As I write this, the known death toll of floods in Texas stands at 104, including dozens of children from summer camps dotting the affected area. That number will likely increase.
It’s a terrible thing, and naturally many of us not caught in the middle of it would like to assign blame.
“Key roles at local offices of the National Weather Service, in particular, went unfilled as the floods hit,” the New York Times reports. US Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) wants “an investigation into the scope, breadth, and ramifications of whether staffing shortages at key local National Weather Service (NWS) stations contributed to the catastrophic loss of life and property during the deadly flooding.” US Senator Christopher Murphy (D-CT) cites “consequences to Trump’s brainless attacks on public workers, like meteorologists.”
But let’s be real here. No, US president Donald Trump and his administration are not to blame for it — and I say that as someone possessed of an ingrained “blame government first” mentality in general and a strong dislike for Trump in particular.
Trump’s not responsible for the weather, and to the extent that federal agencies are responsible for accurately forecasting that weather and warning the public of dangerous situations (they shouldn’t be, but they are), they did exactly that.
According to an ABC News timeline:
The National Weather Service’s Austin/San Antonio office issued its first flood watch at 1:18pm on July 3.
That evening at 6:10pm, the Weather Prediction Center warned of severe thunderstorms in the affected area.
At 1:14am on July 4, flash flood warnings with a “considerable” damage tag — automatically triggered alerts on weather radios and mobile devices. Those warnings were upgraded at 3:35am and 4:03am.
At 4:35am — nearly 16 hours after the first watches and three hours after the emergency warnings — started going out, the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office reported the first observed flooding.
By 7am, evacuations were under way.
It’s important, at this point, to assure you that I’m not trying to SHIFT blame to the victims. There are many reasons other than negligence why those alerts might have been missed, or why those who received them took action that seemed sufficient, but turned out not to be, to save their own lives and others’.
But while we could (and probably will) see failures and foul-ups in the post-flood response from FEMA et al., and while we can (and definitely will) argue incessantly about various things Trump and his team do, this particular tragedy didn’t result from failures of the government systems in place to warn us of impending disaster.
Trying to get politicians and the politically involved to not “play politics” with every bad thing may be a fool’s errand, but it’s always worth condemning when it happens.
Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
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