I remember for Maui wildfire and maybe a couple other disasters that the missing number went down because people found alive or mistakes. That hasn’t happened for this disaster.
If the Soviets only had our capitalist advances in botox and social media influencing, they could have made it work
The exact opposite of what I was saying. Instead of focusing on blame for something people couldn’t control Amd using it to try and settle political scores, the focus should be on the victims. But the last ten pages have been people yelling at each other.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/climate/fema-missed-calls-texas-floods.html Two days after catastrophic floods roared through Central Texas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. The lack of responsiveness happened because the agency had fired hundreds of contractors at call centers, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters. The agency laid off the contractors on July 5 after their contracts expired and were not extended, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who has instituted a new requirement that she personally approve expenses over $100,000, did not renew the contracts until Thursday, five days after the contracts expired. FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
"Sometimes Mother Nature just wins" sounded to me like "We are all going to die some day." IMO, this tragedy was avoidable.
So exactly how would you like Too Hot to “focus on victims”? thoughts and prayers? People can’t control nature. But people can control how we prepare for it and react to it, areas where there has been clear failure, much of it due to negligence and being miserly with resources. In our attention economy if issues aren’t discussed at the time they have our attention, they are forgotten with the next shiny object.
Yeah, or maybe actually waiting for facts before taking the side everyone here was going to take anyway? The partisanship literally started in post 1. I have posted here on and off for over 20 years, have seen the good and bad, but it’s never been more hyper polarized and just lacking in basic humanity both to other posters and to their political foes generally than it is now. With some exceptions of course, there were two dudes who got so worked up here they were gonna fight outside of gate 1(or 2?) at the swamp one time. That still cracks me up. The point was that not everything can and should be used to prove one’s world view, which is what much of this thread is. This isn’t gun control where incident after incident happens and all we hear are T&P. Some terrible things are out of our control and not the fault of Trump or cloud seeding, or even the camp’s fault given it has survived higher floods and been safe for over 100 years. Even with a warning and they might not have evacuated above previous high water marks. Maybe there is blame and time will bear it out, but the thread was largely made to assign blame more than inform or offer empathy. Which is sad IMO. Anyway, I’ve said my peace, so I will let folks go back to fighting. But for those with long memories, this place needs some posters like elderlygator again. Have a nice weekend.
FEMA’s search and rescue teams were not authorized by Noem to go there for more than 3 full days. They might have saved a few lives. There should be a lesson learned from that in order to prevent it from happening again. And, to be clear, this is not political. There is no need to pick political sides to realize that gutting FEMA is not in the country’s interest.
Pretty damming stuff here. And all of verifiable on the minutes of the various meetings transcribed here. Partisanship is doing none of us any favors. (These quotes are from Kerr County public meetings during Obama’s last term and Biden’s term. From 2016 to 2018 they actually applied from the funding that would have yielded these new systems and were denied. Neither Obama nor Biden were in office during that period.)
For those so inclined, here is a great site I love with a detailed (non political) meteorological analysis of what happened.
Not beyond the realm of possibility that the floods in the Texas Hill Country could be the Trump Administration's Katrina. Although not the only factor (there was also the war in Iraq) this was published in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Bush approval at lowest level of his presidency
