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Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, pyrohornIII said:

Yes, from what I have read the camps were responsible for having their own plans.  That's ridiculous, because it's akin to each student writing their own test questions.  How do you judge the strength of a plan without a standard to hold it to?   Just more passing responsibility along.  

Having served as a first responder in rural Texas I have to say the radio communications suck in most counties, particularly ones with hills or mountains.   Then add in that the government about 20 years ago sold off a huge chunk of bandwidth of our airwaves to private vendors like cell phone companies.  That forced departments to start moving away from analog radios to digital systems, which are way more expensive.  So I really can't fault them for going that route.  Where I can fault them is for not upgrading their flood warning system earlier when they had the chance for Obama money.  

I disagee, stupidity and complacency broke it.   The internet sped it up.

Yep, you'd think he'd tell himself first thing to call the guy in charge of monitoring to get some idea on what's headed their way?

Please no.  I avoid DT like I avoid FB these days.  To go in there does me no good.   

To me this makes me think of roaches scrurrying about in the middle of the night when the kitchen light comes on.  Can hear them screaming "Politicization!  Politicization!"  Or however the fuck you spell it.  

2 hours ago, TreatyOak said:

Thanks for being a First Responder. Perhaps our disagreement is over semantics, but IMHO, any school, club, organization, camp, etc., that takes care of large numbers of people should have their own plan for evacuation. If experts can evaluate and correct it, all the better, but surely any plan is better than no plan. As we all know from the The Station night club fire in Rhode Island, disaster happens in seconds. Love to hear your thoughts. 

I think the important lesson from the Station fire and Mystic having a plan approved just 2 days before this disaster (among others) is this:

Having a 'plan' on paper to show an inspector is very different from actually practicing a plan so that it can be effectively implemented when the shit hits the fan, and having supervisors monitor situations closely enough to know when the plan should be executed. 

1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

Well, it's certainly possible that the plan was acceptable and the camp just didn't follow it.

Yep.

Edited by wood
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Posted
1 hour ago, South Austin said:

I'd kill to have aggy Rick Perry back as governor.

The guy who once called for a day of prayer for rain? That could be awkward. Who can predict how long it takes for prayers to be answered? The Lord moves in mysterious ways.

”Oops.”

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Posted
2 hours ago, Ted Lange said:

The loons have screamed so loudly that they have forced Ryan Hall to respond.    And they are big mad in the replies.

image.png.4a91f5af3f44d008a9b001b6759c926d.png

Who/what is Ryan Hall?

 

2 hours ago, Captainant said:

The issue I have here is that the State kept no records as copy of the evac plan. They were all on-site and likely destroyed in the flood. So there isn't really an authoritative record of their plan that was approved aside from "trust me, bro"

I have a hard time believing that the plan was acceptable, given the empirical outcome of its execution. And yet, expressing that opinion is somehow political in the eyes of the overlords.

That's the thing. It doesn't appear to have been executed at all, except by the counselors who weren't given, well, any lead time at all.

 

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

And it remains to be fully explained what exactly Kerr County did in response to the flash flood watch and warning alerts sent out by NWS, you're absolutely right that the camp itself may be victim of the county's negligence in all of this.

But Mystic was also the folks operating a camp in the most flood prone area of the country during flash flood conditions, with nobody standing watch for hundreds of souls. Who knows if their emergency planning even had a watch stander, or if one is even required by the State?

More questions to be ignored and shouted down with accusations of politicizing things, I guess.

Exactly.

Posted
48 minutes ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

You are dead on.  Reminded me of this, from Isaac Asimov:

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Sadly, in effect, it is. Morons get one vote, just like anyone else.

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Posted
51 minutes ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

You are dead on.  Reminded me of this, from Isaac Asimov:

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

This may be a blinding glimpse of the obvious, but it just occurred to me with clarity.  This seems to be symptomatic of the "American Dream." Even without knowledge of the normal distribution, morons seem to know that they are morons, not smart and/or not educated, and are close to the majority.

And intelligence and education correlate pretty well with success in America.  Yes, a moron can get rich or attain the middle class by hard work, pretty much alone, but the odds are not great.

In order to maintain the illusion that "anyone can 'make it' in America," there needs to be a devaluation of intelligence and education.  Add in a little demagoguery and you have an elevation of ignorance.

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Posted (edited)

The Kerrville Mayor said he was very angry. And shockingly he wasn't referring to how the emergency was handled but about the way yesterday's press conference went. 

Edited by Chopper
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Posted
11 minutes ago, wood said:

Who/what is Ryan Hall?

 

 

Weather guy on YouTube, with 3M followers.   I learned about him within the last year or so from one of the weather-related threads here.   He is solid, at least when I have listened, very much just weather info without any over-the-top sensationalism.   I've seen several mainstream meteorologists praise him as well.   I have never seen him get "political," but to be fair, I don't pay a ton of attention to him other than a stream here or there. 

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Posted
14 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Spineless coward. 

 

 

When the going gets tough...Blame "the media."   They are the real enemy to 1/2 the country thanks to Trump.

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Posted (edited)
2 minutes ago, Ted Lange said:

 

When the going gets tough...Blame "the media."   They are the real enemy to 1/2 the country thanks to Trump.

"Sir, children are dead. How can you be worried about yourself at this time?"

Edited by Pam Cummings
Posted
3 minutes ago, Chopper said:

The Kerrville Mayor said he was very angry. Not about the way the emergency was handled but about the way yesterday's press conference went. 

 

He sounds similar to Mayor Larry Vaughn.

 

 

Posted (edited)

Who are yall kidding? The democrats are too busy sticking their heads up their asses with this “they go low, we go high” shit. No way would they wipe off mar a lago or any other republican power center even if given the ability to control weather. At best they’d ask it politely to leave and when not given an answer, they’d brag about how they spoke to Mar a Lago for 8 hours about how mean of a place it is, and their followers would gush over it.

Edited by hpslugga
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Posted

Is this the thread where we can point out that it’s maybe not the best idea to have your youngest campers in the cabins closest to the river? In an emergency flood situation you really want to have to worry about getting the youngest campers to safety? The cabins up the hill where the older girls are were fine. 

Posted
3 minutes ago, Helobious said:

Is this the thread where we can point out that it’s maybe not the best idea to have your youngest campers in the cabins closest to the river? In an emergency flood situation you really want to have to worry about getting the youngest campers to safety? The cabins up the hill where the older girls are were fine. 

Probably not in retrospect. The reason I've seen for the camp geography is that the hill is a lot more difficult for the younger girls to traverse as many times as it must be done during a typical camp day. The mess hall and other activity areas were down there so camp officials must've figured it's better to have the younger girls located closer.

Where the cabins were situated was a much bigger factor than who was sleeping in them. There was enough water to kill whoever was in those cabins when the water reached them. The camp should've been aware what was going on sooner than it was.

Posted (edited)

Having talked to numerous small-town or county dispatchers calling us to request assistance in the middle of the night, my bet is that understaffing is the answer to that reporter's question. Numerous times I've been on the phone with these dispatchers when shit was blowing up on their end, and they were the only ones there, or maybe there were two of them. And sometimes the only person there is brand new to the job.

Edited by wood
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Posted
4 hours ago, Captainant said:

But goddamnit, they can post as much racist hate filled immigrants ragebait as they want in DT!

Yep, I clicked over there the other day just to see if anything new was posted.  First fucking post I saw was brat's montage to social media posts saying Texas deserves this shit for the way they vote.  No one gave a shit about it being CR-esque.  I called it out and a poster or two got pissy about it.  Fuck them.

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Posted
5 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

We've already seen reports that FEMA personnel on the ground is ~ 25% of what it should be.  Well done, government.

Like Chip Roy said, clearly we need to cut government spending. Get that number down to zero then the power of all those prayers can actually kick in.

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Posted
3 hours ago, TreatyOak said:

but surely any plan is better than no plan

If you aren't going to hold it to a standard and the entities know that, then some will go the route of throwing any old shit together into a document and calling it good.  See BP using oil spill response plan from Alaska ops as their OSR plan for Gulf of Mexico.  Worked out great when Macondo happened.

Posted
1 hour ago, Pig Bellmont said:

This is Trumpism. Never take accountability for anything, and suffer no consequences at the ballot box. He taught Abbott and all others to never admit fault, even if it would lead to less dead girls in the future 

Only because this is surly:

Ser Davos Jon Snow GIF by BuzzFeed

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Posted
1 hour ago, wood said:

Having a 'plan' on paper to show an inspector is very different from actually practicing a plan so that it can be effectively implemented when the shit hits the fan, and having supervisors monitor situations closely enough to know when the plan should be executed. 

Everyone has a plan 'til they get punched in the mouth.

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Posted
32 minutes ago, Pig Bellmont said:

Wasn’t this in project 2025?

I can actually buy the notion that disaster response should be primarily a state activity.  That makes a certain amount of good sense.

But, we've had FEMA for who knows how long and many/most states have abdicated their disaster response functions.

Like tariffs, or the notion of incentivizing domestic manufacturing, I could get on board with "we're gonna devolve FEMA's responsibilities back on the states where they belong." But that needs to take place over like 10 years, maybe 20.

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Posted
50 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

We've already seen reports that FEMA personnel on the ground is ~ 25% of what it should be.  Well done, government.

Not sure how to phrase this exactly so I know how callous it sounds, especially for those affected that didn’t vote this way, but at least it’s the state, local, and federal government that the people of Kerr county and Texas voted for. As opposed to it happening to a majority blue area where most impacted would prefer alternate representation and governance than what has been foisted upon them. 

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Posted
Just now, TwiceHorn said:

I can actually buy the notion that disaster response should be primarily a state activity.  That makes a certain amount of good sense.

But, we've had FEMA for who knows how long and many/most states have abdicated their disaster response functions.

Like tariffs, or the notion of incentivizing domestic manufacturing, I could get on board with "we're gonna devolve FEMA's responsibilities back on the states where they belong." But that needs to take place over like 10 years, maybe 20.

This is the right answer.

They basically told Arkansas to get bent on FEMA relief for a tornado and even they were surprised that Sanders couldn't get through to him.  In all fairness, Arkansas (like Texas) is running a surplus and is wanting to cut taxes.

There just should have been some lead time.

Posted
Just now, Aqua Buddha said:

This is the right answer.

They basically told Arkansas to get bent on FEMA relief for a tornado and even they were surprised that Sanders couldn't get through to him.  In all fairness, Arkansas (like Texas) is running a surplus and is wanting to cut taxes.

There just should have been some lead time.

Corollary to this, though.

Although in theory, I think the notion of federalism and state primacy is a good one, in my experience and observation, the federal government does a better job with almost all of the functions where the state, or Texas in particular, has a parallel function.

But yeah, we can cut FEMA, cut federal taxes accordingly and maybe do that for a lot of things where the state has a primary interest, knowledge, and responsiveness to local priorities.  They're also gonna need to raise taxes.

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Posted
8 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I can actually buy the notion that disaster response should be primarily a state activity.  That makes a certain amount of good sense.

3 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Corollary to this, though.

Although in theory, I think the notion of federalism and state primacy is a good one, in my experience and observation, the federal government does a better job with almost all of the functions where the state, or Texas in particular, has a parallel function.

Your corollary was going to be my response.  Sure, in the abstract we can argue that disaster response should be a state activity.  Why should my tax dollars as Texas resident pay for some awful nature shit that happens in Florida or Kentucky?   

But as you allude, when left to the states, there are a lot of states that do an awfully shitty job in providing public services, such as education and roadways and other transportation infrastructure.  It may be because they are governed by a political ideology that doesn't want to spend money for those things.  Or, as a whole some states are poorer than others, and might not legitimately have the resources.

But that's where our federal government has stepped in, whether through the Department of Transportation, the Department of Education, or FEMA.  Until Trump 2.0, that is.   

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