From what I've read/heard ....
The flooding occurred between 4-6 AM, really bad timing for obvious reasons.
And the water level rose 26 ft in 45 minutes.
I heard Chip Roy on the radio this morning, and he said that the city voted down installing weather sirens. There's a legit criticism.
And I'm sure there are some more, but sometimes bad things happen, and this seems like one of those moments -- unless I'm missing a part of the story.
I think there is a long chain of problems that led to the final tragic result, some systemic and addressable, and some just incredibly unfortunate.
Weather sirens could have helped, there are other flood-prone regions in the state that have them.
The state also has a super-annoying cell phone alert system that they regularly use to let us know if someone lost a dog 5 counties over, but was not employed in this case. But as I stated before (or maybe on the thread on the SEC forum), cell phone service in that remote river basin is notoriously spotty, and the campers themselves weren't allowed to have cell phones anyway, but presumably some of the counselors and adult supervisors would have cell access. There's still a problem with service.
(That was just an exaggeration about the dog thing but suffice to say, it has been used over broad areas before to alerts us of events that could never have any impact at all on us).
Beyond all that, this is a river in an area of the state that is well-known for flash-flooding. Having a person monitor the weather services and NOAA weather radio 24/7 would have obviously been a good idea. They may or may not have had someone doing that, but if they did, then that person failed to act in time, although they did have enough warning.
Another unfortunate fact, was that they had some of the very youngest campers, in the cabins closest to the river's edge. That's obviously not an ideal campsite design with hindsight being 20/20.
Lots of other factors and failures occurred to result in this tragedy as well. Ultimately my heart aches even more, because I do believe it was almost entirely preventable.
