Flood Observations

We are in day 28 of the Texas flood response, and I've observed a lot of things worth noting. Here they are, somewhat randomly presented.

The response was incredible. We had teams from our county on the ground in an hour. We are only one county away, but state strike teams were on the scene in a couple of hours. I've heard some complaining about FEMA being slow, but the next day we had copious amounts of resources, to the point that it was hard to put them into action.

Self-deployed assets were a mixed blessing. Some were great and tried to coordinate with local commands. Others got in the way and didn't want to be integrated into the overall effort. Influencers were an absolute nightmare for everyone, as were some very pushy media groups.

The technology available is incredible. We had a search team in our district yesterday. The aerial mapping data, combined with other available map data, gave real-time information for searching. We could toggle back and forth between pre- and post-flood images overlaid on detailed maps. This has become a search for debris piles that have to be taken apart carefully after alerts from cadaver dogs. The last rescue was on the day of the flood.

The dog teams, both dogs and handlers, have been the heroes of the recovery operation. Those dogs show up ready to work and don't quit.

People provided incredible amounts of resources for victims. We have several community centers where victims can pick up any kind of supplies that they need. Sadly, we had some bad actors take advantage of the situation and do things like try to take cases of water and laundry detergent to Walmart for cash. These were fairly isolated and in a few cases offenders were identified and banned from the resource centers.

People's distrust of government caused some issues. When the main search center dramatically lowered the number of missing persons (from 100 to 3), lots of people believed that there was a cover-up. As it turns out, the initial estimates were way too high, and there was an incredible effort to identify people wrongly assumed to be missing. One of the three remaining missing has been found.

The fighting over alert systems will continue for a long time. Despite what you might have heard, the National Weather Service provided timely and accurate warnings about the danger. Alert fatigue is a real and ongoing problem. People tired of frequent alerts had their phone alerts turned off and never got the word.

Overall, the response has shown how generous Americans are and how willing they are to do anything to help out their neighbors in distress. God bless Texas.