more disaster warning troubles in texas

I don’t know how many blog posts I’ve written about the troubles with issuing warnings of disasters. There have been scores for sure over the 30 years that I have been blogging.

Here’s the latest one from the terrible tragedy of flooding in Central Texas, As Floods Hit, Key Roles Were Vacant at Weather Service Offices in Texas  What puts this article in perspective is this one from back in April of this year, Weather Service Prepares for ‘Degraded Operations’ Amid Trump Cuts

I think we need to be careful about “jumping to conclusions” and linking the flooding, deaths and lack of warning directly to the weather service and a lack of staffing. It would take a full blown investigation to have that be accomplished and I don’t see the administration looking to “pin the tail” on that donkey—since they don’t accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong on their watch.

In that first article the senior elected official for the county is quoted as saying that to have a warning system would cost quite a bit of money and people there don’t want to see their local taxes be raise.  Which brings me to the line I’ve used for many, many years. You get the services you want to pay for. If you want to have low taxes, then Alabama is a great place to live. You get the services, roads, schools, jobs that come with low taxes. But, you do get several dynamite college football teams!