In the aftermath of the tragic Texas floods, which in the end will have killed over 200 people, everyone left alive has gone so deep into their corners they’ve all got this wedge-shaped induced wrinkle pressed deep into their foreheads.
The genuinely awful, even by Texas politician standards, governor says what, to be fair, every (guilty) pol would say in such circumstances: No one’s to blame, especially me, so stop the finger-pointing, and let’s pray.
And, Texas being Texas, he goes all “Friday Night Lights” on us, the one, true religion.
Gov. Greg Abbott told a reporter: “You asked and I’m going to use your words, ‘Who’s to blame?’ Know this, that’s the word choice of losers.” He continued: “Let me explain one thing about Texas. Every square inch of our state cares about football. Every football team makes mistakes. The losing teams are the ones who try to point out who is to blame. The championship teams are the ones who say don’t worry about it, we got this.”
Texas, sadly, clearly, did not have this. And I get to say this as someone who is half-Texan and who loves the state deeply. I’m off to see my hundred Panhandle cousins this month as I have for each of my 70 summers except that damn COVID one where we couldn’t down a side of beef and shoot the hot Palo Duro Canyon breeze.
For Texas, God bless its culture high and low, is not so much into the pricey public infrastructure, including the kinds that save lives. I remember driving on an L.A. freeway in the early 1980s with a visiting Amarillo cousin when I changed lanes and bumped over the Botts’ dots that serve to remind us we are swerving. “That’s cool,” he said, having never encountered anything but reflective paint on the roadway. “But TxDot” — their Department of Transportation — “would never, ever pay for that.”
The Kerr County sheriff, in charge of public safety where most of the devastation from the Guadalupe River busting its banks occurred, is right there with his governor when it comes to not being into finger-pointing. The sheriff refused to say if the county emergency officer nominally in charge the Fourth of July early morning as rain pounded the region was even awake as the storm rolled through. Sheriff Larry Leitha admitted that he was only informed about the flood waters after 4 a.m. on July 4. The river had already risen 27 feet. Shouldn’t someone have gone and roused the sheriff? But that apparently sounds too blamey.
The Texas Leg last year rejected a proposal by state Representative Joe Moody, a Democrat and Speaker Pro Tem of the Texas House, to improve flood warning and emergency response systems statewide. Moody co-authored House Bill 13, a bipartisan one aimed at strengthening emergency communication networks and warning systems across the state. The bill passed the House with support from both parties, only to be killed in the Senate during the regular legislative session earlier this year.
Would the networks — sirens, and better ways of getting out mobile phone alerts, for instance — have been in place in time to save the hundreds now dead? No one knows. It’s enough to make you wish you hadn’t ditched your land line. Anyway, so finger-pointy.
And don’t get me started about what’s left of the feds, what with all available resources going to buy better neck gaiters and guns for ICE. Sure, the White House wants to close down FEMA entirely. And, absolutely, it’s laid off so many National Weather Service workers that some offices are down 40%, and can no longer even launch weather balloons. But let’s not point any digits at that.
Because you know who’s really responsible for the severity of the storm that the NWS certainly warned could dump 4 to 6 inches overnight on the Hill Country but in some places dumped almost 20 inches? Me. Oh, and you. All of us human beings who over the last 150 years burned fossil fuels and warmed the planet. The increased moisture over central Texas was driven by a very hot Gulf of Mexico. “Climate change loads the dice toward more frequent and more intense floods,” said climatologist Davide Faranda. “The flash flood that tore through Camp Mystic at night, when people were most vulnerable, shows the deadly cost of underestimating this shift.”
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com