General Discussion

This is a very rural area.

I am in Austin, and we do not have tornado sirens, for example. Nor do we have flood sirens along our major waterways that have flash floods like this. You watch the news when the weather is getting bad, and you have the warning that goes off on your phone, which will hopefully alert you even in the middle of the night. My phone has been going off all day with flood warnings. I am still wondering why that phone alert didn't seem to get to the camp directors, and local law enforcement, who surely would have had cell phones. Some of our local meteorologists are saying on social media that NWS posted flood warnings for the area at 1 AM. Perhaps the cell phone reception is so bad in the area (again because it is so rural) that they just didn't get the alerts over their phones? If so, that is truly tragic.

But back to sirens.

When we had a series of tornados come through Austin several years back, the question of why we don't have tornado sirens came up, and it was explained that not only would it be extremely expensive to implement a siren system across the entire city, but it would have to be constantly maintained, tested every few weeks (annoying!) and upgraded and that was difficult (and expensive) to do as well. In short, it was safer to rely on the cell phone warning system that is currently in place. But that may not be the case everywhere. We'll have to see what comes of this as they investigate and try to prevent future tragedies like this.