TX floods - former county I.T / radio amateur monitor interviewed

As seen on CBS Nightly News tonight.

John @N5ZKK, now retired as IT Director for Kerr county, was working there when an alert system called "Code Red" was installed, was monitoring while the disaster unfolded, and interviewed in his home "shack".

John, WØPV

-------------------------------------------------
Some Texas flood alerts were delayed as officials waited for authorization, former Kerr County official says - By Jason Allen CBS News

As flood water rose rapidly on the Guadalupe River in Texas early on July 4, there was no outdoor siren or warning alarm to alert people to the danger.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, a top local government official, said in the wake of the flooding that the area does "not have a warning system."

The county does have an emergency alert system, though, called CodeRED. The web-based system sends recorded messages and text alerts to residential and business phones, warning of a flood, fire or any emergency where a fast notification could save lives.

Recordings of radio traffic reviewed by CBS News reveal a firefighter, about an hour into the flood response at 4:22 a.m., asked a dispatcher if the CodeRED system could be activated.

"Is there any way we can send a CodeRED out to our Hunt residents asking them to find higher ground or stay home?" one firefighter is heard asking.

"Stand by, we have to get that approved with our supervisor," the dispatcher responds.

John David Trolinger N5ZKK was awake, listening to and recording that radio traffic in Kerrville that morning. It's a hobby he took up as a kid, developed during his time serving on Navy submarines, and kept up while he worked as the IT director for Kerr County.

Trolinger said he helped install the CodeRED when the county purchased it in 2009. Often during major weather events, while employed, he was used to staying late to handle web posts or technical issues, and still finds himself keeping tabs on them in retirement.

When he woke up on Friday around 1 a.m., Trolinger said he immediately tuned into emergency radio transmissions. Watching radar and keeping an eye on alerts from the National Weather Service, he saw heavy rain falling over the north and south forks or the Guadalupe, a sign that the situation could be bad.

At 3:26 a.m., a firefighter warned a dispatcher that a road along the river was impassable, blocking off the city of Hunt from emergency responders coming from the east.

"That's an emergency," Trolinger told CBS News.

The river continued to rise, and Trolinger's recordings show emergency responders calling in flooded houses, reporting children being trapped, and asking for swift water rescue teams.

By 5:11 a.m., as first responders were carrying out rescue operations in the flood waters, the CodeRED alert hadn't been sent.

"I didn't know who was in dispatch," Trolinger said, recalling the morning of July Fourth. "It's been an hour. Someone should have been standing — someone should have gotten up and been there to say, 'OK, send the code red.'"

Trolinger has been retired for six years, and told CBS News he doesn't know who is responsible for approving the emergency alerts anymore. But when he was working, he said it was the sheriff's responsibility. The sheriff's office did not respond to CBS News' request for comment.

Trolinger told CBS News he even thought about calling the dispatchers himself, but said he knew the phone lines were jammed and he figured it might make things worse.

"I thought, 'Man, someone could die because I'm there arguing with a dispatcher that doesn't know who I am or remember my name,'" he said. "And there was no way I was gonna interrupt their process because it's, you know, it's five o'clock, someone's gotta be in dispatch besides just the night, the overnight people."

Although there were no alerts sent by local government officials in Kerr County or neighboring Bandera County, CBS News analysis shows there were 22 warnings sent by the National Weather Service for Kerr County and the Kerrville area.

Among those was a 4:03 a.m. alert sent to Bandera and Kerr counties that said, in part, "This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!" and "Move to higher ground now! This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation. Do not attempt to travel unless you are fleeing an area subject to flooding or under an evacuation order."

When pressed about emergency alerts at news conferences, several officials refused to answer directly and instead said they were focused right now on finding the victims.

But many people in the area say they never received any warnings. Among them, the Roberson family, who told CBS News they're lucky to be alive after flood waters forced them out of their home in the middle of the night.

The family became separated, and Phil Roberson said he rode out the storm on the roof of their house.

"It's just cars floating at the house, and there's cars bouncing off the house, and I had no idea where they were," he said.

Jack Roberson, 15, and his mother, Lindsey Roberson, tried to drive away, but the water rose too fast. They got out of their truck, and the current immediately swept them off their feet.

Hitting fences and being slammed by debris, Jack was able to grab onto a tree before he floated past it.

He still had his phone, and started recording video showing his legs underwater as trees and other debris engulfed him.

Lindsey was also able to get up into a tree. It was dead, partially held up by a board, but held her weight until the water receded.

The Roberson's daughters were at Camp Mystic with their cousins. Helicopters had to evacuate them from the camp, but the family was reunited.

As dozens of people helped tear out debris from their flooded house Wednesday, Phil Roberson said he was struck by the generosity of people, coming together to help them.

"I think we're going to get a preparedness plan together as a family and talk about, you know, what we do and what we don't do, and where we rally together," Phil Roberson said. "And because, I mean, you know, it could happen again tomorrow, but we're not going anywhere."

 

Wow! This scenario brought back memories of the officials responses during the Bastrop Complex fire, years ago. Tons of money spent, little learned. Sad.

 

The Kerr County Texas flood disaster exposed what a disaster our nation’s emergency alert system is. I’ll get to the ham radio aspect in a second.

The weather service did a good job alerting the public two (2) days before the flood on Twitter. The problem is that a lot of people don’t use Twitter. I suspect that local TV stations spread the word. The problem here is that young people don’t watch TV news. Only 9% of people 18 to 49 watch TV news closely according to Pew Research.

According to this article, the weather service issued a flash flood alert at 0114 on Friday morning and declared an emergency at 0415. Unfortunately, only a small number of cell phones received these alerts. It’s not known if the cell phone alert was repeated.

At 0422, local officials requested authorization to notify residents using a county cell phone app. It took over an hour to receive permission.

The media can’t be relied on for alerts especially in the middle of the night. Janitors are about the only people at TV station in the night. Some stations aren’t even local and are automated hundreds or thousands of miles away. I spent 50 years in broadcasting. The Emergency Alert System (EAS) was designed to be the solution. You can’t believe the number of AM/FM stations that don’t own a required EAS decoder/encoder. The FCC no longer does inspections so the chance of getting caught is near zero. A lot of stations don’t even have a way to originate an alert using a microphone. However, they do relay the National Weather Service. EAS is worthless if your radio or TV is off. Google ‘EAS’ and you’ll find that nobody makes a consumer EAS system. If you own a Tesla, you won’t even have an AM radio but the FCC is not about to fine them.

In Texas, there are six (6) rain gauges on the Guadalupe River. No clue if NOAA relied on them but they did say in a Skywarn seminar I attended that hams and others are invaluable as their eyes on the ground. I’m sure hams would volunteer but NOAA needs a way to alert hams to BOLA.

Starlink probably ate ham radio’s lunch for communication for the pros in many disasters (except nukes). I was never impressed with ham radio’s role. Local ham club members grab their rigs from home. One club has a dedicated trailer but no gear and no real plan. Some clubs have very elaborate and expensive trailers. There’s a lot on youtube about these club ‘toys’ but not about what to do with them. One video explains nothing more than exactly how complicated RACES procedures are. It would be nice to see kiss (keep it simple stupid) youtube videos showing what has been done in the past and how it was done without bankrupting the club.

 

Were there NWS Flood Warnings/Alerts sent out via NWS transmitters? Could people have been woken up by a "Weather Alert" radio tone and emergency NWS broadcast. I don't go into Flood Zones without a Weather Alert Radio if there is even a hint of rain in the general region.

 

There were many weather alerts-watches and warnings in a timely manner. In the case of radio/TV, broadcasters can pick and chose what alerts to rebroadcast. For example, a tsunami alert won't be broadcast in Colorado. Some stations really limit what is relayed because (as anyone with a home WX radio knows), there are so many alerts that a lot of people shut the radios off.

 

I would like to ask a question? Would he like more radio with the coax?

 

Folks, lay off the ham radio stuff

It was mentioned in the article to establish tech creds for the informant.

The article detailed some of what didn't happen. Lessons learned.

Pitiful lessons, at huge, needless, epic cost.

 

We can only hope like in other disasters that some how, some way we learn, we get better at things that can help with future disasters. I thought it was just a small city like ours problem of not having a "real" ARES/RACES team who can actually have a plan, AUXCOM trained ops and some type of MOA with the city/county EOC to be called if needed but it sure seems that many towns, even big ones do not and that is awful. We have plenty ops here in deep South Ga but so far no real structure. Again, I just hope and pray that what happened will help us all get more serious about how we support our community during disasters. I also hope it will help all parties, ham ops, city/county EOC's etc to work harder at getting the training and equipment and make a plan that works to save lives. It is not an easy thing to get set up but if it saves one life, especially a child it will all be worth it.

God help us all.

 

I doubt it; and seeing the interviews with survivors only strengthens that suspicion.

The geography in that area just doesn't help. Mountain, river, valley, mountain. Repeat for about 150 miles in each wind direction. It would take several transmitters to cover the whole area.

Plus: in my own area the closest NWS station is 35 miles away. Hard to hear from here, and - somewhat ironically - it's the first thing that goes down during a thunderstorm.

The other problem is that people don't "believe" in WX radios anymore. They think their smartphone will do it all. Again, in reality, they walk into an area that is virtually void of VHF+ signal, due to the terrain.

Last, and by no means least: the state of TX - for years - REFUSED to install an early warning system in that area, with money they only had to ask for. Reason cited by those who objected: privacy concerns. "Too much noise in case of a false alarm".

In a week or so from now we'll be looking at on official death toll close to 300. And the big guy up in Austin keeps comparing this infuriating disaster to a game of football...

Uvalde elementary school shooting, San Antonio flooding, Guadalupe River flooding, "It could have been worse", he keeps on saying...

 

There are thousands of NOAA transmitters deployed across the country. We are all familiar with them. They transmit weather 24 hours a day and DO transmit coded alerts that are specific to an area (if you live in Kerrville you won't get alerts for San Fransisco). Radios sell for $40 and up on Amazon. They are totally silent until a warning is sent DIRECTLY from the NWS to the affected area; no local government supervisor needs to approve the alert. The system is tested once a week according to the NOAA web site, on Wednesday mornings between 11 am and noon.

What more perfect system could possibly be envisioned? If the Kerrville transmitter doesn't reach into the valley where the camps are wouldn't it be a straightforward job to install another transmitter vs air raid-type sirens mounted on wooden poles that reach..... what....one mile and may not even wake up a sleeping household? Imagine this - the best case scenario, you manage to awaken when you hear the siren at 1 am. What are you going to do? Right, you are going to turn on your NOAA radio and get more details because the siren doesn't tell you if it is a flash flood, tornado, high winds, or anything.

$40 each. Keep that in mind as you hear government agencies talking about $millions for other systems and agencies blaming each other. Why was the NOAA system deployed if not for just this need?

 

Every Boafeng ht receives NOAA broadcasts, although admittedly doesn't have an alert decoder built in.

 

Interesting thing happened a few days ago here in central NJ. My cellphone alert went off, tornados in my area for next 30 minutes, take cover.
A friend called me on my cellphone from the Holmdel area to be sure I had gotten the alert. While we were talking the call dropped. Instead of bars indicating signal strength the iphone display said "SOS only." My first thought was lightning had knocked out the cell site. Now I am wondering....... maybe someone can respond, was the cell site forcing users off the air due to exceptionally heavy calling? It came back 10-20 minutes later. If that was the case, I will assume more emergency alerts would still get through.

 

Any VHF scanner can receive the NOAA warnings, I keep my Bearcat 895XLT on the local NOAA frequency 24/7

 

In the specs it says "Weather alert." That means NOAA decoder built in? You surely don't leave the audio running 24/7 ; that would drive a person bonkers.

 

Ok. Alerts were sent to a flood prone area. Receptionist in some of those areas is sketchy, at best. Tons of campers, most probably out of towners, not aware of regular floods, holiday weekend, etc., etc. but, the rv parks, campsite, and specialty camp owner/operators probably were aware of the dangers of crowds camped in flood prone river areas. Did any take the lead and warn their guests ? At the camps focused on young children, was there a lax policy not to have at least one responsible adult patrolling while the camp slept? If the normal residents objected to warning sirens, were any more acceptable alternatives demanded? I don’t believe that the government bears all of the blame. There is much to learn from this latest tragedy. I hope cooler heads prevail.