Texas Ignored Flood Forecasts (for Decades)
Records show Texas officials were warned about possible storms and decided they knew better and also that they served Big Oil, so fuck humans
July 6: TFN Extra! - Texas officials spent years ignoring forecasts about exactly this kind of thing so don’t fucking tell me no one fucking told you … Abbott credits God with saving some of the people from the flood that He sent through a Christian girls camp … Local officials waited hours to pass on warnings from remaining federal forecasters … Trump to ask Hegseth if it’s okay to give Ukraine air defenses …
You can listen to the TFN podcast here, and score swag or support TFN here.
TFN has learned that Texas officials ignored warnings well ahead of Friday’s devastating flooding. Like, decades well ahead.
And what was Texas’s response after being warned well ahead of Friday’s flooding? More wellheads.
At least 51 people are reportedly dead after devastating flooding struck Texas, northwest of San Antonio, with the worst losses coming at an urban drag-performer convention on Juneteenth a Christian girls camp on July Fourth. Twenty-seven girls remain missing as of this morning.
How much warning did Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) have?
In his defense, the possibility of human behavior affecting climate was only documented by Theophrastus a mere 300 years before the birth of Abbott’s favorite superhero.
Global warming generally wasn’t even forecast until as recently as more than a century ago, when Abbott wasn’t born yet. On the other hand, by 1989, when scientists first specifically forecast intensified flooding due to climate change, Abbott was already interested in politics.
Just not the politics of saving Earth. The other politics.
So, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forecast extreme weather due to carbon emissions, Texas Republicans dismissed that forecast. The state attorney general even sued to protect the Texas carbon emissions that contributed to this weekend’s America’s Birthday Flood.
That attorney general was Abbott, and, luckily for the flood survivors, he lost that lawsuit. But Abbott has successfully ignored other forecasts predicting yesterday’s flooding.
His party’s platform in 2014 read:
‘Climate change’ is a political agenda which attempts to control every aspect of our lives. We urge government at all levels to ignore any plea for money to fund global climate change or ‘climate justice’ initiatives.
Mission accomplished! And this was all while Texas was by far America’s biggest contributor to yesterday’s flooding:
As the Texas Tribune reported, Republican officials consistently ignored their own state’s scientists and refused to do any planning for extreme weather that might have saved lives in this weekend’s America’s Birthday Flood.
Even after the Defense Department forecast that climate change — caused by states like Texas more than any state that isn’t like Texas — would be a “threat multiplier,” Abbott refused to take steps to mitigate or prepare for America’s Birthday Flood.
Similarly, Abbott refused to do anything after extreme cold was forecast due to climate change, and 210 people died when the power failed in February 2021. The water board Abbott appointed has done nothing to prepare for droughts that have been forecast. In 2021, WFAA found ten state boards of Abbott appointees ignoring forecasts of climate change bringing extreme and deadly weather events.
That included power supplies, air quality, transportation, climate-related health issues such as asthma, and emergency management, which, in fairness, will have a lot more emergencies to manage by failing to prepare for climate change.
The governor has consistently fought the development of sustainable energy and has instead supported subsidies for the oil and gas industries that contributed to this weekend’s death toll.
Abbott in 2021 issued an executive order directing the state to ignore forecasts predicting this weekend’s America’s Birthday Flood and ensuring the state would make it deadlier.
“Texas is going to protect the oil and gas industry,” Abbott said, while not protecting the girls of Camp Mystic. "Texas is not going to stand idly by and watch the Biden administration kill jobs in Midland, in Odessa, or any other place across the entire region," he said while idly watching the oil and gas industry kill humans across the entire region.
Abbott’s order directed state agencies to challenge any federal actions that might threaten oil and gas or reduce the number of dead girls at Camp Mystic. The administrations of Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton had all issued forecasts alerting Texas officials years in advance of potential flash floods this weekend at Camp Mystic.
In fact, since 2001, Texas has had more billion-dollar disasters than any other state.
In their defense, Texas officials are agonizingly stupid. And bolstered by an especially noxious version of Christianity (yes, it’s real Christianity; see: history, all of).
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) also dismissed forecasts predicting this weekend’s flooding, calling climate-change science, aka science, a “cult.”
Cornyn would know, as he belongs to the same cult Abbott does. Abbott designated today as a Day of Prayer, a wildly tone-deaf response to God wiping out a Christian girls camp.
Abbott did not designate today as a Day of Convening the Legislature to Shut Down Big Oil and Raise Taxes to Pay for Mitigating the Climate Change We Helped Kill Christian Girl Campers.
Abbott quickly used the catastrophe to promote his particular magical-belief system and blame the dead for not using it well enough.
“All we know is that prayer does work,” Abbott said half-accurately, suggesting that 27 still-missing girls better fucking pray harder and that the 51+ dead didn’t pray hard enough or maybe used the wrong word — e.g., “Shazam!” — or possibly prayed to the wrong magic person, e.g, Shazam.
Abbott said that prayer “could have been the reason why water stopped rising into a home or a cabin” and that prayer “could be the reason why there’ve been so many people who’ve been located.”
TFN, however, has learned that the reason the water stopped rising was because physics and the reason so many people were located was because other people.
Texas officials are making the case that no one saw this coming, Theophrastus notwithstanding. But even if we set aside decades of forecasts … and pre-Christian decades of ancient Greeks … let’s consider the plausibility of no one foreseeing flash flooding in a swath of Texas literally known as Flash Flood Alley.
Instead of doing weather/climate shit to protect them from heat, rain, and wind crossing the border, Abbott and Texas Republicans built walls and hired cops to protect them from people crossing the border.
We don’t yet have official numbers on how many undocumented immigrants helped with search and rescue efforts and we never, ever will. Just like we’ll never know how many undocumented immigrants didn’t help with search and rescue efforts.
In Abbott’s defense, it’s not as if he’s had personal experience with the consequences of climate change. He’s devoted his life to politics ever since he was paralyzed by a falling tree that had been weakened by a storm. The accident partially blinded Abbott, leaving him tragically unable to see the irony in dedicating his life helping the oil industry weaken more trees and kill more people.
MEDIA WATCH There’s a lot of lazy coverage suggesting that Texas officials blamed or even blasted the National Weather Service (NWS) for failing to forecast the storm. Maybe they did but I haven’t seen anything it.
Some Texas officials noted that the forecast failed to predict just how much rain would fall, which, true, but that’s not necessarily the same as saying the NWS was at fault for that.
Also true, the NWS was short-staffed — with four out of 23 positions vacant in San Angelo, including a missing meteorologist in charge, hydrologist, and staff forecaster. On the other hand, there’s no indication those vacancies affected anything relevant to the flood.
And WIRED reports that meteorologists they spoke with don’t see NWS at fault here.
The first NWS flood watch was issued at 1:18pm on Thursday. The first flash-flood warning was 1:14am Friday, several hours before the worst of it. Nine alerts followed.
In fact, the NWS was predicting “downpours” by week’s end as early as a week ago, based on a Mexican named Barry, aka Tropical Storm Barry, sending wind and moisture across Trump’s border wall without even slowing down and into Abbott’s state without even getting fingerprinted, face-IDed, blood-typed, cavity-searched, or other-cavity-searched.
One possibility: Texans get so many alerts about hero cops and the rampaging hordes of criminals they face that some folks simply turn off emergency alerts.
AccuWeather blamed everyone who doesn’t use AccuWeather. “[I]t appears evacuations and other proactive measures could have been undertaken to reduce the risk of fatalities had the organizers of impacted camps and local officials heeded the warnings of the government and private weather sources, including AccuWeather,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter wrote, AccuSingly.
Kerrville police didn’t say boo about the flooding until 5:16am. The county didn’t weigh in until 5:31am, with the following key tips for surviving floods:
Be safe
Move to higher ground
Don’t drive through water
Don’t drown
If that seems like a lot to remember, honestly, if you just go by that last one, you should be fine.
Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said, "This happened very quickly over a very short amount of time that could not be predicted," despite the decades of predictions that things like this could happen very quickly. "This is not like a tornado where you can have a siren,” he said.
And yet, Dalton Rice, you can have a siren.
In fact, county officials not many years ago considered installing sirens along the Guadalupe River, but, y’know, too expensive! After all, a penny saved is a girls camp flooded.
“Taxpayers won’t pay for it,” county official Rob Kelly said. And yet, county official Rob Kelly, they just did.
Maybe if their state officials had told them that climate change is real and that they live in Flash Flood Alley and that God won’t save a Christian girls camp, and that they could pay for it by raising taxes on Big Oil, then taxpayers would pay for it?
Despite conventional wisdom to the contrary, it’s never too early to start playing the blame game. Homeland [sic] Security Secretary Kristi Noem implied yesterday that Biden flooded the camp by neglecting to upgrade NWS technology, which, as you know, Republicans have been pressuring Democrats to provide with increased funding for years.
Just remember that the blame game doesn’t start with deciding who’s to blame, it starts with fact-finding. So, no, we don’t yet know who’s to blame for this weekend’s specific disaster.
But none of the back and forth over staffing and warning times that you’ll see endless reporting on mean anything compared to the obvious, uncontested, proud refusal to heed the forecasts of climate change.
And Texas is more responsible for climate change than any other state in the nation that’s more responsible for climate change than any other nation on the planet.
Trump Launches New War with Pentagon Over Ukraine War
Pres. Donald Trump ran on a platform of ending both the Ukraine war and American involvement in foreign wars. So, last week, the Pentagon suspended some weapons shipments to Ukraine, including air-defense missile and drone interceptors and ammunition.
Trump, however, also ran on a platform of doing whatever the fuck he wants regardless of whatever he may or may not have ran on a platform of. So on Friday, Trump told Ukraine Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he’ll supply Ukraine with weapons shipments, including air-defense missile and drone interceptors and ammunition.
This, of course, will require launching a new war against the Pentagon, which blocked those shipments as if the Pentagon were the Houthis blocking the Red Sea shipments that Trump started a war to stop the Houthis from doing but then stopped that war even though the Houthis were still doing it. Peace through strength, motherfuckers!
So now, a source tells Axios, Trump “will check what was put on hold if anything.” Great. You do that.
Four Quickies
I’m long overdue to weigh in with Big Important Thoughts™ on the latest immigration bullshit, including the vile concentration camp Pres. Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) ineptly erected in Florida. But I did wanna drop this: Politico reports that Trump’s new $170 billion to fight the fictional immigration crisis won’t likely be manifest next year. Or the year after. The massive scale-up involved to expand his agencies and find, hire, and “train” his new gestap-and-frisk-o will take an estimated three years. Meaning, by the time they’re up and running, Pres. Pete Buttigieg may be just a few weeks from being sworn in on a Bible that calls him an abomination.
Okay, one more immigration update. The Los Angeles Police Department — which, let us not forget, is responsible for some of the worst violence against protesters and is also so notorious that every one of you Newsfuckers had a visceral reaction to the phrase “The Los Angeles Police Department” — is now doing a good thing. Newsworthy, eh?!? When they’re called to apparent immigration encounters, the LAPD is now required to have federal agents identify themselves and present credentials so the LAPD can record those credentials on their body cams. Presumably so we know exactly who to prosecute once we put this bullshit in the rear-view mirror. (h/t)
Well, the big bullshit bill fight is over, so now our drama-addict president is reviving tariff bullshit. Markets dipped on Friday after Pres. Donald Trump announced he’s sending letters on Monday to a dozen nations — not yet named — giving them new tariff rates. And, of course, Trump’s tariff pauses are due to expire on July 9, Wednesday. All of which could mean nothing because Trump Always Chickens Out.
Pres. Donald Trump will meet on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the Jews who executed Jesus, according to the White House Bible-study leader.
Recommended Reading
If Pres, Donald Trump and a devastating flash flood weren’t enough to dampen your Fourth of July joie de vivre, award-winning former Daily Show writer Jim Earl has just the mordant Fourth of July pushback for you!
TCB
FUTURE NEWSFUCKING I’ll be on The Nicole Sandler Show — free! — right here, on Monday at 3:30pm eastern time.
I’m gonna try to do another live bull session today, but might not, if only because (a) my son might finally be willing to go to a movie with me, and/or (b)…
NEW REPORTING Yes, I’m working on another exclusive story that I’m hoping to post today-ish over on the Jonathan Larsen Substack. I put in my request for comment from the Department of █████ [sic] ████ yesterday and everything!
THANK YOU I could really use some help spreading the TFN word, so please consider recommending TFN to anyone you might know who needs some deeply offensive, dark humor to usher them, Virgil-style, through our current but not permanent hellscape.
That said, I was floored by all the support you Newsfuckers brought to bear in response to my posts about July Fourth and TFN’s recent milestones — most notably, passing 30,000 (!) total subscribers. Thank you. We are well on the way to full TFN sustainability! If you can afford it, you can help us get there…
APP USERS The app doesn’t let you upgrade, so you’ve gotta do it at this link. Thanks!
RESOURCES
Go get ‘em, kids! E pluribus fuckem!
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
Remember when Texas got hit with freezing Temps and wind turbines froze? Texas brain trusts yelled against wind energy. The reality is that turbines need a heater but Texas ignored that regulation. Never any accountability from Texas. From floods, mass shootings, business fraud, medical injustice to measles. Sorry state that gains high federal funding as most red states do.
Every time I read about some Evangelical's notion of G*d I want to invent a BS flag to run up my flagpole, which is unfortunately not anywhere near one of their churches. For years I've thought of this as 'Be good and I'll up your allowance' + 'If you're not good, I'll take it away and ground you for the summer.' Well, guys and gals, if you really believe that then Stephen Miller must have been very, very good recently, because his Palantir stock just keeps going up and up, and all those little girls from the church camp in Texas must have been conducting Satanic Rituals under the light of the moon.