Deadly Texas floods leave officials pointing fingers after warnings missed

 https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/5388538-texas-floods-flash-flooding-camp-mystic-dhs-nws-warnings/

Local, state and federal officials are all pointing fingers in the wake of the deadly Texas flooding, but one thing is certain: The warnings weren’t heard by the people who needed them.

After the catastrophic Independence Day floods that killed at least 90 across central Texas, state and county officials told reporters that the storm had come without warning. But a wide array of meteorologists — and the Trump administration itself — has argued that those officials, as well as local residents, received a long train of advisories that a dangerous flood was gathering.

Some — like Sokich — argued that one possibility is that after rounds of staff reductions, NWS offices that may have had enough staff to issue accurate predictions didn’t have the personnel for potentially life-saving outreach. “If you don’t have the full staff, then you can’t do that,” he said. “People are just focusing on issuing the watches and warnings.” 

University of California, Los Angeles meteorologist Daniel Swain wrote on X that such outreach is “one of the first things to go away when offices are critically understaffed.”