Questions have been raised over extreme weather warnings in Texas, after heavy rain caused fatal flash floods along the Guadalupe River.
At least 51 people have died from the flooding in Texas, with an unknown number of people – including 27 girls from Camp Mystic in Kerr County – still missing.
As rescue teams continue to search for the missing, local and federal officials have come under fire over their flood preparations and about why those along the river weren’t warned of the risks sooner.
What happened?
As much as 10ins (25cm) of heavy rain fell in just a few hours overnight in central Kerr County on Friday, causing the banks of the Guadalupe River to burst at around 4am local time.
Homes and vehicles were swept away by the downpour – equivalent to months’ worth of rain – while 27 girls staying at Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along the river, went missing when the fast-rising floodwaters hit.
The death toll stands at:
• At least 43 people, including 15 children and 28 adults, in Kerr County,
• One person in Kendall County,
• At least four people in Travis County,
• At least two in Burnet County,
• And one person in the city of San Angelo.
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What flood warnings were there?
Private forecasting company AccuWeather said it and the National Weather Service (NWS) sent warnings about potential flash flooding hours before it began, urging people to move to higher ground and evacuate flood-prone areas.
The NWS also issued flash flood emergencies – a rare alert notifying of imminent danger – at 4.23am local time.
In a statement, AccuWeather said that “these warnings should have provided officials with ample time to evacuate camps such as Camp Mystic and get people to safety”.
It also called Texas Hill County one of the most flash-flood-prone areas of the US because of its terrain and many water crossings.
However, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management Nim Kidd said that one NWS forecast earlier in the week had called for up to six inches of rain.
“It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw,” he said.
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Were they enough?
Locals have told various news agencies that while there had been phone alerts late into the night, forecasts headed into Friday evening did not predict the extreme conditions.
Christopher Flowers, who was staying at a friend’s house along the river when the flooding started, told the Reuters news agency: “What they need is some kind of external system, like a tornado warning that tells people to get out now.”
Kerrville resident Darryl Huffman told Sky’s US partner network NBC News that he did not believe the storm would pose such danger before its arrival.
“I looked out the window and it was barely sprinkling outside,” he said, “so I had no indication that the river was going to be right outside my driveway”.
Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at AccuWeather, said it appeared evacuations and other proactive measures could have been undertaken to reduce the risk of fatalities.
He said in a statement: “People, businesses, and governments should take action based on Flash Flood Warnings that are issued, regardless of the rainfall amounts that have occurred or are forecast.”
Separately, the NWS’s union told NBC News the agency’s offices in central Texas were well-staffed and had issued timely warnings, “giving preliminary lead times of more than three hours before warning criteria were met”.
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What have officials said?
Local and federal officials have said they had not expected such an intense downpour of rain and insisted that no one saw the flood potential coming.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s top elected official, said: “We know we get rain. We know the river rises. But nobody saw this coming.”
“We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States,” he said, adding: “We had no reason to believe this was going to be anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever.”
Mr Kelly separately noted that while the county considered a flood warning system along the river that would have functioned like a tornado warning siren about six or seven years ago, “the public reeled at the cost”.
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At a news conference with the Texas governor, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem said on Saturday that “everybody knows that the weather is extremely difficult to predict” before saying “we have all wanted more time and more warning and more alerts and more notification” from the NWS.
She said a “moderate” flood watch issued on Thursday by the NWS had not accurately predicted the extreme rainfall and said the Trump administration was working to upgrade their technology.
Will forecasting get better?
While Ms Noem said technology for the NWS would be upgraded, the White House has previously been criticised after Donald Trump‘s administration ordered 800 job cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – the parent organisation of the NWS.
A 30% cut to its budget is also in the pipeline, subject to approval by Congress.
Professor Costa Samaras, who worked on energy policy at the White House under President Joe Biden, said NOAA had been in the middle of developing new flood maps for neighbourhoods and that cuts to NOAA were “devastating”.
