Very interesting. As usual the lefties are trying to make our President look bad.
It is time for checking out the honesty of these reporters who come in and want to give the truth to the American people by publishing the truth and if they misconstrue the truth – don’t allow them to attend until they prove they want to print the truth.
The heading below had nothing to do with what the true story was. Very misleading.
‘You Gotta Do A Little Better’: Donald Trump Embarrasses Himself, Demands The Media To Stop Reporting ‘Lies’.
Which is true. Just give us what happened and leave the hyperbolic statements’ keys on the keyboard. The citizens are smart enough to part the waves when you print those statements. We have learned who tells the truth and who doesn’t. Therefore, you are wasting money and time AND MAKING YOU AND YOUR COMPANY look stupid. We can hear and see by listening to the story and when you print the lies about the truth – don’t you understand it makes you look like a NINNY?
Surely, you people are more smart than it appears?
My question is – DO YOU KNOW AND USE THE THREE R’S? If you don’t the left has you hooked.
The support of our cities/state from all who are here to help and donate is astounding. We are humbled. The Democrats/Republicans in our cities who have endured/witnessed and come together to share the clean up and work now to put the cities back together and make our political future one of hope and love for both parties.
Everyone has a chance to help and give their opinion and use the blessings of the donations to make all of the cities places of goodwill.
Again, there is always a reason for everything that happens and we question – why? The answers never come; but, we must move on to make things better for those who are left with the spoils.
May God bless all of the families who lost their love ones and give them the strength to help move on.
Again, thank you to President Trump/First Lady Melania Trump/Governor Abbott/All Responders for your support.
More than 100 people in Texas have been found dead after devastating flooding swept through the area in the early morning hours of July 4. Among the victims were nearly 30 young girls and their counselors at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp.
At least 161 people are still missing in Kerr County alone, Gov. Abbott said earlier this week, for whom volunteers and first responders are still searching.
As families struggle to reckon with their losses, many Texans are still wondering how this flooding unfolded, why leaders didn’t expect it and whether it’s something that could happen again.
How the early hours of July 4 unfolded along the Guadalupe
Once the thunderstorms set up over the Texas Hill Country late on Thursday, July 3, they didn’t move for hours.
Greg Waller, a hydrologist at West Gulf River Forecast Center, said the stationary nature of the storms is part of what allowed them to dump so much water in one location. While rainfall totals across the region vary, Waller said some spots were up to 10 or 11 inches of water on Friday.
But the large amount of precipitation alone didn’t cause the river to crest at such heights. In fact, Waller said other parts of Texas got even more rain, but don’t have the same hydrologic conditions that can be found in Kerr County.
As the name might suggest, the Hill Country has many steep slopes which contribute to large amounts of runoff. The rocky nature of the soil also limits water absorption. Where it’s not rock, it’s clay, which Waller said can swell and act as another impermeable surface.
When the Guadalupe River began rising fast on 4 July, emergency sirens blared across the small Texas town of Comfort.
Their long, flat tone – a final warning to evacuate for those who had not done so – saved lives, says Daniel Morales, assistant chief of the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department.
The sirens are a testament to the determination of a community that has experienced deadly floods in the past, warning residents of devastating floodwaters that hours earlier had killed at least 118 people in communities along the same river, including 27 campers and counsellors in neighbouring Kerr County.
That county did not have a warning system like the one in Comfort.
Everyone in Comfort, a town of more than 2,200 people in unincorporated Kendall County, survived the flooding, with many riverside residents evacuating in time, Morales said.
Learning from history
Morales has been with the department for decades. He was there when flooding in 1978 killed 33 people, 15 of them in Comfort, including his grandfather. So when an opportunity arose last year to expand the community’s emergency warning system, he and other residents found a way to fund it.
Texas flooding: FOX rides along Guadalupe River to observe recovery efforts
The fire department’s siren needed an upgrade. While the firehouse got a new siren, Morales found a Missouri company willing to refurbish the old one at a low cost so it could be moved to a central location in Comfort Park and connected to a US Geological Survey sensor at Cypress Creek.
When the water reaches a certain level, the sensor triggers the siren, but it can also be sounded manually.
“We do [it] for ourselves and for the community,” Morales said. “If we hadn’t had a drought the past months and the [Cypress] Creek hadn’t been down, we could have had another [flood like in 1978]. The past few days, I’ll tell you, it brings back a lot.”
Funding emergency infrastructure
Morales said they cobbled together money from a grant, the county commission, the department’s own budget and the local electric utility, which also donated a siren pole. They also got help installing the flood sensor gauge in the creek.
The total cost with donated materials and departmental expenses was somewhere around $50,000 to $60,000 – about €43,000 to €51,000 – “maybe a little more,” Morales said.
In Kerr County, the price tag for a proposed flood warning system covering a larger stretch of the Guadalupe River was close to €850,000. Several county and city officials backed away when grants and funding fell through. The system ultimately was not installed near the camps where dozens of young campers died in the recent flood.
Comal County, Texas – about 90 miles, or 145 kilometres, east of Kerr County – completed its own siren project in 2015 with funding from several local entities. The county now manages the system and river height data. Officials there did not respond to requests for details about costs.
Training residents to respond
After the updated Comfort sirens were installed, the volunteer fire department spent months getting the community accustomed to the siren tests that sound daily at 12pm, putting out messaging that if they hear a siren any other time, they should check local TV stations, the department’s Facebook page and other outlets for emergency notifications.
The sirens have a distinct sound for tornadoes and a long, flat tone for floods.
So on 4 July, if people in Comfort hadn’t seen the alerts sent to phones or heard shouting firefighters urging evacuation, they heard the long tone and knew they had to leave. A Facebook post from the department noted a mandatory evacuation for all residents along the Guadalupe River.
Comfort was miles away from the flash flooding that overtook the camps and didn’t experience cresting river levels until after the early morning surge. Many Comfort residents were already awake and aware of the rising water by the time the sirens sounded.
The Guadalupe’s crest was among the highest ever recorded in the town, rising from hip-height to three storeys tall in just over two hours.
Morales doesn’t know if sirens would have changed outcomes in Kerr County. But he’s sure they gave Comfort residents an extra level of warning. He’s already been contacted by some funders about the possibility of adding a third siren in town.
“Anything we can do to add to the safety, we’re going to sit down and try to make it work,” he said. “The way things are happening, it might be time to enhance the system even further.”
kommonsentsjane 