Tragedy in Texas. Avoidable?

Why did so many die in Kerr County Texas?

The death toll estimate now significantly exceeds 100, by how much will not be certain for a few days yet. That is the amount of time it will take to find those still missing. Searchers will keep searching, parents will keep hoping, but with every passing hour hope of finding missing people alive diminishes.

For more than 100 people to die from a rainfall event in a sparcely populated area of a wealthy country is very. The Kerr County deaths may well exceed those in Hurricane Sandy, a well-predicted storm that affected one of the most densely populated areas of the US. Many of the Sandy deaths were people you would not or could not evacuate despite clear and persistent warnings. Warnings in Kerr County were neither clear nor persistent. There was no "would not" involved. "Could not", perhaps. "Didn't know I should" seems more accurate.

Flash floods are notoriously difficult to predict as specific, individual events. Of the many types of natural disasters it is earthquakes that are actually the very least predictable. They give no warning so there is little chance of escape. Death tolls are typically very high if they affect urban settings. By contrast hurricanes and most other meteorological events can be tracked for several days before they make landfall and evacuation is usually possible, especially in developed coutries where there is a highway infrastructure and most people own cars. Death tolls from meteorological extremes in developed countries should be relatively small. If they are not there is reason to ask whether something "went wrong".

Flash floods are a bit like tornadoes. We know the general meteorological conditions required to create a tornado, but it is almost impossible to say just where a given tornado will form, when and how severe it will be. Lighning is somewhat the same. You need a storm to have lightening. It never strikes from a clear sky. But we can never know when and where lightening will strike. And lightening is changing. It is now common in the Arctic where it was previously unknown.

So, we do know the conditions in which to expect flash floods, while we don't know exactly when or where one will occur. The conditions in the Kerr county region were conducive to flash flooding and meteorologists knew it. The shape of the land surface contributes to the development of flash flooding in a more important way than for tornadoes or lightening, and it doesn't change much, at least not by natural processes. The topographic conditions vary by locality, but steep slopes that funnel rain water into narrow valleys amplifies the likelihood of a flash floods associated with heavy rains. Mystic (girls) Camp was located on the banks of the Guadalupie River in a region known as Flash Flood Alley, the Flash Flood cousin to Tornado Alley. That tells you immediately that there is experience with flash. The thirty year average for annual tornado (not single event) deaths is well less than 100. More like 70. So, why did one flash flood event cause such a large number of fatalities?

Dorm room for young girls at Mystic Camp

It's natural and mayby even warrented to point fingers of blame at a time like this, and for people who might be to blame to suggest that "this is no time for finger pointing". But maybe it's exactly the right time. For some it is time to stoke comspiracy theories of how wicked people can control the climate and caused the catastrophe to punish Republicans. I won't talk about the silly stuff.

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz said on Fox News that “something went wrong”. And further “The fact that you have girls asleep in their cabins when the flood waters are rising — something went wrong there. We’ve got to fix that and have a better system of warning to get kids out of harm’s way,” If indeed something went wrong it implies that the tragedy might have been avoided.

President Trump visited the region to show how much he cared for the victims and praise the rescue workers, but when asked by a reporter if he thought something had "gone wrong" with the warning system his response was to descrine the question itself and the questioner as "evil". That has to make Sen. Cruz evil as well.

Something did go wrong and it wasn't in the forecasting. A skeleton crew of National Weather Service people, the remnants of a robust agency, who remained after it was slaughtered by the Trump/Musk ideological marouders that had pillaged NOAA, understood very well that the conditions were evolving quickly to those in which flash floods were very likely, and then on to when flash floods were more or less certain, Conditions for flash floods evolved rapidly, but they were on it.

What went wrong was the inabilty to transmit that information to people in danger. If you had a NOAA warning app on your phone and were up at 4am in Muystic Camp you might have been warned. The system is called the Wireless Emergency Alert WEA, and it works. Here in New York I have received several in advance of severe weather, and they are always right; no false alarms. But in addition what should be in place are warning sirens. They are just as they sound. They blast a tremendous obnocious signal that would wake the dead, not just teenage girls at a Christian summer camp. Similar systems are in place for tsunami warnings on the west coast. They include road signs that indicate where higher land can be found. It's not always obvious if you are not a local and it is pitch black in the middle of the night. It's hard to know north from south or up from down. Pretty simple--sirens and signs. Apparently local authorities in Kerr county had requested funding for such a system and were declined. Too expensive!

What is the value of a lost life? The so-called Value of a Statistical Life estimated by FEMA from revealed preferences is $7.5 million. Twenty seven young girls died at Mystic. 27 multiplied by 7.5 is 202.5. 130 might be the total deaths so, multiplied by 7.5 is 975. Nine hundred and seventy five million dollars of lives have been lost. Let's just call it a billion.

Was the cost of the warning system anywhere near a billion dollars? We have not been given the cost. Whatever it was it was apparently too much for local government to manage, perhaps genuinely so. The value of the Texas economy is around $2.7 trillion, the value of the US economy is about $25 trillion. It is the role of State and Federal governments to step in when local governments cannot cope. Clearly Texas or the US could have funded a warning system. A billion dollars worth of humans is around .0004 of the Texas economy.

It will take a while to find exactly who the finger should be pointed at, and very likely it is not one entity or individual. We can't duck out of it by callingit an act of God. What did 27 early teen Christian girls do to enrage God? It is obscene to say that God had a purpose and works in mysterious ways and some day we will understand why the girls died.

Events like these don't have simple causation. Physics can explain some of it but only some. We must find out what went wrong, not so much who should be pilaried for it, but so that it will not happen again.