Kerrville, Texas (AP) -Before he went to bed before the fourth July holiday, Christopher Flowers checked it again while staying in the house of a friend past the Guadalupe River. Nothing in the prediction has alerted him.
Hours later he hurried to safety: he woke up in the dark by electric sockets and the popping of ankle-deep water. His family quickly scrambled nine people to the attic. Phones with reports, flowers remembered on Saturday, but he did not remember when they started in the chaos.
“What they need is a kind of external system, such as a tornado -warning that tells people to go out now,” said Flowers, 44.
The destructive fast -moving waters that started before sunrise on Friday in the Texas Hill Country killed at least 32 people, said the authorities on Saturday and an unknown number of people remained missing. Those who are not yet responsible for 27 girls from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along a river in Kerr County where most people were recovered.
But while the authorities are launching one of the largest search and rescue efforts in the recent history of Texas, they are under intensifying control over preparations and why residents and summer camps in the youth that have been littered along the river were not previously warned or told to evacuate.
The National Weather Service sent a series of flash flow warnings on Friday before expressing the emergency situations of the flood – a rare alert report of threatening danger.
Local officials have insisted that no one saw the potential of flood coming and defended their actions.
“There will be many fingers, many second councils and on Monday morning quarterbacking,” said Republican American Rep. Chip Roy, whose district contains Kerr County. “There are many people who say 'why' and 'how' and I understand that.”
When the warnings started
A first flood watch – which generally encourages residents to be aware – was published on Thursday at 1:18 pm local time by the local National Weather Service Office.
The predicted rain amounts between 5 and 7 inches (12.7 to 17.8 centimeters). Weather reports of the office, including automated warnings that were delivered to mobile phones to people in endangered areas, became increasingly ominating in the early morning hours of Friday and urged people to move to higher terrain and evacuating flood -sensitive areas, said Jason Runyen, a meteorologist.
At 4:03 am the office gave an urgent warning that increased the potential of catastrophic damage and a serious threat to human life.
Jonathan Porter, the main meteorologist at AccuWeather, a private weather forecast company that uses data from the National Weer Services, said that it could have been taken to evacuations and other proactive measures to reduce the risk of fatalities.
“People, companies and governments must take action on the basis of the flashy warnings issued, regardless of the precipitation amounts that have taken place or are predicted,” Porter said in a statement.
Local officials have said that they did not expect such an intense downpour that it was equivalent of months of rain for the area.
“We know we get rain. We know that the river is rising,” said Judge Rob Kelly of Kerr County, the best chosen officer in the province. “But nobody saw this coming.”
Kelly said the county of a flood warning system along the river considered that about six or seven years ago would have functioned as a Tornado -warning siren, before he was chosen, but that the idea never got off the ground because of the costs.
“We looked at it earlier … The public has focused on the costs,” said Kelly.
Hundreds of saves
Gov. Greg Abbott from Texas said on Saturday that the enormous reaction to the floods had led to saving and repairing more than 850 people, including some who cling to trees.
Dozens of people in and along the river were brought to safety by helicopter, including girls in Camp Mystic.
Kelly said he did not know what kind of safety and evacuation plans the camps have had.
“What I do know is that the flood first touches the camp, and it came in the middle of the night. I don't know where the children were,” he said. “I don't know what kind of alarm systems they had. That will come out on time.”
The American secretary of Homeland Security Kristi mentioned on Saturday that it was difficult for predictors to predict how much rain would fall. She said that the Trump administration would make it a priority to upgrade the technology of the National weather service that was used to give warnings.
“We know that everyone wants more warning time, and that is why we are working on upgrading the technology that has been neglected too long to ensure that families have as much advance as possible,” said during a press conference with state and federal leaders.
Weather service had extra staff members
The National Weather Service Office in New Braunfels, which provides predictions for Austin, San Antonio and the surrounding areas, had extra staff during the storm, Runyen said.
Where the office would usually have two task predictors during clear weather, they had a maximum of five staff.
“There were extra people here that evening, and that is typical in every Weather Service Office – you staff for an event and puts people employs and leaves people,” said Runyen.
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Murphy reported from Oklahoma City.
