Today, Explained - Texas blame game

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Dozens of people were swept away by flash floods in Texas this weekend. The finger-pointing has already begun. This episode was produced by Denise Guerra and Peter Balanon-Rosen, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Gabrielle Berbey and Miles Bryan, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. A search and rescue worker looks through debris along the Guadalupe River in central Texas. Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good morning everyone, good morning, good morning. Relax, relax, relax. In Texas, officials are facing hard questions about why so many people were in the path of floods that inundated parts of Kerr County this weekend. As of 8.30 this morning, we recovered 75 deceased bodies here in Kerr County, including 48 adults and 27 children. Many of the victims were children because that area is home to a bunch of summer camps. Someone told me that when they were walking

around campgrounds, that they saw that cabin five, their wall had fallen over. And my door flooded away. What went so wrong here? Did the weather alert system fail? Did cuts to the National Weather Service leave critical jobs unstaffed? We've got some answers coming up on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Adio.

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adio.com slash today explained to get 15% off your first year. That's attio.com slash today explained. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. You're listening to Today Explained. I'm Dominic Anthony Walsh. I'm a senior reporter with Houston Public Media, the NPR station in Houston. It seems like the big story now is the search for people who are still missing.

Where do things stand there? Yeah, so we know how many children were at some of the popular summer camps. For example, Camp Mystic had 750 kids, the majority are accounted for. But we don't know exactly how many people were camping along the river. So officials have been reluctant to estimate the total number of missing people. They said over the weekend that more than 850 had been rescued, and first responders of course have discovered dozens of bodies. Officials are holding out hope that they'll still find people alive, but I mean they're

really hoping against hope. It's been, as we're speaking, more than 72 hours since the flooding. At some point, this will turn from search and rescue to recovery. What does search and rescue actually look like for people who aren't there? What is happening on the ground? Yeah, I mean, so if you drive or walk along the Guadalupe River, you will see and hear helicopters flying overhead, swift water rescue boats behind trucks loading into the river. So people on foot, people in boat, people in helicopters. Authorities also have drones in the air. So a lot of activity on the ground.

So you have, from what I'm seeing, you have official first responders, but you also have people looking for their family members? Yes, and local authorities have asked people to not self-deploy. Understandably, some people are very anxious to find their loved ones, so we absolutely have seen people just walking along the river. It gets dangerous. We had a flash flood warning in effect last night. And authorities have basically said that folks self-deploying complicates their work, and they have encouraged people to not do that.

It's not that we think we don't need any help. It's that we want to make sure everyone helping is doing the job that we need, where we need it, and when we need it, and we have the ability to communicate with them. What is the latest on these children from Camp Mystic who are missing, these girls? Right, there were 750 girls at this nearly century old summer camp right on the river.

Camp Mystic this morning confirmed that 27 campers and counselors have been found dead. The camp director, Dick Eastland, was found dead on Saturday, reportedly near the bodies of three girls. Initially they were saying 27 people were missing. That statement this morning says 27 people were dead. So the majority of them at this point are accounted for. Let's go back to the early hours of July 4th when the flooding started. What were the warnings like? What advance notice did people get? Yeah, the timeline starts as early as Wednesday.

Yeah, the timeline starts as early as Wednesday. That's when the state's emergency management division mobilized Swiftwater rescue teams in anticipation of flooding. On Thursday afternoon, the National Weather Service issued a flood watch, which is essentially warning that a flood is possible. That was followed by a flood warning just after midnight, so saying that floods are happening. And after 5am, it announced a flash flood emergency, the highest alert level. The Washington Post looked at federal logs of emergency alerts, and it turns out the local government did not issue its first amber alert-style warning until Sunday, so two days after the flooding. Questions remain about why that wait happened.

And the actual timeline of the flooding was just so fast. Between 4 and 6 in the morning, the Guadalupe River rose as much as 30 feet. In most segments, that rise happened in less than an hour. That affected homes along the river where residents were shocked awake by the floodwaters. This is a popular area for camping and it was a holiday so the flooding washed away campers and RVs. Trees were pulled from the roots, cars swept downstream along with an undetermined number of people and the consistent theme I heard from folks was that they just did not have warning.

They did not know this was coming until the floodwaters hit them. We lost everything, but we have our lives. Oh, bless, yes. It was very difficult to get out of the house. We couldn't push the door open with all the water that just came within five minutes. And my neighbor up the hill helped my husband with a rope around his waist. He has Parkinson's.

And like many of us, we lost everything inside the home. But we have our lives. In terms of where the warnings come from, who is actually pushing those alerts? Is it the National Weather Service? Is it the local government? If I were there and my phone was to sound an alarm, who would it come from? There are two levels of responsibility, the National Weather Service and the local government. The National Weather Service did send alerts in the middle of the night, but according to an analysis by the Washington Post, the local government didn't send any

alerts until Sunday, so significantly after the floodwaters hit. Residents I spoke with said they didn't know what was coming until the floodwaters reached their homes. And of course, campers along the river didn't know until they were swept away. You've been out in the field talking to people who live in this area, including people who are looking for family members. What do you feel like you're hearing again and again? What's sticking with you? So as soon as I got into town, my first stop was the reunification centers and the supply depots. They were together.

The reunification centers were also serving as supply depots. And I spoke with folks dropping off supplies, like resident Marissa Baldwin and her son Hudson. They were pulling a cart full of blankets and towels to a supply depot. Yeah, right now we have blankets and towels. We dropped off non-perishable food earlier. I heard from them and from other residents time and time again that the small towns along the Guadalupe River form a tight community, and so the scale of this destruction hits especially hard. Yeah, I mean, it is small, and so the scale of this destruction hits especially hard.

So everyone knows someone that's been affected. We have friends that are missing, friends that were recovered last night. So everyone's just doing what they can. Kirk County is home to just over 50,000 people so everyone knows everyone. I also spent some time on Sunday in a little neighborhood called Bumblebee Hills. We have about 20 homes here at Bumblebee and they're all devastated but one house which is up on the hill. He was a refugee to everyone around here. When I stopped by, residents and volunteers were scooping out mud and ruined possessions from their homes. We did not have flood insurance, and they said they would not cover not one thing. Folks are still in shock. They're still processing what happened, especially the people who know people who were missing,

the people who, you know, lost their homes or had their homes damaged by the floods. The mood is somber. Folks are grateful. I heard over and over again, even from the folks who lost their homes, that they're lucky to be alive. Not everybody is alive. I've been living in Houston since 2021, and we saw three major weather disasters last year.

Each time the community came together, and I saw that same spirit in Kerr County, I actually found another man from Houston who felt the same way. My name is Donnie Moser. I'm from Houston. Who was trapped in his Airbnb without food or water. Local residents took him in. He said, look, y'all need coffee and you need food. And he gave us directions to his house and said, be there at noon. We're eating and... And he said it reminds him of the way Houstonians come

together after hurricanes. This is an incredibly, incredibly sad situation, but the way people just kind of took us in and helped us and it just made us part of their family. It's just amazing. So even though there's this somber mood, there's also this community spirit. People are coming together. Dominic Anthony Walsh is a senior reporter with Houston Public Media. Dominic, thanks so much for your time. Thank you, Noel. You can find Dominic's work at houstonpublicmedia.org.

They're doing some great reporting. Coming up, did President Trump's cuts to the federal workforce play a part in this disaster? We're going to talk to a reporter who's been doing some digging. Support for today's show comes from Fireflies.ai. And if you're wondering if that's AI, yeah, it is. Fireflies.ai say that over 500,000 companies are already using Fireflies to turn their meetings into action. They offer powerful collaboration tools like real-time and up-to-date web search directly in your meetings, shareable sound bites, time-st stamped notes, and bookmarks that highlight important

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to help grow your business. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com slash S-A-V-E. Upwork.com slash save. This offer is only valid June 24th through August 5th 2025. This is Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. The mandate of the National Weather Service is a simple one to protect people and property. And right now that agency, which has been subject to cuts by the Trump administration,

is taking a lot of flak. Did Trump's cuts to the National Weather Service cause this situation in Texas? Here's what the information tells us so far. The state's emergency management chief says the amount of rain that fell was never in the weather service services forecast. What happened? Andrew Friedman, a senior reporter covering weather and climate for CNN, has been banging the phones trying to figure out who, if anyone, dropped the ball. In this instance, there were two weather forecast offices that were involved. But the idea behind

that is that these are meteorologists who are embedded in these communities, come to know these communities and the idiosyncrasies of their weather, and are better able to warn for inclement weather than say somebody just forecasting out of Washington, D.C. or somewhere else. So we're talking about two offices in Texas, and what do we know about them? Were they fully staffed? The term that I would use is they were adequately staffed.

They were staffed to the extent that most offices would be staffed overnight during the night of the horrible, tragic flooding. The... They each are missing some employees. In the case of the Austin San Antonio office, they're missing a warning coordination meteorologist and a science and operations officer. Both of those positions were opened up because people took early retirement under the Trump administration's program to try to get people to reduce the size of the federal government.

And then the office in San Angelo, Texas is missing a meteorologist in charge. So that's like the top meteorologist for the office. These staff cuts in those two particular offices do not seem to have had a major impact or even a very clear impact on the way the Weather Service performed during this event. What I think I'm hearing from you Andrew is that your reporting does not seem to suggest at this point that the disaster in Texas was caused by the Trump administration cuts.

Am I hearing that right? You are hearing that right. The missing warning coordination meteorologist in the Austin office, That's the biggest question because that position is somebody who interacts with emergency managers who are then responsible for warning the community. But when I've talked to sources they basically are saying it probably did not affect the timeliness of the warnings, the tone of the warnings, which ratcheted up very quickly, as well as how early they

caught on to this event possibly taking place. Do we know why that top meteorologist position in San Angelo was unfilled? I don't know specifically offhand. However, there are offices around the country that are without their meteorologist in charge. The National Weather Service lost about The National Weather Service lost about 600 people. They did get hit hard by doge cuts. Federal workers who were not let go said the afternoon layoffs included meteorologists who do crucial local forecasts in National Weather Service offices across the country. It is truly the backbone of all weather forecasting in this country. Every living former NWS director is warning potential funding cuts could lead to needless

loss of life. What's happened with these cuts is they're losing the most experienced people, the people who are near retirement age, are taking these packages and are leaving. And then you have to train up people who are coming in and they don't have the same level of experience. But again, when one looks at the warnings that were issued, when they were issued, there isn't really a smoking gun there. There isn't really a smoking gun there.

But there is one point that's really important here. Because the cuts have been so deep around the country, this is a question that's going to come up at every single disaster that takes place. Because the meteorologists that I've been talking to in the broader community are basically telling me this doesn't seem to be the the event that vacancies caused a tragedy but mark my words that that that will happen at some point if this isn't addressed. What are your sources worried about? They're concerned about hurricane season.

This event actually was the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry, and that rained out over inland Texas. We also just had Tropical Storm Chantel that made landfall in South Carolina and is causing flooding today and caused flooding over the weekend. So it's just this sense in the community that they're really stretched thin, that people are working longer shifts, people are working six day weeks.

We are generating kind of a Swiss cheese weather service. We have holes throughout the weather service now that are not well thought out. It is not an ideal situation. And people are worried that there is going to be a time when they miss something. But this doesn't seem to have been it. When that time comes, when a disaster hits,

FEMA is often there to pick up the pieces, to help clear up the wreckage. The Trump administration has also made cuts to FEMA. Do we know how broad those are? Yeah, the cuts to FEMA from reporting done by my colleagues really are quite broad. They really are quite deep. The administration has talked about getting rid of FEMA after the hurricane season. FEMA's turned out to be a disaster.

I think we're going to recommend that FEMA go away. However, they pretty much kind of stopped that process as Hurricane Season came upon us. Are you still planning to phase out FEMA? Well, FEMA is something we can talk about later, but right now they're busy working, so we'll leave it at that. So FEMA is active in Texas, but they lost a lot of experience. Staff, they have a shortage of the people that go out to immediately respond and immediately offer help. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is losing a fifth of its staff. We're talking about a thousand permanent full-time workers that are expected to tank the voluntary buyouts. These are of course part of Doge's latest

staff reductions. I worry a lot about how thin the situation is and the ability to get information across during what could be a very active season. These cuts are being made to the National Weather Service, FEMA, in the name of cost savings. This will save the federal government money. Does this actually save money? You know, that's a very good question. I don't know that I can answer that conclusively here, I can tell you though that there are enormous economic benefits to accurate weather forecasts. Studies have shown the savings of

billions of dollars with more accurate hurricane track forecasts, for example. And if you look at the proposals that the administration has put forward for the 2026 budget, they want to actually close every single weather and climate lab that we have in this country. So the people who are working on improving flash flood forecasts, the people who are working on improving hurricane forecasts,

and doing the research that would then lead to the forecast capabilities of tomorrow would be out of a job if that budget were enacted as proposed. All right. So your reporting suggests that staffing cuts are not the cause of the disaster in Texas. But I wonder if you have spoken to people inside the Trump administration who are now going to have to grapple with what occurred and with a popular narrative that says the Trump administration did this by cutting jobs. Do you think in some way this tragic event

makes this real for the Trump administration? I think there is an element of that. You actually saw the administration pushing back on social media over the weekend, saying the mainstream media is lying to people by saying it's due to these cuts. At DHSgov. The mainstream media is deliberately lying about the events leading up to the catastrophic flooding in Texas. The National Weather Service executed timely, precise forecasting and warnings despite unprecedented rainfall overwhelming the region. When the mainstream media, myself included, all we're doing is asking the questions that need to be asked

and then coming to the conclusion almost universally that the cuts probably were not, you know, a significant contributor to this event. The real problem that I think most weather experts have been pointing to is the so-called last mile problem, which is what happened between the times when the Weather Service pushed the button to set off emergency alerts on people's phones? Did they get these warnings? Was there any type of a warning system? What was cell phone coverage like? Okay, what was the wording of the warning? And did it give people actionable information

of what to do? But yes, this makes it real for the administration. This makes it an accountability issue. And like I said, I think that's going to keep happening the more you have weather-related disasters. Andrew Friedman is a senior reporter covering climate and weather for CNN. Andrew, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me.

Denise Guerra and Peter Balanon-Rosen produced today's show, Jolie Meyers, edited. Patrick Boyd and Andrea Christian's daughter are our engineers. Miles Bryan and Gabrielle Burbe checked the facts today. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.