In addition, if you go up to the Mystic website you’ll see that the camp has expanded over the past decade. There was the option to relocate the campers from the flood plain to higher ground cabins if someone chose to make that decision. I can’t help but think there was an element of “it’s been fine for a century, it will be fine going forward”. Well… past results are no guarantee of future performance, right?
Also, as noted, there was a failure to get warnings out in time. Had those warnings gone out a few hours earlier they probably could have evacuated everyone to higher ground. There would be loss of property, but not of life. After which you’d hope someone would have the sense to not repair/rebuild those low-lying cabins.
Well, now that it happened, I figure they are good for another century, right?
I recommend the book A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear.. People (as a whole) are just too - for lack of better words - stupid, cheap, self-centered, and unrealistic to take adequate precautions. They need a government to protect them from themselves, and to force them to pay for certain protection. I’m fine with Darwin culling the dumbest from the herd. But when they take responsibility for others - especially children…
… and predictably the local sheriff is doing the “let’s deal with that later after the emergency” hoping it will blow over and be forgotten. Mistakes and/or omissions were almost certainly made because that always seems to happen in a disaster even when planning and procedures are well crafted. What happened needs to be looked at. Preferably with an aim to actually learn from what happened, but I expect finger pointing, job losses, blaming, and scapegoating. Maybe even criminal charges because that’s where we seem to be these days.
Especially with the scapegoating. Because there is also now evidence that county officials did try to get funding for at least a siren system numerous times but no one was willing to pay for it. I could make a crass comment about child-size coffins at Costco being cheaper than a warning system but with the death toll rising that comparison may not hold up. For damn sure no one outside the immediate local officials that will be hung out to dry - not the agencies stamping “rejected” on paperwork nor the county resident screaming “no taxes for anything!” - are ever going to be held responsible or lose a wink of sleep over their role in this.
It appears from the Times today that the problem with the NWS was not a bad forecast, it was that the person with the responsibility of connecting with local officials to warn them of problems retired early in the face of Musk’s layoffs. The position has not been filled. He appears to have had good relationships with the local people. That’s exactly the kind of job the top level people think is a waste, but turns out to be vital.
I live within eyesight of a recently upgraded siren system. With the windows up it’s hard to hear. Add a stereo or TV and I can’t hear it at all. Most of the people in my neighborhood are farther away and aren’t going to hear it.
What people CAN hear is their phone which the vast majority of people have and keep close at hand. Those alerts will be heard by far more people than a sparsely located group of sirens.
I live within eyesight of a siren system and it’s loud as hell when there’s a tornado warning. Which is often during inclement weather – storm, thunder, windows up, etc. I don’t know what’s wrong with your system.
There are, I believe, 5 siren locations in my small town, which measures about 4 miles by 4 miles. You can hear the warning anywhere in town in any building.
Also, it’s been reported numerous times that cell service in the Texas hill country is spotty at best. Although, there would have needed to be a LOT of siren locations to warn all the campers and RVers that were there for the holiday.
Maybe – I’m not in your house with your phone comparing it to your siren. But the idea that sirens can’t be heard just because you can’t hear yours says a lot more about your local siren system than it does about their effectiveness.
Agreed. My nearest weather siren is 0.8 miles away from me; even with the windows in the house closed, the AC on, the TV blaring, etc., the siren is extremely audible to me. I’d suspect it’s more a case of an issue with the siren(s) in @Magiver 's area, than it is an issue that alert sirens aren’t generally audible to people who are indoors.
The idea that a siren is louder than a phone right next to you inside a house with closed windows is absurd. Sirens are 1950’s theater safety. Particularly in rural areas that are spread out. Almost everybody has a phone and you can buy a weather radio for $16 at Walmart.
At best, if you hear a siren it doesn’t tell you what’s going on. Your phone does.
You’re disagreeing with the premise based on your inability to hear your local siren. I’m not going to bother litigating what’s wrong with your siren but I will say that the basis for your disagreement was based on a faulty understanding of what a functional siren system can sound like. There’s good reasons to have a functional siren system in addition to phone warnings and a functional siren system should easily be audible indoor, with your TV on, etc.
As I mentioned above, there are several siren locations in my small town. The nearest one to my house is about 3 blocks away. I would invite you to sleep in my basement bedroom with a fan blowing and wearing noise-cancelling headphones. I guarantee that you will hear the siren.
If you cannot hear the siren in your house with the TV on, then you should speak to the local authorities. Here in Kansas, if you don’t hear the tornado warning sirens, it might cost you your life.
We had 15 tornadoes go through my area in 1 night a few years back. I am quite familiar with them. Sirens don’t begin to cover the rural areas. Phones and weather radios do.
Not everyone has cell coverage, especially in a rural area. It’s not an either or, there can be multiple systems to alert people, thus ensuring more people get the alert. I get alerts on my phone and on my tv if I happen to be watching tv.
