We all know that the flood situation in Kerr County, Texas, and all around the Texas Hill Country is one of the worst we’ve seen ever. While a lot of people are assisting with the rescue efforts, even those outside of the country, there’s still a lot to do. However, it seems that most of what happened could’ve been avoided if the Kerr County authorities had listened to the warnings. It seems that the NWS sent a lot of alerts to Kerr County officials, and the locals didn’t send any push alerts. Instead, they decided to post everything on Facebook—four hours later.
The clip originates from Redditor VacationSea28, which was originally posted by Fox7Austin. According to the press conference with a judge in Kerr County, the NWS issued numerous warnings to the locals, prompting them to evacuate the area around the Guadalupe River. Instead, they did nothing.
In the clip, you can hear one man telling the judge, “Why weren’t these camps evacuated? Texas Department of Emergency Management put out an all-call and said there’s gonna be a problem.” The judge simply replies, “I can’t answer that. I don’t know.” The reporter continues to ask why the judge can’t answer that until the official says, “We didn’t know this flood was coming. No one knew this kind of flood was coming. We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States. We deal with floods on a regular basis. When it rains, we get water.“
However, the top comment in the Reddit post says the following:
“The NWS warned them. The locals didn’t put the warnings on their Facebook pages until four hours later. Facebook pages. Not a push alert to every phone in the county. Facebook.” – EternalGhandi via Reddit.
As you can imagine, people are beyond angry. Many cite that everyone gets a push alert for other things that aren’t too important. But for the Kerr County floods and those beyond? Nothing.
A lot of people have shared their thoughts on the event and asked those affected to sue the officials who did a poor job of alerting the community.
“Wtf?? No mass push notification alert?! That is damn criminal. I hope families who lost loved ones sue the local officials who did not put out a phone alert to everyone in these affected areas.” – Feisty_Bee9175 via Reddit.
“Guessing the judge had a brisket on the smoker and didn’t want his 4-day weekend to be interrupted. He should face criminal charges.” – No_Amoeba_9272 via Reddit.
It is sad to see authorities and other officials not preparing for these situations. If the judge and everyone else were already aware of the river’s dangers, they could have taken safety measures to prevent a tragedy.
