Texas Hill Country under flood watch as search continues for missing people

Yahoo

a day ago

Texas Hill Country was back under a flood watch on Saturday, with the National Weather Service warning of 'locally heavy rainfall' of 1-3in with isolated amounts close to 6in possible.
The flood watch, which continues through Sunday evening, comes as the death toll from the 4 July flood continues to rise – now at nearly 130 people - and authorities continue their search for the 160 more who are missing.
The latest warnings anticipate considerably less rain than what came down last week, which caused the Guadalupe River to rise 29ft in 45 minutes.
The Texas division of emergency management had mobilized before the storm, but its assets were not focused exclusively on Texas Hill Country. The storm alerts that were issued before and during the storm, in an area of patchy cellphone service, are now the subject of scrutiny.
On Saturday, the Associated Press reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic's buildings from its 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous floodplain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors.
Fema had included the prestigious girls' summer camp in a 'special flood hazard area' on its national flood insurance map for Kerr county in 2011, which meant it was required to have flood insurance and faced tighter regulation on any future construction projects.
That designation means an area is likely to be inundated during a 100-year flood – one severe enough that it only has a 1% chance of happening in any given year.
The 4 July flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by Fema, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off-guard in a county that lacked a warning system.
Syracuse University associate professor Sarah Pralle, who has extensively studied Fema's flood map determinations, said it was 'particularly disturbing' that a camp in charge of the safety of so many young people would receive exemptions from basic flood regulation.
'It's a mystery to me why they weren't taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk, let alone challenging what seems like a very reasonable map that shows these structures were in the 100-year flood zone,' she said.
Pralle told the AP that some of the exempted properties were within 2ft (0.6 meters) of Fema's floodplain by the camp's revised calculations, which she said left almost no margin for error. She said her research shows that Fema approves about 90% of map amendment requests, and the process may favor the wealthy and well-connected.
Experts say Camp Mystic's requests to amend the Fema map could have been an attempt to avoid the requirement to carry flood insurance, lower the camp's insurance premiums or pave the way for renovating or adding new structures under less costly regulations.
Related: Trump cuts questioned as role of Fema in Texas highlights agency's importance in natural disaster response
In a statement, Fema downplayed the significance of the flood map amendments to the AP: 'Flood maps are snapshots in time designed to show minimum standards for floodplain management and the highest risk areas for flood insurance. They are not predictions of where it will flood, and they don't show where it has flooded before.'
While Texas officials and Donald Trump have been resistant to questions about any failures to forewarn of the impending flood – queries that have largely been put to one side as local and state recovery teams, along with thousands of volunteers, work in and alongside the river to find the missing – the Washington Post reported that Kerr county had the technology to turn every cellphone in the river valley into a loud alarm.
But the mass notification system, known as the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, or Ipaws, was not activated and emergency managers in the county relied on a series of text messages for alerts.
Trump visited the area on Friday, telling first responders that he and Melania Trump, the first lady, were there to 'express the love and support and anguish of our entire nation'.
'So all across the country, Americans' hearts are shattered,' he said. 'We're filled with grief and devastation. It's the loss of life and, unfortunately, they're still looking.'
Trump said two things had struck him: the 'unity' of Texans and the 'competence' of those responding to the disaster.
'Everyone has just pulled together, it's rare that you see this,' he said.