Disaster at Camp Mistic - cheap flood alarm

[Donald]

I know hindsight is always 20/20.

For $100 the camp could have installed a boat bilge pump switch near the ground connected to a boat horn or some weatherproof 12V siren and an AGM battery 20' up a tree or telephone pole.

AGM battery would have easily stayed charged over the summer.

They would have had their own flood alarm.

Especially since it's happened before in the general area.

 

[CKN]

After all the sadness settles-I expect lawsuits to be filed every which way on this................

 

[Lubener]

Everyone has the answer. It's very easy to second guess and those comments are not needed.

 

[NiwradND]

After all the sadness settles-I expect lawsuits to be filed every which way on this................

Too bad you think that way..........Praying for the families involved.

 

[Donald]

Everyone has the answer. It's very easy to second guess and those comments are not needed.

I disagree. I think it's part of a review of what they did wrong and what they did right to plan for the future so hopefully it does not happen again.

If I ran a camp along that river I would be very interested in installing my own $100 flood alert system until the county or state gets their act together and installs a county wide system.

 

[mk378]

The water came up rapidly. A local flood alarm switch that was placed low enough to provide adequate warning time for this flood would have sounded many times on minor floods. If local observation was the only information you had, you would need to evacuate the camp every time the river started to rise even though most of those would ultimately be false alarms.

It takes a system of experts and networks of hardware to observe the rainfall, predict how high the river will rise, and communicate the warning to the public. This technology is well-established and does not require a large budget. Some places have other priorities though.

 

[Kira]

until the county or state gets their act together and installs a county wide system.

Yeah, but the "government is bad...taxes are bad..."
Praying for somebody costs nothing and requires no effort.

A summer camp is built in a flood plain because the land is cheaper...and people act surprised when it floods.
Like the roadside 'campgrounds' in the German and Austrian mountains. The clean, flat rock -so attractive to campers on a budget- is clean because of runoff water.

You don't pay your money and take your chances.

 

[eljefino]

Yeah, but the "government is bad...taxes are bad..."
Praying for somebody costs nothing and requires no effort.

A summer camp is built in a flood plain because the land is cheaper...and people act surprised when it floods.
Like the roadside 'campgrounds' in the German and Austrian mountains. The clean, flat rock -so attractive to campers on a budget- is clean because of runoff water.

You don't pay your money and take your chances.

Mankind is genetically programmed to like being near (fresh?) water. Before we invented plumbing we felt "safe" being near something to drink and maybe even fish in. Real estate the world over is more expensive/ desirable by water because we want to be there.

The people running the camp didn't have great foresight for safety as played out in the papers the days after the tragedy.

 

[Donald]

The water came up rapidly. A local flood alarm switch that was placed low enough to provide adequate warning time for this flood would have sounded many times on minor floods. If local observation was the only information you had, you would need to evacuate the camp every time the river started to rise even though most of those would ultimately be false alarms.

It takes a system of experts and networks of hardware to observe the rainfall, predict how high the river will rise, and communicate the warning to the public. This technology is well-established and does not require a large budget. Some places have other priorities though.

My idea of a local alarm is to wake people up to go out and look. They can decide to evacuate or not. But evacuating to safety here only meant having the young girls walk up the hill to the older girls cabins.

Maybe the alarm switch is near the cabins for the young girls. If the water reaches their the counselors could have been told to have the girls walk up the hill.

I am not saying there should not be a properly designed county wide flood alert system. There obviously should be

 

[AZjeff]

This presentation by NASA helps you understand what happened without the media hype. A flash flood at night that exceeded 500 year flood parameters needed the advanced warning of a meteorological prediction system. Take 5 minutes and read it.

@Donald , good thinking but this was an unprecedented event. Historically generations have gone to these camps without tragedy.

https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/dashboard/stories/tx-flood

 

[Donald]

This presentation by NASA helps you understand what happened without the media hype. A flash flood at night that exceeded 500 year flood parameters needed the advanced warning of a meteorological prediction system. Take 5 minutes and read it.

@Donald , good thinking but this was an unprecedented event. Historically generations have gone to these camps without tragedy.

https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/dashboard/stories/tx-flood

If I was a parent I would say I don't care if it was a once in a million years fash flood, my child died and the state/county/camp should have handled things better.

 

[IveBeenRued]

We were just discussing things like this at work the other day. States and localities used to employ flood alarms and sirens but they have been largely discontinued in the 80s and 90s as the NWS became more capable of predicting events due to the availability of Doppler radar. But because NWS over predicts flash flood conditions and has been crying wolf too often over the past decade or two many people, including myself, almost completely ignore the warnings nowadays. For example, I have been under flood warnings for 10 out of the past 12 days and the other two days had flood watches; the most water that I saw was one large puddle in the lowest spot that covered half of a single road. Hardly life or property threatening.

It’s high time that localities take responsible for their safety systems again.

 

[Rand]

If I was a parent I would say I don't care if it was a once in a million years fash flood, my child died and the state/county/camp should have handled things better.

I think its a too soon they are still finding and burying bodies.
This would be similar to talking about airplane security failure/ assigning blame while the twin towers were still on fire.
Mistakes were made. A large part is the cry wolf weather reporting. 99 alerts for no event.. leads you to think number 100 is a no event.

 

[Pew]

We were just discussing things like this at work the other day. States and localities used to employ flood alarms and sirens but they have been largely discontinued in the 80s and 90s as the NWS became more capable of predicting events due to the availability of Doppler radar. But because NWS over predicts flash flood conditions and has been crying wolf too often over the past decade or two many people, including myself, almost completely ignore the warnings nowadays. For example, I have been under flood warnings for 10 out of the past 12 days and the other two days had flood watches; the most water that I saw was one large puddle in the lowest spot that covered half of a single road. Hardly life or property threatening.

Complacency kills. People should take heed with proper drills and action. One of the soldiers who survives the Ia Drang Valley (We Were Soldiers Once, and Young) Rick Rescorla, went on to work security for the twin towers during 9/11. It was known he was very, very staunch with evac and fire drill timing. He was credited with saving the lives of many people through his strict fire drill training but unfortunately perished himself when the towers fell.

 

[IveBeenRued]

Complacency kills. People should take heed with proper drills and action. One of the soldiers who survives the Ia Drang Valley (We Were Soldiers Once, and Young) Rick Rescorla, went on to work security for the twin towers during 9/11. It was known he was very, very staunch with evac and fire drill timing. He was credited with saving the lives of many people through his strict fire drill training but unfortunately perished himself when the towers fell.

Warning fatigue is more accurate. I’ve personally experienced thousands of flood warnings and have never been affected by a flood, so I and many others ignore them. Meanwhile, I’ve only experienced a handful of tornado warnings in my lifetime and have had my house hit by one, had to speed away from three while driving, and had neighbors’ houses and properties destroyed by them. So I take tornado warnings seriously. They need to redo how their flood prediction models or employ more physical detection devices and move away from their purely satellite based flood warning systems.

 

[CKN]

Too bad you think that way..........Praying for the families involved.

Has there been a disaster where after every thing settles this hasn't happened? It's not a matter of "thinking that way"-it's reality.

 

[doitmyself]

We're basically armchair quarterbacking here. It's a very complicated situation. People are still living in New Orleans, which is below sea level. People still choose to live in "tornado alley". Just sayin'.....................

 

[Lubener]

You can keep second guessing but I am still trying to comprehend that amount of rise in water in such a short time. Amazing what the hilly terrain can do to water flow. I recall something similiar happening a few years back in West Virginia due to water running downhill into the valleys.

 

[Donald]

But this is the same kind of flooding NC had a year ago. If it rains 6" in a V shaped area (hilltop to hilltop) the people at the bottom of the V (valley) will get a lot more than 6" of water.

Disappointing that FEMA and their flood maps are backward looking rather than looking towards the future. Apparently FEMA has smart people who could do forward thinking flood maps taking into account what's happening with the climate, but they are not tasked with doing that.

These are times when I am glad I live in Delaware. It's basically a flat sandbar. Not much to burn or flood.