By the time the waters receded, at least 82 lives had been lost to the flash floods that tore through Texas last week. A figure at once astonishing and—given the geography, the season, and the increasingly erratic climate—utterly unsurprising.
As the search for the missing continues, the torrent of commentary, unbidden and unrestrained, poured forth online with even greater velocity than the stormwaters themselves.
In our age of instantaneous certainty and curated outrage, culpability was assigned before the first casualty had been confirmed.
The usual suspects were quickly summoned: a beleaguered National Weather Service, its budget recently slashed with bureaucratic indifference; a failed 2019 bill in the Texas legislature, now reanimated by hindsight, that might have strengthened the state’s emergency alert system.
Both grievances found traction and share a certain relevance in the wider discussion, although in this particular case neither delay nor dysfunction had played a decisive…
