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'Only a Very Evil Person Would Ask:' Trump Flips Out After Reporter Questions Texas Flood Alert System
"I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances," U.S. President Donald Trump insisted.
Jul 11, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday lashed out at a reporter who asked a pointed question about the government's response to the devastating floods in Texas that claimed the lives of more than 120 people, with over 170 still missing.
During a press event that also included Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a local reporter grilled the president about the timeliness of the emergency alerts sent out to people in the flooded region.
"Several families we've heard from are obviously upset because they say that those warnings, those alerts... didn't go out in time, and they also say that people could have been saved," the reporter said. "What do you say to those families?"
"I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances," Trump replied. "This was, I guess [Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi [Noem] said, a 1 in 500, 1 in 1,000 years [event], and I just have admiration for the job that everybody did."
The president then proceeded to insult the reporter personally.
"Only a bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you," he said. "I don't know who you are but only a very evil person would ask a question like that."
REPORTER: Families are upset because warnings didn't go out in time. What do you say to those families?
TRUMP: Well I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances. This was a one in 1,000 years. Only a bad person would ask a question like that. Only an evil… pic.twitter.com/IwYS6JJOCF
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 11, 2025
ABC News reported earlier this week that flood alerts last weekend were not sent out to people in the affected area until 90 minutes after a local fireman first requested one. Additionally, reported ABC some residents didn't receive the flood alerts until six hours after the initial request was made.
Democrats in Congress this week also called for an investigation into whether Trump administration cuts to federal weather monitoring and emergency management agencies may have hindered the response to the Texas floods.
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After Delaying FEMA Response for Three Days, Noem Calls to 'Eliminate' Agency Due to Slow Texas Response
Congressional Democrats want investigations "at every level of government of what went wrong" and to "stop the dismantling of federal agencies."
Jul 10, 2025
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem renewed her call Wednesday to "eliminate" the Federal Emergency Management Agency, calling it "slow to respond" to the deadly floods that have killed more than 120 people in Texas over the past week.
But that "slow" response was the direct result of a policy put in place by Noem herself, according to four FEMA officials who spoke to CNN.
Last month, the network reported on a new policy introduced by Noem that required any contract or grant above $100,000 to cross her desk for approval.
The administration billed the move as a way of "rooting out waste, fraud, [and] abuse." But multiple anonymous officials, including ones from FEMA, warned at the time that it could cause "massive delays" in cases of emergency, especially as hurricane season began to ramp up.
That appears to be what happened in Texas. According to the four officials who spoke to CNN, "FEMA ran into bureaucratic obstacles" as a result of this requirement. Compared to the billions that are typically required to respond to disasters, officials said $100,000 is essentially "pennies."
FEMA officials said they were left to ask for Noem's direct approval on virtually every action they took in response to the catastrophic flood, which created massive delays in deploying Urban Search and Rescue Teams.
The sources told CNN that "in the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests."
Multiple sources said Noem waited until Monday to authorize the deployment of these search and rescue teams, more than 72 hours after the flooding began. Aerial imagery to aid in the search was also delayed waiting for Noem's approval.
On Wednesday, Noem used these very delays to justify her calls to disband FEMA entirely.
"Federal emergency management should be state and locally led, rather than how it has operated for decades," she said. "It has been slow to respond at the federal level. It's even been slower to get the resources to Americans in crisis, and that is why this entire agency needs to be eliminated as it exists today, and remade into a responsive agency."
President Donald Trump said last month he is in the process of beginning to "phase out" FEMA and that it would begin to "give out less money" to states and be directed out of the White House.
He first took a hatchet to FEMA back in February using the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which eliminated 2,000 permanent employees, one-third of its total staff.
Noem has also boasted about using FEMA funds to carry out Trump's mass deportation crusade, including allocating hundreds of millions from the agency to build the so-called "Alligator Alcatraz" immigrant internment camp in Florida, as well as other detention facilities.
Before a House panel last month, former FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell noted that the administration's cuts have made it harder for FEMA to respond in disaster areas.
"It just slows down the entire response and delays the recovery process from starting," Criswell said. "If the state director asks for a resource, then FEMA needs to be able to quickly respond and mobilize that resource to come support whatever that is. They still need the staff that are going in there. And so when you have less people, you're going to have less ability to actually fill those senior roles."
The revelation that Noem's policy may have contributed to the slowdown has only amplified calls by congressional Democrats to investigate how Trump administration cuts to FEMA and other services like the National Weather Service may have contributed to the devastation.
"During disasters, every second matters," said Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas). "Noem must answer for this delay."
Congressman Greg Casar (D-Texas) said this disaster in his home state highlighted the need for federal agencies like FEMA.
"Year after year, Texans face deadlier fires, freezes, and floods." Casar said. "As we continue to support first responders and grieving families after the terrible flooding, we will need investigations at every level of government of what went wrong and what could save lives in future."
"We must stop the dismantling of federal agencies that are supposed to keep us safe from the next disaster," he added.
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'Partisan Power Grab': Amid Flood Crisis, Abbott Tucks Gerrymandering Ploy Into Special Session
"This is an attack on democracy," said the head of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. "Trump and Republicans in Congress know that they cannot win fairly in 2026, so they are demanding that Abbott cheat."
Jul 10, 2025
As the death toll rises and recovery efforts continue in the wake of disastrous flooding in central Texas, the state's Republican governor announced Wednesday that an upcoming special legislative session will include an effort to redraw congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Gov. Greg Abbott's decision to include a rare mid-decade redistricting push on the special session agenda drew immediate outcry from Democratic lawmakers and pro-democracy advocates, who accused the Republican leader of trying to boost his party's electoral prospects at a time when his focus should be on flood response, recovery, and future prevention.
"While search and recovery is ongoing, this black-hearted governor added a partisan power grab to a 30-day agenda that should be all about ensuring this NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN," Texas state Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D-49) wrote on social media.
"I am often disappointed in Greg Abbott," Hinojosa added, "but this is revolting."
The special session is set to begin on July 21, and the agenda Abbott unveiled Wednesday does include several items related to the disastrous flooding that killed at least 120 people.
But the redistricting item, buried near the bottom of the agenda outline, sparked immediate ire and warnings that the Texas governor is doing U.S. President Donald Trump's bidding. Last month, The New York Times reported that Trump's political team "is encouraging Republican leaders in Texas to examine how House district lines in the state could be redrawn ahead of next year's midterm elections to try to save the party's endangered majority."
The state's congressional map is already aggressively gerrymandered. The Biden Justice Department sued over the maps in late 2021, but the Trump administration dropped the legal fight earlier this year.
"Now, Texas Republicans want to enact an even more egregious gerrymander, because they are afraid of voters who are furious with their unpopular MAGA agenda and horrific budget bill."
In a July 7 letter to Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Trump Justice Department urged the state's officials to redraw four districts—three of which are currently represented by Democrats and one that is vacant but was previously represented by late Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner.
Abbott's Wednesday announcement of the special session agenda specifically cites the Justice Department's letter, which claimed the four targeted districts amount to unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. Abbott's office called for the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature to craft "legislation that provides a revised congressional redistricting plan in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice."
John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement Wednesday that "despite the fact that Texas is in a state of emergency, instead of focusing on the well-being of his constituents, Governor Abbott's focus is how Republicans can enact a mid-decade gerrymander to secure unearned power ahead of the 2026 midterm elections."
"Texas' congressional map already silences the voices of thousands of Texans," said Bisognano. "That's why Texas voters have spent the last three years in court challenging it for violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now, Texas Republicans want to enact an even more egregious gerrymander, because they are afraid of voters who are furious with their unpopular MAGA agenda and horrific budget bill."
"This is an attack on democracy," he added. "Trump and Republicans in Congress know that they cannot win fairly in 2026, so they are demanding that Abbott cheat."
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin also denounced Abbott's ploy, saying that the governor's "full attention should be focused on flood rescue and recovery efforts."
"Instead, he's using this tragic moment to plot a gerrymandering scheme while families are still reeling from a devastating disaster," said Martin. "Republicans have already gone all-in on taking away healthcare, taking away food, and raising costs on families. Now, they want to disenfranchise Texas voters during a dire emergency. This is despicable and needs to be called out."
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100+ People Dead in Texas—Just 2 Months After Former National Weather Service Chiefs Warned of 'Nightmare' Scenario
While the agency and outside meteorologists say the NWS provided timely and accurate forecasts, the fatal flooding is generating fresh alarm about cuts and open positions.
Jul 07, 2025
As the official death toll from catastrophic flooding in Texas ticked above 100 on Monday, concerns over vacancies as well as job and potential funding cuts at the National Weather Service continued to mount—even as the NWS and independent meteorologists insisted that the agency had "issued timely warnings in advance of the deadly floods."
The flooding came just over two months after all living former directors of the NWS published a letter sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 and its cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the parent agency of the NWS in the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The five men—Louis Uccellini, Jack Hayes, Brig. Gen. D.L. Johnson, Brig. Gen. John J. Kelly Jr., and E.W. "Joe" Friday—wrote on May 2 that "even if the National Weather Service remains level funded, given the interconnectedness of all of the parts of NOAA, there will be impacts to weather forecasting as well. We cannot let this happen."
"These proposed cuts come just days after approximately 300 National Weather Service... employees left the public service to which they had devoted their lives and careers," the ex-directors pointed out. "That's on top of the approximately 250 NWS employees who were fired as a result of their probationary status in new—often higher-level positions—or took the initial buyout offered by the Trump administration in early February."
"That leaves the nation's official weather forecasting entity at a significant deficit—down more than 10% of its staffing—just as we head into the busiest time for severe storm predictions like tornadoes and hurricanes," they continued. "Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life. We know that's a nightmare shared by those on the forecasting frontlines—and by the people who depend on their efforts."
Discussing recent job reductions with The Associated Press on Monday, Uccellini, whose tenure leading NWS included Trump's first term, warned that "this situation is getting to the point where something could break."
"The people are being tired out, working through the night and then being there during the day because the next shift is short-staffed," he said. "Anything like that could create a situation in which important elements of forecasts and warnings are missed."
For the flooding in Texas, the NWS Austin-San Antonio office had five meteorologists working, rather than two, as part of its "surge staffing" protocol.
However, Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the NWS Employees Organization, a union that represents government workers, also told NBC News that the agency's Austin-San Antonio office does not have a permanent science officer, who conducts training for and implements new technology, or a warning coordination meteorologist, who has contact with media.
That office "is operating with 11 staff meteorologists and is down six employees from its typical full staffing level of 26," NBC reported. The nearby San Angelo office "is short four staff members from its usual staffing level of 23. The meteorologist-in-charge position—the office's top leadership position—is not permanently filled. The office is also without a senior hydrologist."
Despite some open positions at the two offices, the NWS began warning of potential flooding as early as Thursday morning, and as conditions worsened overnight, the agency issued its first warning for "life-threatening flash flooding" for parts of Kerr County at 1:14 am Central Time Friday, according to CNN.
"But questions remain about how many people they reached, whether critical vacancies at the forecast offices could have affected warning dissemination, and if so-called warning fatigue had been growing among residents in a region described as one of the most dangerous in the country for flash flooding," the network noted.
As Fahy put it to Politico: "The crux of this disaster is a failure of the last mile of communication... The forecasts went out, they communicated the forecasts, they disseminated the watches and warnings. And the dilemma we have is there was nobody listening at 4 o'clock in the morning for these watches and warnings."
Wisconsin-based meteorologist Chris Vagasky similarly told NBC that "the forecasting was good. The warnings were good. It's always about getting people to receive the message... It appears that is one of the biggest contributors—that last mile."
As The New York Times reported:
In an interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive, and local residents are resistant to new spending.
"Taxpayers won't pay for it," Mr. Kelly said. Asked if people might reconsider in light of the catastrophe, he said, "I don't know."
As of Monday evening, 104 people are confirmed dead, most of them in Kerr County, which includes Camp Mystic, a Christian all-girls summer camp that lost at least 27 campers and counselors. The AP reported that "search-and-rescue teams carried on with the search for the dead, using heavy equipment to untangle trees and wading into swollen rivers. Volunteers covered in mud sorted through chunks of debris, piece by piece, in an increasingly bleak task."
In a statement to multiple news outlets, the NWS provided a detailed timeline of its alerts. The agency also said that it "is heartbroken by the tragic loss of life in Kerr County" and "remains committed to our mission to serve the American public through our forecasts and decision support services."
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday sent a letter to Roderick Anderson, acting inspector general at the Department of Commerce, urging an investigation into "the scope, breadth, and ramifications of whether staffing shortages at key local National Weather Service... stations contributed to the catastrophic loss of life and property during the deadly flooding."
"The roles left unfilled are not marginal, they're critical," he emphasized. "These are the experts responsible for modeling storm impacts, monitoring rising water levels, issuing flood warnings, and coordinating directly with local emergency managers about when to warn the public and issue evacuation orders. To put it plainly: They help save lives."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt lashed out at him and reporters for such scrutiny on Monday, saying that "unfortunately, in the wake of this once-in-a-generation natural disaster, we have seen many falsehoods pushed by Democrats such as Sen. Chuck Schumer and some members of the media. Blaming President Trump for these floods is a depraved lie, and it serves no purpose during this time of national mourning."
In addition to the president's so-called Department of Government Efficiency—previously led by billionaire Elon Musk, the richest person on Earth—pushing layoffs and retirements, Trump's administration is working to boost fossil fuels that drive the global climate emergency.
As Common Dreams reported earlier Monday, a study published by ClimaMeter found that the floods in Texas were caused by "very exceptional meteorological conditions" that cannot be explained merely by natural variability.
Former Common Dreams staff writer Kenny Stancil is a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, which has documented "Trump's attacks on disaster preparedness and response."
"The deadly Texas floods will not be the last manifestation of extreme weather turbocharged by fossil fuel pollution," Stancil wrote in a Monday blog post. "In an era of escalating climate threats, we need a stronger public sector with more resources to mitigate risks, help people weather storms, and adapt to the future."
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Report Shows How Deadly Texas Floods Were Driven by Human-Induced Climate Crisis
"Very exceptional meteorological conditions" preceded the Texas floods, climate scientists have found.
Jul 07, 2025
A new report from a trio of prominent climate researchers has concluded that the devastating floods that hit central Texas over the last three days were made significantly worse due to the impacts of human-induced climate change.
A study published on Monday by ClimaMeter found that the floods in Texas were caused by "very exceptional meteorological conditions" that cannot be explained merely by natural variability.
The authors—Davide Faranda of the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace in France, Mireia Ginesta of the University of Oxford in the U.K., and Tommaso Alberti of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia in Italy—contend that the meteorological conditions present at the start of the Texas floods on July 4 "were characterized by slightly negative surface pressure anomalies over Central Texas, with values ranging up to –2 hPa, indicating the presence of a weak low-pressure system over the region." They also found that "temperatures were significantly below the climatological average for this time of year, with anomalies reaching –5°C across much of the area affected by the flooding."
The researchers then compared how extreme weather events that occurred under meteorological conditions similar to those present during this week's floods would have manifested had they occurred in the years from 1950 until 1986, a three-decade period during where human-induced climate change had yet to cause a global surface temperature spike. They concluded that the meteorological conditions ahead of the deadly Texas floods this year were up to 7% wetter than those that had proceeded past floods in the region.
The ClimaMeter study adds heft to statements made by climate scientists over the weekend who argued that there was no question that human-induced climate change—which is driven largely by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels—had tipped the floods into historic disaster territory.
"The tragic events in Texas are exactly what we would expect in our hotter, climate-changed, world," said Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysics and climate hazards at University College London. "There has been an explosion in extreme weather in recent years, including more devastating flash floods caused by slow-moving, wetter, storms, that dump exceptional amounts of rain over small areas across a short time."
As of this writing, at least 80 people have been confirmed dead as a result of the Texas floods while dozens more people have been reported as missing. The Washington Post reports that data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Integrated Public Alert and Warning System shows that Kerr County, Texas didn't send out an Amber Alert-style push message to local residents until Sunday, two days after the floods overwhelmed the area's rivers and creeks.
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'Exactly What We Would Expect': Climate Scientists Weigh in on Deadly Texas Flooding
"It's not a question of whether climate change played a role—it's only a question of how much," said one expert.
Jul 06, 2025
As the death toll from catastrophic flooding in Texas continued to rise, climate scientists this weekend underscored the link between more frequent and severe extreme weather events and the worsening climate emergency caused primarily by humans burning fossil fuels.
Officials said Sunday that at least 69 people died in the floods, 59 of them in Kerr County. Of the 27 missing girls from Camp Mystic—some of whom were sleeping just 225 feet from the Guadalupe River when its waters surged during flash flooding Friday—11 are still missing.
While some local officials blamed what they said were faulty forecasts from the National Weather Service—which has been hit hard by staffing cuts ordered by the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency in line with Project 2025—meteorologists and climate scientists including Daniel Swain of the University of California, Los Angeles have refuted such allegations, citing multiple NWS warnings of potentially deadly flooding.
However, some experts asserted that vacancies at key NWS posts raise questions about forecasters' ability to coordinate emergency response with local officials.
Climate scientists do concur that human-caused global heating is causing stronger and more frequent extreme weather events including flooding.
"This kind of record-shattering rain (caused by slow-moving torrential thunderstorms) event is *precisely* that which is increasing the fastest in a warming climate," Swain wrote in a statement. "So it's not a question of whether climate change played a role—it's only a question of how much."
As Jeff Masters and Bob Henson wrote Saturday for Yale Climate Connections:
Many studies have confirmed that human-caused climate change is making the heaviest short-term rainfall events more intense, largely by warming the world's oceans and thus sending more water vapor into the atmosphere that can fuel heavy rain events. Sea surface temperatures this week have been as much as 1°F below the 1981-2010 average for early July in the western Gulf [of Mexico] and Caribbean, but up to 1°F above average in the central Gulf. Long-term human-caused warming made the latter up to 10 times more likely, according to the Climate Shift Index from Climate Central.
"The tragic events in Texas are exactly what we would expect in our hotter, climate-changed, world," Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysics and climate hazards at University College London, said Saturday. "There has been an explosion in extreme weather in recent years, including more devastating flash floods caused by slow-moving, wetter, storms, that dump exceptional amounts of rain over small areas across a short time."
It’s hard to make the Texas flood tragedy worse, except to know that on the same day Trump signed a bill to stop our efforts to defeat the climate change that is causing increased frequency of disastrous floods. And giving us more expensive electricity. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/c...
[image or embed]
— Governor Jay Inslee (@govjayinslee.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Instead of taking action to combat the planetary emergency, the Trump administration is ramping up fossil fuel production while waging war on clean energy and climate initiatives. The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law by Trump on Friday slashes the tax credits for electric vehicles and other renewable technologies including wind and solar energy that were a cornerstone of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act.
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Global Water Woes the 'Canary in the Coal Mine' for Climate Calamity: WMO
"As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated. It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water," the WMO lead said.
Oct 07, 2024
The climate crisis is destabilizing the world's water cycle, depriving millions of people of the freshwater resources they need while inundating others with deadly and catastrophic floods.
That's the picture painted by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)'s third-ever State of Global Water Resources report, released on Monday, which found that 2023 was the driest year for the world's rivers in more than three decades.
"Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. "We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods, and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems, and economies."
A total of 3.6 billion people struggle to access sufficient water for at least one month per year, according to U.N. Water, and this number is projected to swell to over 5 billion by 2050. In 2023, which was also the hottest year on record, river catchment areas around the world were at their driest in 33 years. As in the two years before, more than half of all catchment areas saw abnormal conditions, with most of them seeing below-average water flow.
Especially hard-hit river systems included the Mississippi and Amazon basins, which shrank to record-low water levels, as well as riparian systems in much of Northern, Central, and South America. Argentina's GDP shrank by 3% due to drought, the WMO found. Meanwhile, the report showed how major river systems in Asia—the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Mekong river basins—were drier than usual across almost all of their reach.
Another threat to freshwater access is the melting of glaciers. In 2023, the world's glaciers lost their greatest amount of mass in 50 years at over 600 metric gigatons of water. This ice loss was primarily driven by melting in western North America and Europe's Alps. Switzerland's glaciers shrank by 10% in two years.
"It was either too dry or too wet—and neither is encouraging."
"The worldwide loss of glacier volume, equivalent to 600 gigatons of water according to the latest WMO report, is alarming," said report contributor Robert Reinecke of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. "It is the greatest loss we have witnessed in the past five decades."
Saulo added: "Melting ice and glaciers threaten long-term water security for many millions of people. And yet we are not taking the necessary urgent action."
While 2023 saw drought and ice melt, its high temperatures combined with the shift from La Niña to El Niño halfway through and the positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole also fueled extreme precipitation events.
"It was either too dry or too wet—and neither is encouraging," Reinecke said. "We have to expect both extremes more frequently as global temperatures continue to rise."
Africa saw the deadliest flooding, with Storm Daniel causing a dam collapse in Libya that killed more than 11,000 people in September 2023. Also hard hit were the Greater Horn of Africa, Congo, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Malawi.
"As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated," Saulo said. "It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture which is conducive to heavy rainfall. More rapid evaporation and drying of soils worsen drought conditions."
To respond to these shifting conditions, WMO urged more monitoring and data sharing and said that the Early Warnings for All initiative must cover water-related hazards.
"Far too little is known about the true state of the world's freshwater resources," Saulo said. "We cannot manage what we do not measure. This report seeks to contribute to improved monitoring, data-sharing, cross-border collaboration, and assessments."
In response to the report, water advocate Mina Guli also called for increased conservation efforts.
"To tackle this crisis, we must invest more resources into protecting and restoring our freshwater ecosystems. Healthy rivers, lakes, and wetlands do so much more than provide water—they are our best defense against the worsening impacts of climate change and play a crucial role in ensuring food and water security while also reversing nature loss," Guli wrote on social media.
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'Wake-Up Call for the World': Millions Impacted by Extreme Floods in Brazil
"This is not a disaster of Brazil's making. The whole planet is experiencing increasingly rapid climate changes due largely to the greenhouse gases produced by a handful of wealthy nations," one expert said.
May 20, 2024
Experts emphasized the escalating risks of climate-related disasters and their disproportionate impacts on low-income people on Monday following flooding in Brazil that has killed at least 150 people and displaced more than 600,000.
The floods that hit over recent days and weeks have knocked out bridges and the main airport in Porto Alegre, a port city in southern Brazil. More than 460 of the 497 municipalities in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sol have been affected, with more than 2 million people impacted, according to provisional government data.
"The situation is catastrophic," said Rachel Soeiro, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical coordinator in Brazil, who visited the area by helicopter. "We were able to view the towns from above and noticed that in some cases we couldn't even see the roofs of houses.”
More than two feet of rain has fallen so far this month, according Brazil's national weather service, inundating large areas.
"Whole towns and large, urban city centers are in some cases almost completely underwater," the BBC reported on Saturday.
We joined an emergency services helicopter rescuing people from Brazil's floods. The rescues themselves are fraught with risks. More than half a million people are displaced.
Watch on @BBCNews at 6 today (on at 1705) or catch up on the News at One.
Whole cities are destroyed👇 pic.twitter.com/hxZYSVDDmz
— Ione Wells (@ionewells) May 19, 2024
Experts connected the extreme rainfall to climate change, which increases the likelihood of such weather events. Incidents of extreme flooding have increased "sharply" across the planet in the last two decades, according to a study in Nature Water released last year.
"In many ways, this is not a disaster of Brazil’s making. The whole planet is experiencing increasingly rapid climate changes due largely to the greenhouse gases produced by a handful of wealthy nations," Cristiane Fontes (Krika), executive director of World Resources Institute (WRI) Brasil, wrote in a commentary earlier this month in which she called the situation a "wake-up call for the world."
In recent weeks, flooding has also hit China, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia, and WRI's staff in Kenya are dealing with dam breaches from heavy rains, Fontes noted.
A Brazilian expert indicated that the flooding, catastrophic as it has been, should not come as a surprise.
"People on the streets here in Brazil, they've attributed this change to global climate change driven by the increase of fossil fuels," Paulo Artaxo, a physics professor at the University of Sao Paulo, and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He explained that was in line with IPCC projections showing that southern Brazil would face more extreme rainfall due to tropical and polar currents.
In Brazil, as elsewhere, climate impacts are not evenly distributed. MSF relief efforts are focused on the most vulnerable, including Indigenous communities, one of which had been isolated by rising waters and without help for 10 days before being reached by the humanitarian group.
"Assisting those who are most vulnerable is one of our main concerns in such situations," Soeiro said. "These people were already facing difficult situations before the flooding. But their needs have risen further and access to them has become more difficult."
Some wealthy people in Porto Alegre have choices such as escaping to a second home, but in "rundown towns" on the city's periphery, low-income people have no such options, according to CNN.
Brazilian left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged to provide relief money to families that lost their homes. Brazil is one of most unequal countries in the world, according to World Bank data.
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2023's Costliest Weather Disasters Reveal 'Double Inequality' of Climate Crisis
"There is a global postcode lottery that is stacked against the poor," Christian Aid's chief executive said on the publication of the charity's annual list of the year's costliest climate-driven disasters.
Dec 27, 2023
Christian Aid's annual list of the 20 costliest climate crisis-driven disasters of 2023, published Wednesday, reveals a "double injustice," as populations that have emitted relatively little greenhouse gas disproportionately suffer the impacts of extreme weather events ranging from floods to storms to wildfires.
While the disasters on the list impacted low-, medium-, and high-income countries, the U.K.-based charity observed that people in low-income nations have fewer resources to recover.
"When it comes to the climate crisis, there is a global postcode lottery that is stacked against the poor," Christian Aid chief executive Patrick Watt said in a statement. "In poorer countries, people are often less prepared for climate-related disasters and have fewer resources with which to bounce back. The upshot is that more people die, and recovery is slower and more unequal."
The disasters on the list reflect an accelerating climate emergency, as 2023 is set to be the hottest year both on the official record and in 125,000 years of human history.
"The effects of climate change are increasingly obvious, not least in the increasing frequency and severity of climate related disasters," Watt wrote in the report foreword. "Floods, storms, heatwaves, and droughts are all becoming more intense, and climate attribution science is becoming clearer that climate change is causing these more intense disasters."
The report focuses on disasters whose increased frequency or intensity have been linked to the burning of fossil fuels, excluding events like earthquakes. It draws primarily on the EM-DAT database of international disasters, supplementing with data from individual countries, insurers, and the United Nations. It then determines their per capita cost by dividing total damages by the impacted population.
"The worst negative impact of Cyclone Freddy that I shall never forget in my entire life is the destruction of the only house that we struggled to construct."
"This method offers a more individualized perspective of the disaster's impact, highlighting the financial strain on the average citizen rather than just the aggregate economic toll," the report authors explained.
The costliest climate disaster of 2023 was the wildfire that devastated Maui from August 8 to 11. The report found that the fires had a per capita cost of $4,161 for the people of Hawaii. While Hawaii is part of the U.S., a wealthy country, other commenters have noted that the fire reflected the legacy of the colonialism inflicted on Indigenous Hawaiians and land-use changes that favored first agricultural plantations and then tourism over maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Locals and climate justice advocates voiced concerns that the affected area would be rebuilt in the interests of wealthy developers rather than surviving residents.
Other headline-making disasters on the list included the flooding that inundated Libya in September and Cyclone Freddy in Malawi, which was the second deadliest cyclone in Africa since 2000.
Christian Aid's full list of the 20 costliest disasters of 2023 and their per capital price tag is as follows:
- Hawaii, U.S., wildfire: $4,161 per person
- Guam, storm: $1,455 per person
- Vanuatu, storm: $947 per person
- New Zealand, storm: $468 per person
- New Zealand, flood: $371 per person
- Italy, flood: $164 per person
- Libya, flood: $105 per person
- Peru, flood: $66 per person
- Spain, drought: $50 per person
- Myanmar, storm: $41 per person
- Chile, flood: $39 per person
- Haiti, flood: $36 per person
- Mexico, storm: $35 per person
- Chile, wildfire: $30 per person
- U.S., storm: $25 per person
- China, flood: $23 per person
- Peru, storm: $20 per person
- Malawi, storm: $17 per person
- U.S., storm: $16 per person
- Peru, flood: $9 per person
The report authors pointed out that per capita costs tend to be higher in wealthier countries that have higher costs of living and more insurance data to inform figures. This does not always reflect the relative impact of a disaster on a population. For example, a full recovery from Storm Freddy in Malawi is estimated to cost $680 million.
"Given the scale of the disaster, and the huge number of people affected, this may seem like a relatively low amount," the report authors noted, "but since the total of economy of Malawi is $13 billion, it represents 5%, a much higher proportion than in most other disasters on our list."
The per-person cost of that full recovery comes out to $33, which seems small by U.S. standards but amounts to more than 5% of the average annual income of $500 in Malawi.
"The worst negative impact of Cyclone Freddy that I shall never forget in my entire life is the destruction of the only house that we struggled to construct," 69-year-old widow and storm survivor Mofolo Chikaonda told Christian Aid.
Watt wrote in the foreword that "the fact that poorer countries and communities contribute little to global heating makes climate-related disasters a double inequality. This is an injustice that a growing number of poorer countries and civil society campaigners have rightly challenged."
The charity made several recommendations for the international community to prepare for and address climate disasters in a just manner.
"Governments urgently need to take further action at home and internationally to cut emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change," Watt said. "And where the impacts go beyond what people can adapt to, the loss and damage fund must be resourced to compensate the poorest countries for the effects of a crisis that isn't of their making."
A loss and damage fund to help poorer nations pay for the inevitable impacts of the climate crisis was agreed to at the 27th annual U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP27) in 2022 and had its details finalized at this year's COP28 in Dubai.
"Loss and damage costs are in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually in developing countries alone," Nushrat Chowdhury, Christian Aid's climate justice policy adviser in Bangladesh, said in a statement. "Wealthy nations must commit the new and additional money required to ensure the loss and damage fund agreed at COP28 can be quickly get help to those that need it most."
Christian Aid said that countries should agree on a New Collective Quantified Goal to fully fund climate mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage; make sure poorer nations can quickly access the new loss and damage fund as it becomes operational in 2024; make vulnerable communities more resilient by investing in solutions like agroecology; increase funding for early warning and response systems; measure the impacts of disasters and share their findings; and establish social services at home to assist disaster victims while providing poorer nations with the debt relief, funding, and tax-rule reform they need so they can afford to help their own populations.
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WHDSF: The Next Climate Acronym
WHDSF stands for “Wildfires, Heatwaves, Droughts, Storms, and Floods,” and is a handy way to remember the range of catastrophic change we’re going through.
Dec 17, 2023
If people can remember socially important acronyms like LGBTQ + and an older generation can’t get toxic advertising acronyms like LSMFT out of their brains (BTW—it stands for “Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco”) we might all want to start remembering WHDSF whenever the issue of climate change comes up.
WHDSF stands for “Wildfires, Heatwaves, Droughts, Storms, and Floods,” and is a handy way to remember the range of catastrophic change we’re going through. These are not all of the impacts from fossil fuel-fired climate disruption of course (sea-level rise and melting glaciers are two more that come to mind), but WHDSF are the most readily recognizable that scientists are able to measure in terms of growth, frequency, and intensity.
They are the poster disasters when “extreme weather events” make the news as they increasingly do. Which is not surprising given that the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration—NOAA—has confirmed that in 2023 there were 25 weather or climate disasters with losses exceeding a billion dollars just in the U.S. and just as of early November. That’s compared to an average of less than six per year in the 1990s that grew to 13 per year by the last decade (2010s).
If the basic science is too hard to follow, here’s a simple equation that gets to its heart: BP, EXXON, CO2, UAE and WTF equals WHDSF.
The science is pretty basic if you “believe” in science. The burning of fossil fuels has raised atmospheric carbon dioxide, a major heat trapping greenhouse gas, from a preindustrial level of 280 parts per million (ppm) to today’s 424 ppm and still rising, trapping ever more solar heat in Earth’s atmosphere (and in the ocean) that would otherwise radiate back into space.
This explains why the last 10 years have been the hottest in human history, with 2023 now slated to go down as the best ever for air conditioner sales. This past summer clearly reflected climate scientists’ decades of warnings that if we didn’t act quickly, we’d transition from a dangerous to a catastrophic climate regime. Welcome to the age of WHDSF.
For more information on what’s not getting done fast enough, feel free to check out COP28, the annual U.N. climate summit just concluded in the oil rich United Arab Emirates monarchy and its billionaire theme park, Dubai. It was presided over by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, chief of the UAE’s national oil company who recently claimed there is “no science” behind demands to phase out fossil fuels. Or, as Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
So, if the basic science is too hard to follow, here’s a simple equation that gets to its heart: BP, EXXON, CO2, UAE and WTF equals WHDSF, also the need for a rapid transition from fossil fuels to a clean energy economy by, according to the best available science, ten years ago. Also, acronyms like WHDSF have particular appeal for our ADHD trending youth. That is why, next year when some high school student asks her buddy, “How’s Your Summer Going?”, they might reply:
“Not Great.”
“Why Not?”
“You know, WHDSF.”
“I heard you’ve had big H out there.”
“Actually W, H, and D.”
“Well, you know what they say, ‘Wildfire sky in the morning, better take warning. Wildfire sky across the state, better evacuate, or, you know, if you’re Canadian, find something that rhymes with province.’”
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