For what's developing.
This is just developing out of the Middle East now right down, it's developing.
Fifty five krc the talk station height O five a fifty five KRCD talk station. Brian Thomas here. Always looking forward to this time of the week because we get to talk to breit Bart. Get the inside Scoopers. Would like to call it from bright Bart News b R E I T b a art dot com book market. I always like to start out with a suggestion. You
do that, you'll be glad you did. Take me up on that advice, because you'll be reading at least stuff about Texas and the Texas border with my guest Randy Clark, who is the bright Bart News Texas border reporter. Randy, welcome back to the morning show. It's always a pleasure having you on.
Good Morning, Brian, Thanks for having me.
Looks like we're pivoting away from the border itself for the border related issues to talk about the floods, which of course dominating the news. What an absolute outright tragedy and almost even more tragic, and I don't say that too seriously, the fact that Democrats are blaming Donald Trump for the death of these young people and the others who perished in the flash floods. I just beside myself in disbelief that they would go that low, but that's what they do.
Yes, it's a sad situation, and that just compounds it. You know what we know right now as of late last night, we've got one hundred and four deaths in six counties there in the central part of Texas. The worst hit was Curville, where there's eighty four deaths. Many of them were children from some of these camps. So
this was the perfect storm. It was the worst day of the year for this to happen, and obviously the hour of the day it hit between three and five am on July fourth, when most folks were asleep and we turned cell phones off or or you know, we just get so many alerts during the day we just
tire of that. So a lot of effort went into notifying people as far as information that came out from the National Weather Service, but a lot of that came out as this became more imminent after right shortly before
midnight and then shortly after midnight. So but you're right, the miseries compounded by what we're seeing not only from you know, the left, but also from some members of the media who show up, you know, to these press conferences that are designed to provide some information to the public by county officials and city officials, and in some cases it appears they're being heckled more than they are
being asked questions at times. So it is it has become politicized unfortunately many instances, you know, in today's day and age.
Yeah, and you're right about your observation in terms of the time that there's like there's a warning, there is you know, alerts that go out. There's sort of gradual, Hey, we might expect some flooding, be you know, aware that there is a potential for flooding, and then it moves over to what an outright emergency where yes, it's flooding, get the hell out or and all those came in
over time. Twelve hours was the beginning of the notices, and that was of course during the day obviously people were in a position to be able to get that information. But in the middle of the night, four am when you send out the emergency alert, I understand not only were obviously people asleep, but this was in a low communication area in terms of cell phone connections and the like, so it's possible that they maybe even didn't get an alert.
That's correct. And some of the camps, they you know, they pull the cell phones from the children attending, you know, for good reason, because they're there for you know, wholesome activities and kind of get away from that. Yes, right, camps are Christian camps and you know, and the adults are watching over them. You know. The camp there was most impacted camp missed it. Their director, you know, this camp's been in their family since nineteen thirty nine, lost
his life trying to save these poor children. And so it's just a tragedy. But that tells you the likelihood of a flood event like this happening. That camp was established in nineteen twenty six. We've had ex presidents Lyndon Baines Johnson send his daughters there. Laura Bush worked there as a camp counselor. So it's a prominent place. They wouldn't put the children in harms way on purpose, we know that. So to politicize it is absolutely despicable.
Yeah, in hindsight, of course, is twenty twenty. I've read an article in fact on Breitbart, a discussion with Kirk County Judge Rob Kelly, who apparently has property that was impacted. Kelly, the county's top elected official, edited that a flood warning sirens system was in consideration to be placed along the now devastated Guadalupe River before he was in office, about six years ago, but it was never executed. He's quoted to saying we've looked into it before, but the public
reeled at the cost. So there was a reason and a motivation to talk about a public alert system because this has happened before in that particular area, has it not well?
So there have been floods all throughout the region. Right the Gualla Loupe is just only one river that traverses that area. You've got the Blanco, the Frio, the Medina. You've got tons of rivers in this hill country area. And where rainfalls impacts. What areas are going to flood? Low lying areas, low water crossings on tiny roadways, you know, they're subject to flooding almost with any amount of rain.
The last major event was in nineteen eighty seven where a loss of life, you know, close to this occurred. Ten children from a camp were lost when they were trying to evacuate. So the second guessing, if you put an alarm system and you start moving children in a big storm like this, you may lose some in the evacuation process if you get them out. There were seven hundred and fifty you know, girls at that camp, so you can imagine what it would take to evacuate those
folks in short order. The chaos caused by that, getting buses in order and moving in on those roadways. The bridges were all but washed out to that camp, so if they would have tried to leave the area, they may have suffered. If they have gotten without shelter up on higher ground, you have lightning strikes. So this was just the perfect storm. And you know, we've got to
look at this and decide. I think, you know, are people going to begin to ignore a siren that may go off two or three times a month and not materialize into flooding where they are at. That's human nature and that has to be looked at in the light of day. But when you do that, we need to leave politics at the door when you go in to discuss this and come up and formulate a plan.
No doubt about it. I thought there was an interesting observation from Brian Stetler over at CNN. He said warning fatigue was being cited by quite a few experts as one of the causes of the disaster. And I don't necessarily draw a correlation between warning fatigue and the disaster, but insofar as he said, when everything is labeled extreme weather,
nothing seems extreme anymore. And I think there's a good point to be made there, because you know, it's twenty four hour day shock and on news, you know, they even like the weather channels like, oh my god, we're all gonna die. Hurricane season. Yeah, there's like nine thousand predicted. Oh my god. And you know, they predict these dires weather events and quite often they don't manifest or materialize, and we're like, all right, there's another crazy warning. It's
like the Boy who Cried Wolf. You know, at some point still you're like done with it.
Well, and we see that. We saw that happen with Hurricane Helene. You know, you get the warnings, you don't think it's going to happen, and it materializes. Look at Katrina, a complete and utter disaster. So it happens when you get the warning that materializes, and sometimes it's worse than what the warning is. But that's fatigue comes from not just weather alerts, but you know, we get important amber
alerts as well. So when you're dead asleep and that cell phone starts to go often you've got to go to work, you're likely to just silence it because you're going to think, well, I'll look at this in a few hours when I wake up. Well, that river rows, you know, near twenty nine feet in two hours. That is extremely significant. It's the second highest level it's ever achieved.
Now do they have like the civil defense sirens in the area there? Because I honestly, and I've said it before, I'll say it out loud again. We do a text segment every week on this program on Fridays, and one of the things I always say, I, you know, I don't pick up a phone if I don't recognize the number, I just let it go into voicemail. But in the middle of the night, I want to get a good night's sleep, so I keep my phone off, So if someone's trying to reach me, they're not going to be
able to. But I could be awakened by a civil defense sirens screaming and going off in the middle of the night. That's like a backup system for us. Is there anything like that in that general area?
No, And that's what they were proposing, you know, to have added that was going to cost a million dollars was actual audible sirens because in that river bottom and I experienced that watching you know, this unfold the following day and you know, seeing the rescues come in and you get on that river bottom and even the authorities had to beg bar and steal to get some starlink apparatuses to get out some of those areas because the
towns are not gigantic towns. You move away from the city, that river stretches two hundred and thirty miles to the Gulf of America. Now, so if you move out of those cities yourself, one coverage drops. If you move into that river bottom, which can be up to a quarter mile wide, that's it. You kind of lose signal in some of those spots.
What also was overwhelming was the just absolute volume of water. And now I've seen other floods before, and I'm always overwhelmed by the amount of water that can accumulate, but in the amount of time that it accumulated, I mean that it came out of nowhere and the river rose what twenty six feet in a matter of forty five minutes.
Yes, And so that's why this was the perfect storm, because if that storm had dropped that water, you know, several miles to the east or the west, or just downriver of Kurbville by just a mile or two, we probably wouldn't be speaking right now, because that water was directed into that particular waterway by two offshoots that feed into that wadlupa river just upstream of Hunt. So it was the worst place, worst day, and the worst hour
for it to happen. And being that the camp's been there since nineteen twenty six and in the same hand since nineteen thirty nine, tells you nobody expected since that day that this was going to endanger that many girls that were camped in that area.
That's such a tragedy and we've lost the life is now north of one hundred and there are still how many people missing at this point, Randy.
Well, that's the big question. You know, we know from the camp we've got ten girls and one councilor they still have folks that remain unidentified that they have recovered so a lot of this area, especially along the wall A Lupe, the cities and towns like Kurbville, did not get you know, horribly damaged. It's what structures were on the river bottom, which mainly the camps in the RV. So folks that may not have told their family they were going to be at a particular park in that county.
We don't know if they haven't shown up to work and that they're added to the missing. But you know, we suspect there's several dozen missing still and at least eleven from the camp, one counselor and ten campers.
Well, and since you're familiar with the area, how difficult is it for first responders and search and rescue folks to get in there and scour the area? Is it difficult? Generally speaking? I figure if these camps have been there for that long, they have to be released somewhat readily accessible, well, so.
They aren't in fair weather, when the roads aren't destroyed, you can get into Curval. It's off Curveling Comfort sit right off by ten, so it's an easy drive from San Antonio sixty mile. Then you're going to be hoofing it on foot through that river bottom to conduct searches. But the searchers are in the water, in the air, on horseback, you name it. A multitude of federal agencies. And that's the good that I witnessed. The volunteers coming out.
We've got fire department from Mexico coming. I hear there's some coming from California to help. That's the good. But when you start getting towards Hunt and Ingram, some of those roads were damaged and they had to air drop supplies into those kids. The ones that survived a flood, there were eight hundred and fifty rests. Is just within the first twenty four hours.
Wow, well, it's I appreciate your reporting on this and you're updating us on the situation. Randy Clark Border Expert. Can I pivot over just for a brief moment here? What is the border crossings have virtually ended? I mean, the Trump administration has virtually has basically stopped people from
getting gaining entrance into our country. Is there a noticeable like change of attitude improvement, a general up up uplifting feeling in the general in the area based on the population and what they're experiencing.
Now, yeh see, you don't hear very many border residents complaining that the border's not wide open. A lot of them have lost sleep for the last four years from the Texas Real Grand Valley all the way to San Diego, California. Yeah, so the morale is better on the border troll on the line. But if you see yesterday we had that nut attack one of the facilities for the bordertroll and McCallum Texas. You see what's happening in La with Mayor Karen Bass trying to shoe off the agents, and you
know what's the officer was shot in Alvarado. So we're seeing the left creative situation that's almost as dangerous to the agents. That's what they were facing by an open border. But it is night and day for the residents. In some areas, they're less than five to ten crossings and places there used to be five thousand in a day. So it is night and day difference at the border. And it was all done with messaging and an effort to enforce the law.
Well, Trump's certainly following through what he campaigned on a campaign in terms of shutting down the border that was wildly successful. Even along the southern border. There was a New York Times article about that. I just commented some of the quotes from some of the Democratic representatives there that seemed like, oh my god, you know, we've been Democrat now forever, and look, Trump took all of the
border counties and it was an amazing turnaround. So they're sort of having a come to Jesus moment on their position on border security, recognizing the vast majority of Americans want a crackdown on border security.
Absolutely, I'll tell.
You what, it is always a pleasure talking with the Texas Border reporter Randy Clark. Thank you for the time you spent my listeners of me today. Keep up the great work at Breitbart. I'll look forward to another edition of the Inside Scoop next Tuesday. Take care of my friend.
Thank you, Brian, have a wonderful day.
Thanks you too. It's eight nineteen right now, I fifty five KCD talk station. I get to mention Colin Electric. Colin the outstanding electricians they are. They're all licensed. You don't have to worry about that. You get a ten year wiring warranty on literally anything Colin does for your residence, simple project, complex project, anything in between. They've done all of those For me, I the whole house generator. That was quite the wiring project from my perspective. I'm not
an electrician, what do I know. But they've done all the canlights in our house. They rewired all of our bathrooms and we got the bathrooms remodeled. Always superior work done efficiently with a smile on their face. Customer service outstanding, which is why they enjoy an A plus with a better business barrow. So if you got a house, got an electric problem, call Colin. They pride themselves on their honest reputation.
So the number five one three two two seven four one one two five one three two two seven four one one two. Tom Brian said, Hi, please find a more online and you can think of you schedule appoyment online as well. Cullenelectric Cincinnati dot com fifty five KRC the talkstation