this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
261 points (99.2% liked)

News

30771 readers
2960 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 37 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

I do feel bad for anyone who was affected by this who did not support Trump and his dismantling of the weather services that could have prevented this.

However, for anyone who was affected who voted for Trump and supported his dismantling of said programs? Fuck around, find out.

[–] its_prolly_fine@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Don't think the children voted for Tump.

And literally the first sentence in my comment addressed that chucklefuck you're not being clever you're just being a gotcha-seeking asshole.

[–] protist@mander.xyz 28 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

Unfortunately, even with better forecasting, it wouldn't have been possible to predict exactly how much rain was going to fall or where in a storm like this, but just two days before all this started, they were literally predicting sunshine this weekend in Central Texas.

There's a huge element of randomness in this kind of storm, where one area gets 15+" of rain while 30 miles away they only get 3", but a warning that excessive localized rainfall was a possibility would've been helpful.

I also blame the local government. Central Texas is flash flood central due to our geography, and all local governments should have emergency preparedness plans to send out push notifications to people in their areas. This all went down in the middle of the night and happened so fast that the local government got caught totally off guard though

[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 1 points 10 hours ago

Silly human, push notifications are for hunting cop killers, not saving lives from floods!

/s.

[–] madlian@lemmy.cafe 7 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

The federal government has been dismantling weather systems left and right. Those systems could have given valuable minutes of warning. Flash floods do happen, but even 10 minutes of warning can pretty much save everyone.

The reason they did not have this warning is because of Donald Trump, And then after him every single republican politician.

[–] protist@mander.xyz 3 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

The federal government has been dismantling weather systems left and right. Those systems could have given valuable minutes of warning. Flash floods do happen, but even 10 minutes of warning can pretty much save everyone.

All this is true

The reason they did not have this warning is because of Donald Trump. And then after him every single republican politician.

This is not clear. What does a warning from the NWS look like? Because they issued them:

At 4:06 a.m. the National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio posted on X: "A very dangerous flash flooding event is ongoing." It ended: "Turn Around, Don't Drown!"

Then, at 5:15 a.m. the National Weather Service San Angelo posted on X that there was a flash flood emergency. The Austin/San Antonio office posted on its X account about the emergency at 5:23 a.m. This type of alert is "exceedingly rare" and used when there is a "severe threat to human life and catastrophic damage," according to the National Weather Service.

But how does this message get to people who are asleep? The best answer is the Wireless Emergency Alert system. I haven't seen any information one way or the other indicating whether this system was activated in a timely manner. If it wasn't, that was a serious mistake that costed lives.

Let me be clear that cuts to the NWS are going to end up costing lives. There is no doubt about that. But I think it's important to understand the reality of a situation rather than reflexively blaming Trump

Edit to add the NYT is reporting on specific vacancies at the local NWS offices that were dedicated to communicating with local officials. Probably a serious contributing factor here to the word taking longer to get out

[–] madlian@lemmy.cafe 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

With regard to the girls camp that is in a flood zone, I imagine it would be part of the job to provide a safe experience for children by monitoring danger.

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 21 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

I agree with your points but it is extremely frustrating that they also are killing the science to try and have better predictions and not even bothering with managing climate change which will make these kind of events more frequent and more devastating. I am sure you already know but it is so damn frustrating. People are dying and it only is going to get worse.

[–] protist@mander.xyz 6 points 21 hours ago

I very much agree

[–] solsangraal@lemmy.zip 8 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

fascist govt will do nothing to help, blame it all on brown people, and call it a day.

then maga will say "mexicans did this to us!!" and increase their hate further

it sounds stupid and absurd, and it is.

welcome to amerikkka