PrairiePundit

 TownHall: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has firmly pushed back on a stunningly misleading New York Times report that claimed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) failed to answer calls from flood survivors after the devastating Texas floods that killed over 100, including children. The left-wing outlet, eager to paint a picture of federal negligence under the Trump administration, ignored key facts and context. However, DHS set the record straight, showing that FEMA was actively responding and coordinating rescue and relief efforts while media elites were busy spinning narratives instead of seeking the truth. The New York Times claimed that FEMA failed to answer thousands of phone calls after the devastating floods because the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, fired call center contractors, stating that she waited five days to renew the contracts of the staffers. However, DHS swiftly debunked the outlet’s false claims. "FALSE. NO ONE was left wi...

 Newsmax: More heavy rains in Texas on Sunday paused a weeklong search for victims of catastrophic flooding along the Guadalupe River and led to high-water rescues elsewhere as officials warned that the downpours could again cause waterways to surge. It was the first time a new round of severe weather had paused the search since the July Fourth floods, which killed at least 129 people. Authorities believe more than 160 people may still be missing in Kerr County. In Kerrville, where local officials have come under scrutiny about the warnings given to residents, authorities went door-to-door to some homes after midnight early Sunday to alert people that flooding was again possible. Authorities also pushed alerts to the phones of those in the area. Ingram Fire Department officials ordered search crews to immediately evacuate the Guadalupe River corridor in Kerr County until further notice, warning the potential for a flash flood is high. Search-and-rescue efforts were expected to resu...

 Axios: President Trump defended his administration's response to the  Texas Hill Country  flooding after surveying the  damage  and meeting with victims' families on Friday in Kerrville. The big picture:   The president's visit comes amid questions about the federal response to the flooding, as he has pushed to dismantle the   Federal Emergency Management Agency . FEMA did not deploy search and rescue teams   to Texas until   more than 72 hours   after the flooding,   per CNN . Still, Trump arrived to friendly faces in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott and other Texas officials have continued to   praise his response . The latest:   At least 121 people were confirmed dead and more than 170 still missing on Friday, a week after the floods hit,   per CBS News . President Trump also on Friday approved Abbott's request for federal disaster assistance for   more counties , in addition to the hard-hit Kerr County. What th...

  Victor Davis Hanson: ... We had this minor official—a Democratic official—Sade Perkins, and she posted that she was almost happy that we lost over a hundred people, the majority of them children, in this flash flood in Texas . She said they were “all white,” and therefore, they were discriminatory. I’ve never seen anything like it. And then, people weighed in. And they had some atrocious comments. A pediatrician was almost gloating. And they had a variety of mechanisms to show how grotesque and ghoulish they were. One group of people said, “It was global warming. You people in Texas”—where, by the way, there’s more, I think, there’s more wind turbines and solar than almost anywhere—“you people denied global warming. This was caused by global warming. And therefore, you got your just desserts.” It was not caused by global warming. It was a once-in-a-century flash flood of a magnitude no one had seen in a hundred years. And then there were other people who said, “You supported the...

  NY Post: Donald Trump has been accused of many outlandish things, but killing children with flash floods has to be among the worst. The first reflex of his critics was to blame him for the appalling tragedy in central Texas, where a flood on July 4 killed more than 100 people, including over two dozen children at a Christian summer camp . This is one of the deadliest floods in the United States in the last 100 years, and the toll among kids is a particular gut punch. It’s natural that observers will ask how it could have happened, but the fact-free, malicious attacks constitute one of the more poisonously stupid episodes of the Trump years — and that’s saying a lot. The theory here is that Elon Musk’s chainsaw cuts to the National Weather Service gutted the agency, with catastrophic consequences . See, Trump’s adversaries say, we told you DOGE would get people killed. There were indeed staff reductions at the National Weather Service, totaling about 10%. The idea, though, that t...

 Daily Signal: ... An analysis of global rainfall trends over the past 200 years published by The Heritage Foundation earlier this year concludes that “global rainfall trends and extremes do not align with a global systematic change that could be attributed to a single driver, such as rising carbon-dioxide emissions.” “Rainfall doesn’t follow a regular pattern—it goes up and down in unpredictable ways and varies a lot from place to place,” Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of Heritage’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment, told The Daily Signal. “Because of this, scientists use models that deal with randomness to study it.” “While changes in local and regional rainfall are important for managing water and preparing for floods or droughts, there’s no strong evidence yet of a global trend in rainfall or a worldwide increase in extreme events that can be clearly linked to human-caused climate change ,” she added. Mario Loyola, a senior fellow in law, economics, and technology a...

 Newsmax: President Donald Trump on Sunday signed a major disaster declaration for Kerr County, Texas, where at least 43 people have died and dozens remain missing in flooding after torrential rains. The declaration is "to ensure that our brave first responders immediately have the resources they need. These families are enduring an unimaginable tragedy, with many lives lost, and many still missing," Trump posted on social media. ... I have seen other reports indicating the death toll in the floods is up to 82.  This area of Texas is somewhat hilly, so the rain would have to be significant to do so much damage and cause so many deaths.  See also: Death toll in central Texas flash floods rises to 82 as sheriff says 10 campers remain missing Families sifted through waterlogged debris Sunday and stepped inside empty cabins at Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp ripped apart by flash floods that washed homes off their foundations and killed at least 82 people in central Tex...

 Headline USA: At Least 13 Dead in Texas Floods and More than 20 Children Missing from Girls Summer Camp 'My son and I floated to a tree where we hung onto it, and my boyfriend and my dog floated away...' See also: In all the deacdes I have lived in Texas, I have never seen this kind of flooding before.  As you can see from the video there is plenty of high ground that people could run to if they had a warning.   I live in Southeast Texas.  While we had some rain, I saw no flooding in my area. See also: At Least 27 Dead in Texas Floods, Search for Missing Continues A Texas sheriff says the deaths from flash flooding in central Texas has risen to 27 people, including nine children. Search and rescue efforts were continuing in the Texas Hill Country, said Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha. The destructive fast-moving waters along the Guadalupe River destroyed a girls' camp and washed away homes early Friday near the river. Many people remain missing. Crews searched...

 Headline USA: Western N.C. Hurricane Victims Thank Trump for Giving Them a ‘Shot of Hope’ 'I had in the back of my mind... "If Trump would just show up" ... We need him. We need that shot of hope in the arm. ... We need to know we're going to be OK and not forgotten...' ... ... The flooding was catastrophic in this area and the response of the Biden administration appears inadequate to many in the area.  Biden has offered $750 to people who have lost homes and businesses while he is shipping billions to Ukraine.

 NY Post: Tiny Florida town ‘wiped off the map’ by Hurricane Helene’s wrath: ‘There’s nothing left’ When Hurricane Helene battered Florida’s Gulf Coast this week, one of the hardest-hit areas was the small town of Steinhatchee, which was overwhelmed by a 10-foot storm surge and 140 mph winds. Most of the town’s 500 residents evacuated the area — and returned to find their homes and businesses destroyed. “It’s heartbreaking,” said Donna Landon, whose mobile home just outside the town limits was a total loss. ... A 10-foot storm surge would devastate most homes not on high ground and there is very little high ground in Florida.  Few buildings are left standing in the town near the state capitol of Florida. See also:

 Daily Wise: Several communities in the area had flooding after the heavy rains in the area.  I was not out today, but my stepdaughter said she saw a lot of standing water.  The weather report indicated rain was more than 8 inches.  Downhill from my house is a pond that no doubt had water over its spillway which goes into a creek that takes it down to the road threw a heavily wooded area. Such rains are rare in this area and more of a significant problem in the more flat areas. Check the link above for more information on the areas of flooding in this part of Texas. I have to go to College Station in the morning and may get a chance to see more of the problem firsthand. See also: Driver carried away by overflowing creek after steering straight into Texas floods

 NY Post: Florida bracing for new influx of residents fleeing blue states — including NY — after Dems’ election success New Yorkers are headed to Florida.  Californians are headed to Texas and Tennessee. 

NY Times: A Climate Plan in Texas Focuses on Minorities. Not Everyone Likes It. For years, money for flood protection in the Houston area went mostly to richer neighborhoods. A new approach prioritizes minority communities, and it’s stirring up resentments. Flood plane management did not really begin in the area until the 1070's  It mainly applied to new construction and required all homes to be above the 100-year flood plain.  At first, builders put some homes on "anthills" to get them above the required level, but eventually, they became much more creative by using lakes and channels to deal with the excess rainfall.  In recent years there has been a focus on avoiding flooding in older homes.  My recollection is that the focus has been on areas that are most likely to flood.  In fact, the Meyerland area is a neighborhood of relatively wealthy homeowners that suffered serious flooding in Hurricane Harvey and since then homes have been elevated seve...

Washington Post: Water from Addicks Reservoir flows into neighborhoods from floodwaters brought on by Tropical Storm Harvey in Houston on Aug. 29, 2017. (AP) Millions of homeowners face flood risks without realizing it, and climate change is making it worse At least 6 million households are unaware that they’re living in homes that have a 1 percent chance of flooding in each year — putting them within a “100-year” flood zone, according to a new report. By 2050, 16.2 million properties will be at “substantial risk” of flooding in a given year. Harvey was a 1,000-year flood event.  It had the highest rainfall accumulation ever recorded in the US.  BTW, the link is to a Washington Post story about the flood that was published in the Denver Post. Homebuilders in the Houston, Harris Country area are required to make sure the houses constructed are above the 100-year flood plain.  I am skeptical that climate change had anything to do with making things worse....

LA Times: As Hurricane Harvey approached Houston, Kevin Kelly hunkered down in his brick house, which was built in 2009 in a federally designated flood zone. He set his alarm to ring every two hours throughout the night so he could monitor water creeping closer from a creek overflowing a quarter mile away. From his upstairs window, as bolts of lightning flashed across the sky and wind battered his walls, he and his wife watched as record-setting rains turned his street into a river. “The question was how much furniture were we going to put upstairs,” Kelly recalled. In the end, the water came within 5 feet of his house and no closer. Many of his neighbors were not so lucky. What helped save Kelly was a Houston building regulation that ensured his house was situated on higher ground than older homes. No other major metropolitan area in the U.S. has grown faster than Houston over the last decade, with a significant portion of new construction occurring in areas that the fed...

Texas Tribune: For 60 years, the Texas Water Development Board has been the keeper of a master list of projects that are supposed to meet the state's water needs for the next half century. But the latest list the agency is compiling is not about supplying water — it's about managing it. Earlier this year in the wake of two major floods that crippled communities across the state — and just months before the remnants of Hurricane Harvey dumped a historic amount of rainfall on southeast Texas — state lawmakers voted to give the agency $600,000 to create the state's first-ever flood plan. The document will broadly evaluate statewide flood risks and detail projects local governments want to pursue to mitigate those vulnerabilities with suggestions as to how the state could help fund or finance them. “What we are doing over the next year or so is a desktop assessment of who is doing what, what are in the local plans [and] how much is it going to cost,” said Robert Mace, the...

AP: Houston officials said Saturday that they’re already thinking about how to build and fund projects that will lessen the blow of the next storm, even as the nation’s fourth-largest city continues to recover from Harvey’s devastating floodwaters. Leaders with the U.S. Conference of Mayors gathered in Houston to meet with Mayor Sylvester Turner. They discussed how Houston is working to rebuild and what other communities can learn from its experience. Turner has said his top two priorities in Houston’s recovery are removing the 8 million cubic yards of debris that Harvey left behind and finding permanent housing for the hundreds of Houston-area residents who remain in shelters. Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on Aug. 25 and dumped more than 50 inches of rain in some areas around the city after weakening to a tropical storm. But Turner said Saturday that trying to move forward with various flood mitigation projects — such as widening some of the area’s bayous and ...

Washington Post: As flooded Houston neighborhoods dry out, residents wonder if they’re worth rebuilding After three major floods — in 2015, 2016 and now Hurricane Harvey — urban planners are broaching the once-unthinkable idea that some communities ought to be abandoned and returned to nature. After the 1900 Galveston Hurricane dredge material from digging the Houston Ship Channel was used to raise the elevation of Galveston Island by eight or nine feet.  What Houston should consider is making the Barker and Addicks reservoirs deeper so they can retain more water when there is an another flood event.  The material from the dig can be used to raise the elevation of flood prone areas. I suspect that many of these areas have homes built prior to the 1970's when Houston instituted a requirement that all new construction be above the 100-year flood plain.  Because of Houston's lack of zoning, it is much easier to turn a neighborhood over and see tear downs of older ...

Leo Linbeck III: Imagine the following scenario: A major metropolitan area with millions of people is hit with a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions. Everyone expects a catastrophe of biblical proportions. After the disaster passes, you learn the following: 99.5 percent of people are able to remain in their homes. 94 percent of homes suffered no damage. 0.0000075 percent of the population dies from the disaster, an increase in the annual death rate of about 0.1 percent. At any given point, more than 98 percent of Houstonians have electric power, and 92 percent of Houstonians never lose power. City, county, corporate, non-profit, and community leaders do a great job of responding to the disaster, as do state and federal government emergency management agencies. Average, everyday citizens step up in a big way to take care of family, friends, and neighbors. The economic damage caused by the disaster is estimated to be than 10 percent to 20 percent of annual regional economic ...

Defense Tech: Predator, Reaper Drones Flying to Monitor Harvey, Irma Aftermath The Air National Guard has deployed medium-altitude drones to help airlift and search-and-rescue units find victims in disaster-stricken areas, its top general said Saturday. The Guard is flying unarmed MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reaper drones, as well as manned RC-26 mobile intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance planes, to scour areas in Texas affected by Hurricane Harvey, according to Air Force Lt. Gen Scott Rice, director of the Air National Guard. And they’ll use them for Irma, too, he said. ... Even nonmilitary drones were used in Houston to photograph flood damage even when choppers could not fly because of the weather.  The birdseye view provided dramatic pictures of what was happening real time.