effort of rescue in progress, and finding the rest of these people alive, hopefully, is a priority. But after that, in the coming months, I think we owe everyone to make sure that there is an in -depth investigation on what was wrong.

Fadel: As you know, we start to feel heavier and more extreme precipitation. What should happen now to try to avoid future loss of lives in these weather emergencies?

Castro: We need a solid national meteorological service. We must strengthen labor relations between the National Weather Service and the State and local governments. We must obviously improve warning systems. And, I know that for many years, the idea of ​​climate change has become political, it has become a very political debate. But these events which were supposed to be an event of 100 years or a 500 -year event took place more often. So we have to take this problem seriously and fight it.

This digital article was published by Obed Manuel. The story of radio was published by Jan Johnson and produced by Vince Pearson.