Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: I was out in Kerrville in Kerr County.
Speaker 1: That's our reporter Kara Carlson, who's based in Texas. She's
Speaker 1: been speaking with people who survived the flooding in Texas
Speaker 1: on July fourth, and one story in particular has stayed
Speaker 1: with her.
Speaker 3: I have this thing.
Speaker 4: About watching storms interactive maps.
Speaker 2: It really struck me. She was actually up, you know,
Speaker 2: watching the storm, watching a lot of the alerts and
Speaker 2: was still really caught off guard in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4: I was really watching where the lightning was striking because
Speaker 4: it was intense.
Speaker 3: It was scary.
Speaker 2: It was like.
Speaker 4: Really close. So I went outside and I noticed the
Speaker 4: water in the driveway was like out of foot high,
Speaker 4: and I thought, Oh, that's weird.
Speaker 2: You'd seen that before.
Speaker 1: Rina Bailey lives in Hunt, a small community by the
Speaker 1: side of the Guadalupe River in Texas's Hill Country. She
Speaker 1: lives in a house that was built in nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 4: It's better floods many other floods.
Speaker 1: Hunt is mostly a rural area with hills and farmland
Speaker 1: and wineries, a place Kara says many Texans visit as
Speaker 1: a summer getaway.
Speaker 2: That's a little bit of climate in the summer than
Speaker 2: a lot of other areas in Texas. It's kind of
Speaker 2: an idyllic area on the river generally.
Speaker 1: But some of the things that make this part of
Speaker 1: Hill Country so idyllic also make it risky. They call
Speaker 1: this area of Texas Flash flood Alley because the steep terrain,
Speaker 1: shallow soil, and intense storms make it exceptionally prone to
Speaker 1: flash floods.
Speaker 2: I think what most people are thinking of when they
Speaker 2: hear flash flooding is maybe stay off the roads, you know,
Speaker 2: stay out of certain areas. They aren't necessarily expecting it
Speaker 2: to come to them.
Speaker 1: Rena was used to floods, but she was shocked to
Speaker 1: see the floodwater in her driveway in the early morning
Speaker 1: hours of July fourth. And then the water kept rising.
Speaker 4: All of a sudden, it jumped up, and I saw
Speaker 4: the Hunt stores and heard the start to de centigrade.
Speaker 4: I saw the post office start to dicentigrade, the office
Speaker 4: next to it, and then.
Speaker 5: This wall of bar.
Speaker 1: She saw the water sweep their truck away. Her husband
Speaker 1: was still asleep and woken up, and my.
Speaker 4: Knees saw it. It was coming up the steps like
Speaker 4: there it was, and he said.
Speaker 2: You have to get out of here.
Speaker 1: Rina wears a back race and she says she sometimes
Speaker 1: has trouble walking, so her husband helped her out through
Speaker 1: a window and across their yard towards a narrow gap
Speaker 1: in the fence.
Speaker 3: There's a seven.
Speaker 4: Foot concrete wall and there's a metal fence a gap
Speaker 4: that line.
Speaker 2: That gap had and liten there with The.
Speaker 1: Official death toll has risen to over one hundred people,
Speaker 1: including dozens of children, most of whom were at Camp Mystic.
Speaker 1: Over one hundred people from Kerr County are still missing.
Speaker 1: The Baileys made it to higher ground. They climbed the
Speaker 1: hill behind their house and headed for a log cabin
Speaker 1: on their property where they could take shelter and wait
Speaker 1: out the storm. In the wake of the floods, dozens
Speaker 1: of stories like Rena's are emerging, stories of families barely
Speaker 1: managing to evade danger, who were woken up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night by thunder, or by their dogs barking,
Speaker 1: or by their neighbors, but not by an official warning system.
Speaker 1: These accounts are raising questions about why Kerr County residents
Speaker 1: were caught so off guard and what, if anything, could
Speaker 1: have been done to save more lives.
Speaker 2: Should there have been a slightly different alert, Should the
Speaker 2: campgrounds maybe have been evacuated sooner? You know, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of unanswered questions that are still being looked.
Speaker 1: Into, questions that have repercussions far beyond Kirk County as
Speaker 1: storms become more intense, more deadly, and more frequent due
Speaker 1: to climate change. I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the
Speaker 1: big take from Bloomberg News today on the show What
Speaker 1: the Floods in Texas reveal about the growing risk of
Speaker 1: flash floods as the climate changes, and the difficult economic
Speaker 1: choices facing communities that are grappling with these new risks.
Speaker 6: Flooding is the most expensive natural disaster we face.
Speaker 1: Joshua Sachs is the director of the Adaptation program at
Speaker 1: the Georgetown Climate Center.
Speaker 6: And it can destroy communities. It not only impacts loss
Speaker 6: of life, but someone's home traditionally is their majority of
Speaker 6: their wealth.
Speaker 7: As we have warmer temperatures, the atmosphere can hold more water,
Speaker 7: more moisture, and so then when you have these storms,
Speaker 7: they are able to dump more rain.
Speaker 1: Zara here g covers climate for Bloomberg and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of time thinking about how our understanding of risk
Speaker 1: is currently evolving in a warming world.
Speaker 7: So Texas is actually a state that has a ton
Speaker 7: of resources. It has one of the best emergency response
Speaker 7: kind of offices and teams and capabilities in the country.
Speaker 7: Most states are not like Texas.
Speaker 1: Zara says, Texas is the gold standard when it comes
Speaker 1: to its emergency response capabilities, but it also faces a
Speaker 1: wide variety of disaster risks, from hurricanes to extreme heat,
Speaker 1: and even if it has a lot of money to
Speaker 1: spend on disaster response, it faces difficult choices about how
Speaker 1: to spend it, and on the ground, localities face their
Speaker 1: own budgetary trade offs. We know, for example, that Kirk
Speaker 1: County considered installing a warning system that could have involved
Speaker 1: sirens in high risk areas, but it didn't.
Speaker 7: We have heard from officials in Texas that one of
Speaker 7: the reasons why they had not built a flood detection
Speaker 7: warning system in this area, saying care ca where some
Speaker 7: of the worst fooding was, is because of the cost.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 7: So it was Care County Judge Rob Kelly who told
Speaker 7: The New York Times that local residents whose taxes wound
Speaker 7: up to fund such a system bocked at it.
Speaker 1: How much does it cost to develop a really effective
Speaker 1: early warning system for these emergencies.
Speaker 7: I think it depends on the community and the type
Speaker 7: of warning and the type of area that you're trying
Speaker 7: to cover. But obviously it's an expense, and every local
Speaker 7: government and state government has a lot of things on
Speaker 7: their plate, and I'll say mitigation often falls to the
Speaker 7: bottom of that.
Speaker 6: There are traditionally federal grant programs that communities or individuals can.
Speaker 1: Apply for Joshua sax Agon, like.
Speaker 6: Putting their homes higher up or elevating their homes, or
Speaker 6: elevating air conditioners, water heaters, things like that. Sometimes there
Speaker 6: are state grants, but for the most part, people and
Speaker 6: community are having to ask the government for money, and
Speaker 6: there isn't nearly enough money to go around to solve
Speaker 6: all the problems we're.
Speaker 1: Facing, Zara says. At this point, federal government funding has
Speaker 1: become more and more integral to emergency management efforts.
Speaker 7: And it really speaks to what's at stake if the
Speaker 7: Trump administration kind of pulls back on this funding. Earlier
Speaker 7: this year, there are a couple of times when the
Speaker 7: Trump administration paused a huge number of federal grants specifically FEMA,
Speaker 7: and these are grants that are tied to this mitigation,
Speaker 7: this resiliency, this prep.
Speaker 1: All of this worsening storms. The challenges and costs of
Speaker 1: investing in better infrastructure has also made the predictive data
Speaker 1: we get from the National Weather Service even more critical.
Speaker 1: The service is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Speaker 1: They're the ones that track environmental disasters and put out
Speaker 1: weather advisories and warnings.
Speaker 3: NOAH has our responsibility, especially through the National Weather Service,
Speaker 3: to put out a series of, one would say, progressively
Speaker 3: more action oriented messages.
Speaker 1: Rick Spinrad served as the head of NOAH until January
Speaker 1: of this year. He says those action oriented messages include
Speaker 1: the watches and warnings you get on your phone or
Speaker 1: in weather apps. A floodwatch did go out for Kerrville
Speaker 1: for the Guadalupe River at one eighteen pm local time
Speaker 1: on July third, and a flash flood warning signaling that
Speaker 1: the hazardous weather event is imminent or already happening went
Speaker 1: out about twelve hours later. It was tagged considerable, meaning
Speaker 1: it automatically triggered wireless emergency alerts on mobile devices.
Speaker 3: That particular warning included phrases that this was going to
Speaker 3: be a considerable and catastrophic event. That is the queue
Speaker 3: to emergency managers to start getting people to evacuate, to
Speaker 3: start preposition materials and personnel and equipment needed to protect
Speaker 3: people from the event. The most perfect forecast is only
Speaker 3: as good as how it is implemented by the ones
Speaker 3: who need to use it.
Speaker 1: To make sure these forecasts reach the local officials in
Speaker 1: charge of making public safety decisions, there are warning coordination
Speaker 1: Meteorologists or wcns.
Speaker 3: At WCN doesn't wait for the phone to ring, but
Speaker 3: actually gets out there and begins the discussion and ensures
Speaker 3: that all of the sheriff's offices and rescue companies and
Speaker 3: emergency managers are online with him or her. They know
Speaker 3: the nature of the alert that went out, and they
Speaker 3: are there to tell them what they think is going
Speaker 3: to happen with respect to the river levels increased precipitation.
Speaker 3: When that kind of thing, it's.
Speaker 1: Too early to know exactly what might have made a
Speaker 1: difference for the flood victims. There are still questions about
Speaker 1: how local officials responded, and reporting is ongoing, but there
Speaker 1: was no WCM in the forecast office for the area
Speaker 1: that flooded. He left his position in April. He took
Speaker 1: an early retirement offered by the Trump administration as it
Speaker 1: moved to cut Noah's staff and its budget.
Speaker 3: It's disturbing to know that in the San Antonio Austin WFO,
Speaker 3: the WCM position is vacant because that person left the
Speaker 3: agency as a result of the cuts, and I would
Speaker 3: say coerced retirements that the administration put on the Weather Service.
Speaker 1: The legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization,
Speaker 1: Tom Faye, told NBC News that while the San Antonio
Speaker 1: Weather Forecasting Office did have vacancies in two of its
Speaker 1: top positions, it was down a WCM and a permanent
Speaker 1: science officer. The offices in the area had quote adequate
Speaker 1: staffing and resources to respond to this event.
Speaker 7: Happened in Texas. Is that happened in the middle of
Speaker 7: the night, and it happened in an area that doesn't
Speaker 7: have great or extensive cell coverage.
Speaker 1: My colleague Zara Kirgee.
Speaker 7: Again, so even if warnings had gone out and alert
Speaker 7: had gone out to people's phones, maybe they didn't get
Speaker 7: it and they didn't hear it. And you can imagine
Speaker 7: if there was a siren that went off. That is
Speaker 7: something that someone who is camping would have noticed, verses
Speaker 7: a buzz on their phone if that buzz ever happened.
Speaker 1: At a press conference on Tuesday, four days after the disaster,
Speaker 1: as rescue and recovery efforts were underway, Governor Greg Abbott
Speaker 1: wasn't inclined to discuss what, if anything, he believes went
Speaker 1: wrong in preparing Kirk County for this flood.
Speaker 8: Who's to blame?
Speaker 1: Know this?
Speaker 8: That's the word choice of losers. Let me explain one
Speaker 8: thing about Texas, and that is Texas. Every sport entered
Speaker 8: our state cares about football. It could be a hunt Texas, Huntsville, Texas, Houston, Texas,
Speaker 8: any size community, they care about football and know this.
Speaker 8: Every football team makes mistakes. The losing teams are the
Speaker 8: ones that try to point out who's to blame. The
Speaker 8: championship teams are the ones to say, don't worry about it, man,
Speaker 8: we got this. We're going to make sure that we
Speaker 8: go score again, that we're going to win this game.
Speaker 1: Texas officials say. The state legislature is planning a special
Speaker 1: session later this month to discuss flood warning systems, flood
Speaker 1: emergency communications, and natural disaster preparedness. They'll also consider relief
Speaker 1: funding for the Hill country. So what communities are most
Speaker 1: vulnerable to flooding in the US and what can they
Speaker 1: do to protect themselves that's after the break. One of
Speaker 1: the main tools that communities in the US have to
Speaker 1: understand their flood risk are maps made by FEMA, the
Speaker 1: Federal Emergency Management Agency. In twenty nineteen, FEMA estimated that
Speaker 1: over eight million properties are at risk for severe flooding
Speaker 1: from what's known as a once and one hundred flooding event.
Speaker 1: My colleagues Area here Ge says those maps are used
Speaker 1: for everything from emergency planning to calculating flood insurance premiums
Speaker 1: for millions of people all across the country, but calculating
Speaker 1: the true level of risk out there is complicated.
Speaker 7: One of the things that's changing with klindate change is
Speaker 7: places that haven't even flooded historically, like places in Kentucky,
Speaker 7: have experienced flooding that they never even thought was possible,
Speaker 7: And so you know, you're having more places effectively become
Speaker 7: like Carre County.
Speaker 1: Updating these maps to match our evolving climate is possible,
Speaker 1: but it takes investment in technology and research. Some private
Speaker 1: companies like First Treet, which does climate risk financial modeling,
Speaker 1: have more up to date flood maps. In twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: First Street released a report identifying nearly six million additional
Speaker 1: properties nationwide that we're at the level of risk that
Speaker 1: FEMA considers severe, a total of fourteen point six million.
Speaker 6: It is rarely a surprise when a flood hits a place.
Speaker 1: That's Joshua Sachs from the Georgetown Climate Center.
Speaker 6: Again, the issue is simply, when are we going to
Speaker 6: start as a country to act on these things. When
Speaker 6: are we going to take this knowledge and build it
Speaker 6: into public policy to address these climate impacts. To make
Speaker 6: ourselves safer is going to cost an inordinate amount of
Speaker 6: money and require some levels of personal sacrifice. Some people
Speaker 6: who may not want to move are going to have
Speaker 6: to move. Some road segments that flood regularly might have
Speaker 6: to be abandoned, and these are not popular choices.
Speaker 1: That's because those individual sacrifices can also have consequences for
Speaker 1: the whole community.
Speaker 6: A locality cares about its property value. If they encourage
Speaker 6: people to move out of beachfront proper, they might be
Speaker 6: hurting their own revenue. Or there are other people who
Speaker 6: live in flood prone areas who simply can't afford to
Speaker 6: go somewhere else. Their home is their only asset, and
Speaker 6: until the government or someone decides to step in and
Speaker 6: help them, they're stuck. Every time you see communities try
Speaker 6: to adopt new flood maps and higher flood standards, there
Speaker 6: is always at least a part of the community that
Speaker 6: fights against it.
Speaker 1: If a vulnerable community does acknowledge its risk and encourages
Speaker 1: people to relocate en mass, that can drive down housing
Speaker 1: prices and risk your areas and drive up demand and
Speaker 1: safer ones. And for those who stay, it can become
Speaker 1: more costly and more difficult to get insurance.
Speaker 6: We can see this if we look at places like
Speaker 6: the outer banks in the Carolinas and how homes are
Speaker 6: falling into the ocean. We can see this if we
Speaker 6: look into what people call the insurance crisis of how
Speaker 6: insurers are pulling out of homeowner insurance because they're finding
Speaker 6: the risk is too severe to cover.
Speaker 1: This has put pressure on the federal government itself to
Speaker 1: offer flood insurance. That's the program Zara was talking about earlier.
Speaker 7: Congress created the Federal Food Insurance Program in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 7: Basically because the private insurance for flooded risk failed and
Speaker 7: private insurance pulled out of that hazard. They said we're
Speaker 7: not going to cover this anymore because they didn't feel
Speaker 7: like they could price policies affordably enough for most of
Speaker 7: the homeowners who are in that area of risk. And
Speaker 7: we've seen federal food insurance rates go up because turns
Speaker 7: out the risk is really high. And one of the
Speaker 7: problems is there've been so much flooding and so they've
Speaker 7: had to make so many payouts that they've run out
Speaker 7: of money and they keep having to go to Congress
Speaker 7: and say we need more money. So it's not a
Speaker 7: sustainable program, and you could sort of understand how and
Speaker 7: why the insurance market got out of it.
Speaker 1: There are ways to reduce those risks, which brings us
Speaker 1: back to mitigation. Zara says. Research shows spending more upfront
Speaker 1: money on mitigation turns out to be significantly cheaper in
Speaker 1: the long run.
Speaker 7: In twenty nineteen, there was a report that was partially
Speaker 7: funded by FEMA and the federal government looking specifically at mitigation.
Speaker 7: It's called the Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves twenty nineteen Report.
Speaker 5: And it had found that every one dollar in federal
Speaker 5: grant money spent on hazard mitigation saves six dollars in
Speaker 5: disaster damages in the future.
Speaker 1: The cost of cleaning up a disaster like the flooding
Speaker 1: in central Texas can be staggering. A preliminary estimate from
Speaker 1: acieather Ink puts the total damage and economic loss from
Speaker 1: the floods in Texas in a range of eighteen billion
Speaker 1: dollars to twenty two billion dollars, and.
Speaker 7: More than that, the return on investment is even higher
Speaker 7: for federal grant spending on riverine flooding mitigation. So I'm
Speaker 7: talking about the mitigation that would specifically go towards helping
Speaker 7: or preventing the type of event we saw in Texas.
Speaker 7: And so in that case, by granting eleven point five
Speaker 7: billion dollars to help states build up river defenses between
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety three to twenty sixteen, the federal government and
Speaker 7: society at large avoided eighty two billion in losses from
Speaker 7: deaths from likely flooded damage from business disruptions associated with
Speaker 7: the flood. So is the study author. One of the
Speaker 7: study authors of that report told me mitigation or preparedness
Speaker 7: saves lives, and he didn't say this, but what's clear
Speaker 7: is it also very much saves money.
Speaker 1: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 1: The show is hosted by Me, David Gura, Wanha and
Speaker 1: Salam Mosen. The show is made by Aaron Edwards, David Fox,
Speaker 1: Eleanor Harrison Dengate, Patti Hirsch, Rachel Lewis, Krisky, Naomi Julia Press,
Speaker 1: Tracy Samuelson, Naomi Shaven, alex Ugia, Julia Weaver, Yang Yong,
Speaker 1: and Taka Yasuzawa. To get more from the Big Take
Speaker 1: and unlimited access to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe
Speaker 1: today at Bloomberg dot com Slash Podcast Offer. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: We'll be back on Monday.