Propublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates power abuse. Sign up for Dispatches. This is a newsletter that spotlights misconduct across the country, where you receive your stories in your inbox every week.
Nine months ago, Hurricane Helen packed barrels from the Gulf of Mexico, hitting the rough mountains of western North Carolina, causing rain to rain on the already saturated landscape. More than 100 people have been killed, most have been drowned by floods and crushed by water-fueled landslides.
“I never thought it was trying to do what it was doing,” said Jeff Howell, now retired emergency manager in Yance County, North Carolina, the countryside vastness with the most deaths per capita.
A week ago, the remains of a tropical storm slid down the Mexican coast, pulling moisture from the bay and then collided with another system in the southern hills of central Texas and flooded rivers and streams. More than 100 people have been confirmed to have died, many of whom are increasing in children.
“There was no reason to believe this would be something like what happened here. There’s absolutely nothing,” said Judge Rob Kelly, the top elected official in Kerr County, Texas.
The similarities between North Carolina and Texas extend beyond the words of these two officials. In both disasters there was a disconnect between accurate weather warnings and potentially life-saving actions on the ground.
Officials from each of those locations were warned. The National Weather Service sent urgent warnings about possible life-threatening dangers hours before flash floods, leaving time to inform and evacuate people in harmful ways.
In Texas, some local officials did just that. But others didn’t.
Similarly, Propublica’s investigation found that when Helene was hit on September 27th, some local North Carolina officials issued evacuation orders. At least five counties on Helen’s Road, including Yancey, were not. Howell said the storm was so enormous that it was far worse than anyone who lived to see before, and that he notified residents as much as possible.
National Weather Service explained Helene’s several days approach. It sent increasingly disastrous warnings of dangerous flash floods and landslides. The staff spoke in person with local emergency managers to organize webinar updates. The Facebook Message Regional Office posted about 1pm the day before Helen was hit, warning the mountains that “devastating and life-threatening flooding is important.” “This is one of the most important weather events occurring in the western part of the modern region.”
Similarly, in Texas, the Weather Service warned the day before about possible flash floods. Also, on the day, the Regional Director of the State Emergency Management Agency said, “We have “individually contacted” in the area and notified the mayor and others to “notice all potential floods,” Dan Patrick’s later said at a press conference.
Accuweather, a commercial weather forecasting service, issued the area’s first flash flood warning at 12:44am on July 4th, about three hours before the catastrophic flooding. At 1:14 am, 30 minutes later, the National Weather Service sent similar warnings to two specific areas, including Central Carr County, dotted with vacation homes, summer camps and campsites.
“The flash flood is ongoing or is expected to begin soon,” the weather department alert said. The impact may include “life-threatening flash floods in streams and streams.”
The severity descriptor for that alert sent it to the weather radio and the country’s wireless emergency alert system.
Accuweather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter was disappointed to hear the news that all the children attending the youth camp in Kerr County were not led to the highlands despite these warnings.
At Camp Mystic, the beloved century Christian summer camp for girls, at least 27 campers and counselors were killed. Six have not been found yet. The director also passed away while trying to save the child. (The New York Times said people in the camp had little or no help from the authorities.)
“The campers were very concerned that they were awakened by the rapidly rising water that had risen to the second level of their bunk beds by those who came to avoid evacuating based on timely warnings issued,” Porter said.
In this area known as the Flash Flood Alley, Porter called it “the worst kind of tragedy.” Because camps and local officials seemed to have been mobilized earlier in response to alerts.
“We had plenty of time to evacuate people to the highlands,” Porter said. “The question is, why didn’t it happen?”
But Dalton Rice, mayor of Kerrville, the county seat, said at a press conference the following day that he “didn’t have time” to communicate the risks to the camp as the floods rose rapidly.
Rice said he jogged and checked out near the Guadalupe River at 3:30am (more than once since flash flood warning began) but saw nothing.
But up the river 13 miles from the park where he was jogging, the river began at 3:10am and rose 25 feet in just two hours.
At 4:03am, the Weather Service upgraded the warning to an “emergency” (the most severe flash flood alert) and tagged it with the “devastating.” We picked out the Guadalupe River at a hunt in Carr County. “This is a particularly dangerous situation. Look for the highlands now!”
The local sheriff said he would not be aware of the flood from 4am to 5am. He said whether he woke up when the local emergency manager, responsible for warning the public that he was approaching a storm, started at 1am.
Local officials have refused to provide more details, saying they are focusing on finding over 100 people who are still missing and notifying their loved ones of death.
First image: The aftermath of Hurricane Helen in Asheville, North Carolina last September. Second image: Search and rescue workers examine the debris on July 6th after flash floods in Hunt, Texas. Credits: First Image: Shawn Rayford/Getty Images. Second Image: Jim Vondruska/Getty Images
One of the challenges as a disaster approach is that weather warnings often cause harm and do not reach people.
In rural areas of Texas and North Carolina, mobile phone services are uneven on the best days, with some people turning off alert notifications. In remote areas of North Carolina, many people live at least from the grid. Cell services aren’t great everywhere, and many are not glued to phones or social media. In Texas, Kerr County residents posted Facebook complaints and received no weather service alerts, while others said their phones blew their breath all night long with warnings.
Many counties also use the app to send their own alerts, which are often tailored to specific rivers and roads. However, residents must opt-in to receive them. Carr County uses Codered, but it’s not clear what alerts they sent overnight.
Pete Jensen spent a long career in emergency management, responding to the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks. He serves as a Federal Emergency Management Agency employee during Hurricane Katrina and often ponders why many people do not receive and listen to weather warnings.
“There’s a lot of denial,” Jensen said. “Disasters happen to someone else. They don’t happen to me.” It includes “local officials who don’t always know what their responsibility is. They respond very often, as most people do.
There is a big difference between disasters in Texas and North Carolina. In Texas, residents, journalists and others are demanding accountability from local officials. Gov. Governor Greg Abbott has called on Congress for a special session starting July 21 to discuss the flood warning system, flood emergency communications and natural disaster preparation.
But that’s not happening in North Carolina. The state legislature has yet to discuss possible changes, such as expanding your zone evacuation plan across the coast or increasing funds for local emergency managers. (Instead, lawmakers returned home in late June without giving them full budgets.) Many emergency managers, including Yancey County, operate in rural areas with small tax bases and skeleton staff.
“We haven’t had any protests here yet, but how do we do something different?” said Sen. Julie Mayfield, a Democrat from Asheville. “It still feels like I’m in recovery mode.”
Anchorage will restructure the prosecutor’s office after our report reveals the firing of hundreds of criminal cases
The North Carolina Department of Emergency Management has commissioned a review of disaster handling. The report found state agencies were severely understaffed, but did not investigate issues such as evacuation before Helen hit or the behaviour of local emergency managers.
Erica Andresen also lives in Asheville, a mountain city at the heart of Helen’s destruction, where businesses help prepare for disasters. The lawyer and advocate for a former Army judge, she also teaches emergency management. After Helen, she was one of North Carolina’s few voices, criticising the lack of evacuation and other inaction before the storm.
“I knew right away that from both my instincts and my experiences a lot of things were grossly wrong,” Andren said. When she opposed criticism of local governments during times of crisis, she retorted, “it needs to be accountable.”
