Front Burner - Did the Texas floods have to be this deadly?

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

Search efforts continue in central Texas after extraordinary flash flooding killed more than 100 people. As the death toll rises, questions are growing about whether local, state and federal authorities should have done more to warn residents, and help them get to safety.The disaster is also placing fresh scrutiny on the Trump administration's enormous cuts to the federal bodies involved in disaster alerts and relief, including the National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Many are wondering what this means for the next time disaster strikes.Today we're joined by Emily Foxhall, a climate reporter with the Texas Tribune.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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Hi everyone, I'm Jamie Poisson. In central Texas tonight, a catastrophic flood emergency. The flooding began in the very early hours of Friday, July the 4th, when most Texans were still asleep in their beds. The massive rainfall sent water gushing down the Guadalupe River, causing it to rise 26 feet in just 45 minutes. The water swept away cars, houses, and people. One survivor called it a black wall of death.

Tonight, battling the heat, mud, and misery, they're looking for any signs of life. Search and rescue teams on the Guadalupe River furiously combing through massive mountains of debris. About 160 people are still missing, and more than 100 have been confirmed dead, including 27 campers and counselors from a Christian girls camp. Search and rescue teams say they're finding bodies up in trees, including at least one of the girls from Camp Mystic. We found two young girls up near the hunt store and then about 10 o'clock we found another little girl wrapped up in debris in a tree.

At the time that we taped this, on Tuesday, five campers and one counselor were still missing. I think while it was going on, I kind of felt like a sense of numbness. Saying it out loud is making me realize what actually happened and how... 13-year-old Stella Thompson, one of the survivors of Camp Mystic, spoke to NBC Dallas, Fort Worth. She was staying in a cabin on higher ground, and they slowly learned what happened

to the campers down by the river. Eventually, when we got that news, we were all hysterical and praying a lot, and the whole cabin was like really, really terrified. But not for ourselves. Questions are now being raised about whether local state and federal authorities did enough to warn people in the flood's path and get them out in time. And what the Trump administration's massive cuts to both the National Weather

Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, could mean for the next time disaster strikes somewhere else in the country. Today I'm speaking with Emily Foxhall. She's a climate reporter at the Texas Tribune. Emily Foxhall, climate reporter, Texas Tribune Emily, hi. Thank you very much for making the time. I know you're very busy right now.

Hi. Thanks for your interest. So I understand that you are from Houston and you have reported on many natural disasters there. And just on a personal level, what's been going through your head the past couple of days as this terrible tragedy, this disaster has unfolded? Yeah, that's right. I've been a reporter in Houston for about 10 years now, and I've covered my fair share of hurricanes and tropical storms. Witnessing those events is always really difficult as a reporter because you see people who lose everything.

You know, I remember interviewing people who lost their wedding dress or their family Bible, and, um, you start to see people grappling with just the power that weather can have and the vulnerability of the places that we live. So covering flash flooding on a river is a little different for me. I mean, this happened a lot faster, um, but it's definitely pulling at my heart in the same way. You know, you see people kind of taken aback by how powerful the river became and how much

damage was left in its wake. So yeah, it's definitely been an emotional time for a lot of people here in Texas. LESLIE KENDRICK In particular, this girls camp, Camp Mystic, where we're at least 27 people have been killed, mostly children, very young, children, I think, like eight to 10-year-old girls. What kinds of reactions have you been hearing from Texans to that incredible tragedy? Yeah, this is one, you know, I grew up in a community where people I went to school with went to camp there, they went to other camps along that river.

So there's a lot of people I know just from growing up who are grieving, not necessarily because they knew someone who died, though many people did. There's also just kind of this loss of a place that they held dear, you know, like grief, I think, knowing there's something about like the innocence of camp and the fact that this happened to such young girls, like you mentioned, in a time of life that for many was one of their happiest memories that I think is adding to the tragedy. It really just like strikes at the core of this community. Yeah.

I've seen a couple of pictures going around of those little girls at camp. Yeah. I've been thinking about them so much. Judge Rob Kelly, the highest elected official in Kerr County, where the worst flooding happened, said on Saturday, and where this camp is, right? Said on Saturday that they didn't see this coming.

Everyone here, if we could have warned them, we would have done so. And we didn't even have a warning. When I checked it about 8 o'clock that night, there's a chance of rain. But I did not see a flood warning. I did not receive a flood notification. I did not receive a flood notification. Some local and state officials have said that the forecast didn't adequately prepare them

for the amount of rainfall they received, but the National Weather Service said that the forecasts were as good as they could be. We are a couple of days out here. What are we learning about what really happened here? What warnings did the National Weather Service put out and when and where did things break down in terms of alerting people on the ground and how dangerous, about how dangerous the situation was? Yeah, I've been talking to weather experts the last few days and what I have learned

from them is that they feel that the National Weather Service, in this case, did everything they could have done on Thursday afternoon. So that was before, you know, well before the flooding happened. They put out a watch, which covered multiple counties. And it's intended to sort of indicate that flooding could happen, that the ingredients are there for a flood to come. And that's meant to warn local officials to kind of keep an eye out, you know, like there might not be flooding, but it's it's worth keeping a watch on the weather. And then it wasn't until late, you know, in the middle of the night at 1 14, that the Weather Service pushed out their first warning. And that's what would

have triggered these kind of emergency alerts to go to cell phones and weather radios to begin to alert people that the flooding is occurring or about to occur. And those alerts were just to be clear, they would go out to cell phones. Right, it's possible that you could turn your cell phone off. You could turn off the warnings on your cell phone so you don't receive them. And it's a question so remains about who had cell service. So exactly how many people received

them isn't really clear at this point. Right, because I could see, I see at 403 a.m. the National Weather Service sends out a text that says, this is that and this is in all caps, particularly dangerous situation, seek higher ground now! But it's possible that many people wouldn't have seen that because it was at 4 a.m. and also because they might not have cell service or like had turned off their phones. Yeah, I think to me where I have just been really trying to ask a lot of questions is, you know, if this first warning went out at 1.14 in the morning and the first reports of water across low, you know, low water crossings came in around 4.30. So the Weather Service

has said, you know, that's 201 minutes that elapsed between the first warning and the first reports of flooding. And we have so many questions about what was happening in that timeframe. Do you know what was happening? Like, do you know what local authorities might have been doing at that time? Were they trying to, like, let's just use this campus as a place to live? Or were they trying to, like, let's just use this campus as a place to live? Or were they trying to, like, let's just use this campus as a place to live? Do you know what was happening? Like do you know what local authorities might have been doing at that time?

Were they trying to like, let's just use this camp as an example. Were they trying to get in touch with the camp and talk to the people running it? We have been trying very hard to figure this out. The county judge, the county sheriff, the emergency management coordinator have not responded to our requests for comment. What we have found is, so after about an hour and a half after that 4.03, so we're at 5.30 now, the forecasters pushed out the second flash flood emergency, and that was saying this quote large and deadly flood wave end quote was heading down the river. And it's around that time, around 530, that we start to see the Kerr County Sheriff's

Office and the Kerr County Facebook pages have warnings on them about river flooding. So that's kind of like the first sign that I have been able to find so far of public warnings coming from the county. And do we know, like, so my understanding is that the campers who perished in this flood were in cabins very close to the river, right? And so do we know when the water consumed those cabins? And when that was in relation to when that alert

telling people to move to higher ground went out at 403 or when the alerts coming from the sheriff's office started going out at 530? That's what we're starting to look at today. I think it's a question on a lot of people's minds of who knew what when and who, you know, who was able to get the message. But I think, you know, I've been talking to a lot of experts about they call it this last mile problem. I mean, it's a commonly understood issue in weather forecasting that the weather forecasters are gaining this

understanding of the severity of the storm, right? Like it takes time to be able to pinpoint exactly where these things are going to hit and cause damage. And as they're pushing out these alerts, there's always a question of like, who is listening on the other side? And there's a lot of issues about the way that this happened that people describe. It was really sort of a nightmare scenario. The fact that it happened at night while people were asleep, it happened on a holiday when there's a lot of visitors from out of town who might not be familiar

with the possible danger. And as we're sort of talking about the speed at which the river rose, these all add up to make the problem of getting the warning out to people even more challenging than something, you know, it can be hard even in a hurricane when you have days of notice to get the word out to everyone you need. SHARA Well, just on that point, I know that many of the surrounding counties have outdoor sirens to warn of floods, right?

This area of Texas is known as Flash Flood Alley, but Kerr County doesn't have these sirens. The camp did not have these sirens. And Judge Kelly from Kerr County told media that it's something that's been broached many times, but they haven't gotten one because quote, taxpayers won't pay for it. Lieutenant Governor of Texas now said yesterday. Had we had sirens along this area, up and down, it's possible that that would have saved some of these lives. And at another meeting, a different official saying, the thought of our beautiful Kerr

County, having these damn sirens going off in the middle of the night, I'm going to have to start drinking again. But the only, as we've talked about, you know, the warnings that were going out were from cell phones. And just do people think that a more robust flood warning systems that included sirens would have done more for people there, especially for, again, just to focus on those campers as well. Yeah, I think that's going to be a huge question going forward. It's been interesting for me

because I was talking with someone yesterday who said, you know, even sirens might not be enough, like sirens are outside, they can go off and if you're inside, you might not hear them. I've been really interested in there's weather radios that you can buy that will apparently turn on and just blare alarms at you when these weather service alerts that are severe enough trigger. So those are not very expensive and seem like something that officials might have or

people in the area might want to have. So I think there's a lot of different ways these response systems can look, but clearly in this case, yeah, it seems that the warnings didn't reach Yeah, it seems that the warnings didn't reach people with enough time. We're all looking for great places to visit in Canada. One of my favorites is the Stratford Festival. The theater is truly of the highest caliber and there's so much selection. They have 11 large-scale shows on stage and trust me, whatever is on when you're there will be exceptional. People always think Shakespeare when they think of Stratford, but it's so much more. Broadway musicals, family shows, classic comedy and drama.

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When debt's got you, you've got us. Give Credit Counseling Society a call today. Visit nomordets.org. We're talking about this warning system. There are a lot of questions around that, but there are also a lot of questions that have been raised around cuts, like staffing and resource cuts. Meantime, the government's climate and weather agency, NOAA, is laying off 5% of its staff.

Now that's about 600 positions. After the Trump administration laid off workers and offered buyouts and early retirement packages in order to shrink the federal service. And as you said, the forecast was as good as maybe could be expected. But beyond the forecast themselves, there's coordination issues. And former National Weather Service officials have told the New York Times

that those cuts meant that there was an absence of crucial people who could have, who would have helped coordinate with local emergency services in Texas. And just, can you talk to me more about some of the cuts at the NWS and their parent organization, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, and the concerns that they could have impacted the response to these floods? Sure. I think that's definitely been on a lot of people's minds. In this case, we've been told that there were actually extra staff working during this event because they kind of saw, well before this flooding happened, they saw the potential was there. So it doesn't seem like staffing during the event was a problem

as we understand it. But as you've noted, the Weather Service offices have lost staff in this local office for the San Antonio Austin region. That was forecasting for this, was certainly missing staff as well. And one of the people who retired is this position, I think you're sort of referring to, it's called the warning coordination meteorologist. And it's that person's job to kind of build these relationships with the community and educate, you know, this issue between a watch and a warning and that can be very confusing and sort of helping people to understand what that means and what should happen in those cases. That was a person with a long time career in meteorology and he retired in April. So some people have said, you know, he would have laid the groundwork for an event like

this. It's not like that much time had passed between April and now. So I'm not hearing a whole lot of concern about that with this event in particular, but, you know, the weather doesn't just stop after something bad happens. So there's certainly concern moving forward about what cuts to important positions like that and vacancies could mean. More institutional knowledge at the door. For sure.

Maybe worth noting here, Trump was asked after the floods, whether he would hire back any of the federal workers that were cut from the National Weather Service. And he said that he would not. Experts have also been pointing to cuts at FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as a concern that's really being highlighted by this current tragedy. We know that FEMA was activated to provide support

for these floods, but its future isn't jeopardy. Trump said that he would start phasing FEMA out by the end of this hurricane season. And we want to bring it down to the state level. A little bit like education, we're moving it back to the states so the governors can handle it. That's why they're governors now. If they can't handle it, they shouldn't be governor. If the responsibility of disaster response fell only on the state's shoulders, would Texas have been able to handle what happened this week? There's certainly been a lot of concern among the people I talked to about if FEMA is cut

entirely what that would look like, especially with hurricanes and other kind of very damaging, very expensive to recover from events. I've certainly been talking to people in recent weeks who are watching closely to see what happens with the decisions around FEMA. It's sort of a situation where we don't really quite know yet where the funding cuts are going to come.

I wanted to ask you about this bill that Texas lawmakers failed to pass that actually would have improved the state's emergency response plans and also called for the adoption of new emergency warning systems, including outdoor sirens, like those used in more tornado-prone parts of the state. I saw one state representative, Wes Virdle, told your colleagues at the Texas Tribune that after he's seen what it takes to deal with a disaster like this, he probably would have voted differently. MS. VIRDLE Yeah, that's right. My colleagues had a story looking at how this bill would have really helped improve disaster response for the state and create a sort of grant program to help counties buy emergency

equipment. And this representative couldn't remember why he opposed it, but he thought it might have had something to do with how much funding was tied to it. So I think, you know, get in light of this disaster that just happened, it'll be something we'll watch to see if a bill like this comes forward again. I know I don't need to tell you how vulnerable Texas is to extreme weather events. Texas has had more weather disasters costing over a billion dollars than any other state in the country, in the U.S. Just in recent memory, there's been Hurricane Harvey. Tonight, greater Houston remains paralyzed severe winter storms in 2021. 36 more deaths right into the death toll, bringing the number to 246 people, most of those from hypothermia.

And so what makes Texas particularly vulnerable to these kinds of events? Yeah, I tell people sometimes it feels like we're sort of living on the front line of climate change. Obviously a huge part of the state is along the coastline, including me here in Houston, and climate change is making hurricanes more likely to be stronger. So that adds to the vulnerability here. Heat is another big problem we write a lot about. Temperatures are rising because of climate change. And so yeah, I think a lot about temperatures are rising because of climate change. So yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with our geography, but as I think more and more people are understanding, there isn't really such a thing as a climate haven.

It's just here in Texas, we've gotten our fair share of these weather disasters, and I think it's had people here talking more and more and thinking more and more about how to adapt and live and protect themselves in an environment like this or, you know, making choices about whether they want to live somewhere else where the risk is different. Have those conversations translated to sort of concrete changes that either the government is making there or that individual people

who choose to stay there are making? Sure. You definitely see it on individual levels. Some people who can afford it will buy power generators to help them through disasters when the power gets cut. There are homes you will see in the Houston region and other flood-prone areas that are kind of built up on stilts or just built up really high now.

I think a lot of sort of flood protection mitigation conversations are happening on the local and regional level. It just, again, brings up lots of questions about how much risk people are willing to live with and how much they're willing to pay to protect themselves. And there's this whole other issue, you know, of course, about equity, about who can afford to make these changes

on an individual level and who kind of gets left behind. And then I suppose too, how much government money, you know, the people and also the government are willing to put behind this. Like I'm just wondering from a political perspective, what kind of political roadblocks you might see for the state. I say this in part because Governor Greg Abbott has refused to use the term climate change in reference to natural

disasters and instead uses the term extreme weather events. You ask, I'm going to use your words. Who's to blame? Know this. That's the word choice of losers. Let me explain one thing. The state has repeatedly resisted legislation having to do with mitigating the effects of climate change. And of course, we talked just now about that bill that didn't pass. Sure, yeah. Climate change is not a phrase you hear used by Texas legislatures very often. And sometimes I think it is these weather disasters that sort of get everyone thinking

about it a little bit more. So certainly for us, we try to follow any lawmaking that comes out of these disasters. And we're also looking for what doesn't happen, what decisions aren't made. But I spent a lot of time last summer covering Hurricane Barrel, which sort of wiped out the power infrastructure here in the Houston region.

There were millions of people without power for days. You start to think about, there's the reaction to the event itself, and then there's these bigger questions about what needs to be done for systems as a whole or what needs to be done for the state or the region as a whole. It'll be done for the state or the region as a whole. And it'll be important for us at the Texas Tribune to be watching to see if those larger conversations happen now.

AMT – Emily, thank you very much for this. We really appreciate it. EM – Thank you. Jamie Pauwesphong That is all for today. I'm Jamie Pauwesphong. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.