By Phill Courtney
Last July’s deadly floods in Texas reminded us once again of how often we keep repeatedly ignoring one of the lessons that the sinking of the British ocean liner Titanic should have taught us but didn’t: that while we should make our plans carefully and hope for the best, we should still always plan for the worst.
Famously, or rather infamously, as is now well known, the liner did not come equipped with enough lifeboats for everyone on board that cold April night in 1912 and consequently over 1,500 souls went to a watery death because the company thought that those lifeboats would “clutter” the deck, while also thinking it was basically unthinkable that the ship was sinkable.
As has so often happened throughout history, they did not plan for the worst, but the worst also happened partly because they were not required to do so by government regulations; a “perfect storm” so to speak, resulting in tragedy. And now such seems to be the case with the floods in Texas.
Although the areas inundated by the Guadalupe River were prone to floods in the past—floods which had resulted in by no means insignificant amounts of deaths, while this time government regulations had been in place “red flagging” those areas—the regulations had been compromised and weakened by various “deals” cut between landowners and government officials.
The most high-profile and heartbreaking incident during the July 4th flooding was the literal wiping out of Camp Mystic, a girls’ Christian summer camp on the banks of the Guadalupe, owned and operated by Dick Eastland since 1974. Although, to his credit, Eastland had proposed and had finally seen put in place an automatic flood alert system after a flood in 1987, complacency had gradually increased since then and when the company that had installed the system went out of business in 1997, the river authority had decommissioned the system in 1999, citing unreliability and the possibility of false alarms.
Also adding to this “perfect storm,” was the lack of other flood warning alerts by phone and sirens. Besides the fact that the Mystic camp girls were not allowed to have cell phones (so, even if there had been phone alerts, they wouldn’t have heard them), county residents had balked at the possibility of some raucous horns going off accidentally, while also rejecting the costs involved—all reminiscent for me of those public service TV announcements in the ’60 and ’70, urging the use of seatbelts that included interviews with women who said they didn’t like them because they “wrinkled” their skirts.
Also contributing to the chaos were the conflicting and sometimes muddled responses by several government organizations, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which, like many other U.S. departments, has been impacted by funding cuts from the Trump administration. Headed now by former South Dakota governor (and South Dakota Snow Queen pageant winner), Kristi Noem, whose immaculate make-up and the various “theme” outfits she sports are always in place, attempts to ferret out the facts by organizations like CNN only resulted in a series of frustrating “she said—they said” backs-and-forths at press conference and in official statements.
For instance, it was reported by CNN that Noem had to personally sign off on any expenditures above $100,000 which hamstrung efforts to proactively pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews who lacked a green light from Noem which did eventually come, but only three days later. Many news agencies also reported that emergency calls to FEMA went unanswered after Noem had allowed the contracts at four call centers to lapse, while other glaring oversight mistakes abounded.
After some of the dust had settled (or the flood waters had receded), Noem, cribbing a page from the Donald Trump playbook, dismissed all these charges as, of course, “fake news,” and “absolutely trash,” and, as so many others have on the “Trump team,” suffered no repercussions, nor calls from her boss to resign or, if not, face a firing. Once again, incompetence carried the day.
Meanwhile, Texas governor, Greg Abbott, when asked who was to blame, immediately bristled and fired back that it was not appropriate to fix blame, but rather to look forward like a football team after a stinging defeat and face the next game with confidence. In other words, like he does after the latest one of the many mass shootings in Texas, now was not the time for pointing fingers. Fixing blame is for losers. Let’s just offer those thoughts and prayers.
Now, before we leave the Texas floods and look forward at yet more disasters to diagnose here and the lessons lost, we can’t do that without mentioning the tragic fate of the Mystic camp director and owner, Dick Eastland because he too, like the captain of the Titanic went “down with his ship,” after ignoring reality and the warnings he did receive that night until it was far too late, while always knowing the risks involved in the location of his camp.
So, while he did make that earlier effort to have alarms in place, later, it seems, knowing full well that Camp Mystic and its surroundings had been placed in a designated hazard zone by a flood insurance rate map, had, despite that, sought out and received permission from authorities to wave those restrictions and continued to operate until that rainy night of July 4th when it all ended in tragedy. So, it seems in this particular “blame game,” the fingers point in many directions.
Moving from water to fire, let’s now take a look at the many fire disasters that have hit the United States in recent years—particularly those in my home state of California. First, I should say, though, that there’s been a tendency to see these high-profile holocausts as somehow being unprecedented. They’re not.
Although when we think about some historically memorable fires, we tend to think of those in terms of urban fires, such as the loss of most of San Francisco in 1906 after the famous earthquake, and, of course, Chicago in 1871, far worst in terms of human deaths are wildfires, which have taken a far higher toll.
On the same night as the Chicago fire in October of 1871, forest fires farther north named after the most populous town there, Peshtigo, Wisconsin, devastated the region. Although the fires killed some 1,500 to 2,500 people, or five times the fatalities in Chicago, history has largely forgotten those deaths in favor of Chicago. History has also forgotten the lessons which should have been learned there: that placing human settlements inside of forests is a deadly combination.
Adding to that dynamic were the almost entirely unaltered practices of the industrial timber industry in the following years, with increased levels of logging, which, combined with drought and high winds, resulted in more wildfires and more deaths during predictable and recurring intervals.
Sadly, such is the case today, with those in California, of course, dominating the news, the most memorable of which recently were the massive urban fires of January 2025, which devastated among others, the communities of Pacific Palisades and Altadena, with some 19,000 structures burned to the ground, touching off another round of “how could this have happened?” and “what do we do in the future” discussions involving such topics as water storage; lack of escape routes; and out-of-touch politicians.
Almost lost in the shuffle, or the smoke (again), was the obvious fact that California governments continue to allow homes to be built in what’s been called the wildlands/urban interface, when houses are built on both picturesque hillsides and amid dense, but also picturesque (and deadly) brush and trees because of its status as “prime real estate,” where deals are cut to allow it despite all the cautions.
Perhaps one of the most egregious examples of this practice was the virtual obliteration of the ironically named Paradise, which was located amid the dense forests of the Sierra foothills in Northern California. When a fire broke out in November of 2018 (ignited by above ground Pacific Gas and Electric power lines—more on that shortly) it quickly swept into the town of almost 2,000, many of whom were unable to escape down the inadequate single-lane roads, resulting in 85 incinerated corpses, some found still sitting in their cars.
After the smoke cleared, the politicians swooped in to offer up their dubious “insights” into wildfires, including President Trump who cluelessly suggested that the problem was simply the lack of “raking” the forests like Finland does, despite people in Finland having no idea what he was talking about.
Other conservative commentators blasted the “woke” influence of “radical environmentalists” who were obviously behind all this because they’ve opposed controlled burns, and while the truth of the matter is that burning is a solution when part of natural cycles (like lightning strikes) through centuries of growth (and by some Native American tribes), and some trees even need fire to germinate their seeds, it’s long been suppressed by U.S. government fire policies, but now recognized as a mistake.
But again, largely buried beneath the debates, is this often unremarked upon question: should towns be built inside of forests to begin with? One exception amid that silence came in a report by the Sacramento Bee published shortly after the Paradise inferno, which quoted a former Sacramento Metropolitan Fire Chief who made this comment: “There’s just some places a subdivision shouldn’t be built.” To which I’ll add: “There’s just some places where towns shouldn’t’ be built.”
I received much the same response when I wrote an extended blog piece about wildfires in 2019 titled “Burning Issues,” and submitted it for perusal by the then fire chief in Redlands, who basically approved of my piece and echoed his colleague in Sacramento.
However, money often speaks more loudly than reason, so government planners and lawmakers continue to give in in the face of the public’s demand to live in beautiful forests and the profits to be made when they do, while, once again, the lessons have gone unlearned as people rebuild Paradise while yet other towns are being readied for re-burning amid others yet to be.
As for Pacific Gas and Electric—they soon declared bankruptcy amid the growing threat of billion-dollar payoffs to those suing the company (they were later allowed to reach some lower settlements), while the same scenario appears to be the case for Southern California Edison, one of whose decommissioned lines above Altadena is being increasingly seen as the culprit in that town’s obliteration.
It’s also come out that some of the lines above Altadena had been idle for many years amid company assertions that they needed them to stay just in case they ever wanted to use them again, while the undoubtedly true option of undergrounding all lines is affirmed by industry as far safer, but far more expensive—up to ten times the cost of overhead lines.
Now the same can be said for lessons learned and the principles that apply to trains and the options available in how we build them. Case in point: the recent completion of the Metrolink line which recently came into Redlands. I followed this story closely, partly because I’m a big train advocate and partly because I was intimately familiar with the line through Redlands.
Once a nine-mile train spur during the 19th and 20th centuries connecting Redlands to San Barnardino for the shipment of produce from the then thriving citrus industry and various milled grains, I saw possibly one of the last runs through downtown Redlands sometime around 2007 shortly after I’d move there that year; three or so hopper cars with grain from a mill since dismantled.
I also knew the line well because it was one of my running routes through town, affording safe passage down the dirt sides free from the fear of being struck by a motor vehicle with only a few street crossings to be concerned about. So, when the line was proposed for Redlands, while I didn’t like losing my running trail, I was all for it and followed its progress closely.
However, there was one big problem that I and a number of Redlands residents could see as a potential for creating problem in the future: the new Metrolink lines, unlike the wonderful Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system (which I’d first ridden on shortly after it opened) are not elevated, but, instead, operate at ground level just like the old ones, and the same would be the case for Redlands, recreating what could be described as yet another example of the “motor vehicle/train interface.”
For some Redlanders, particularly those in the business community, all they could think about was the potential for economic harm to their businesses caused by the traffic tie-ups downtown as the trains passed through, while, for me, all I could think about was the potential for deaths, involving both vehicles and people on foot.
One of the undeniable benefits of elevated railways where vehicles and people never cross paths, is the complete elimination of potential collisions with people both in and out of vehicles, such as an infamous incident in 2005 in Glendale when a man with mental illness and drug addiction was bent or either suicide or causing an incident to impress his estranged wife (not surprisingly the motivation is murky), parked his SUV on the Metrolink track only to abandoned his vehicle at the last moment, which was then struck by the train resulting in 11 deaths.
With elevated trains that can never happen, but when I spoke to several of our city’s governmental “mover and shakers,” including the mayor and at least a couple of city council members, while they conceded the reality of that fact, they also cited the reality of the costs: elevated trains are far more expensive, therefore the line would stay on the ground.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t too long after the line started running in 2022 before what I’d feared would come to pass came to pass, with four deaths in the first six months: one that was definitely suicide; another possibly; and a mother and her daughter, after the woman apparently became confused by the signs and barriers at a street crossing and ended up with her vehicle officials say (the full story has yet to come out amid a pending lawsuit) trapped in traffic between the crossing arms while straddling the tracks when it was far too late for the train to stop.
So, as we’ve seen far too often: cutting costs: important; cutting lives short—not so much. I could go on, but there you have it: the many times when lessons were ignored; warnings went unheeded; and lives were lost either through willful neglect; ignorance; the dismissal of potential possibilities; or simply the expediency of cutting costs.
Sadly, the list is endless: a nuclear plant is destroyed by a massive quake and tsunami after it was built next to the ocean and a massive earthquake fault; a space shuttle explodes when, like the Titanic, warnings about ice were dismissed; a town on a flood plain is washed away in a flood, while another built in a forest burns in a forest fire. I could go on, but you get the picture.
And now humans face our most important warning of all: that the continued immense level of emissions from the ever-increasing pace of fossil fuel combustion threatens to collapse the eco-systems upon which all life depends, while millions want to either ignore it or even scorn it all as a hoax.
Of course, we’re being told by many that it’s not too late, but the history of mankind and our endless ability to look reality in the face and ignore it does not bode well for the future, and all I can say is this: one way or another, it’s going to be interesting.
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Phill Courtney has been an English teacher at several high schools in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, and twice a candidate for Congress with the Green party. His email is: pjcourtney1311@gmail.com