Flood alerts: What they mean and what you should do
Not all flood alerts are the same. Here’s what you should take seriously.
Just the FAQs, USA TODAY
A pair of college students. A nurse and musician. A 4-year-old strapped into her car seat.
In one horrific accident after another, these four and at least 71 others lost their lives last year when vehicles they were in flooded or fell when roads and bridges collapsed.
Vehicle-related flood deaths reached a five-year high in 2021, in part because of extreme rainfall that scientists expect to grow worse as the climates warms.
Cars, SUVs and even trucks are no match for the powerful force of flowing water – even 6 inches can set a small car afloat, and 18 to 24 inches can carry large trucks away.
The National Weather Service launched its “Turn Around, Don’t Drown” campaign 18 years ago out of concern for the number of flood-related deaths in cars and trucks. Though public awareness campaigns helped reduce lightning deaths to a record low of 11 last year, efforts to reduce vehicle-related flood deaths haven’t produced similar results.
When thunder roars, people go indoors. But when they see flooded roads, they often drive right in. They’re sometimes surprised by flash floods. Bridges and roads collapse as water rushes beneath.
Vehicle-related incidents account for more than half the flood deaths each year. With a 10-year average of 58 lives lost annually, they remain a leading cause of weather-related fatalities behind heat-related deaths, tornadoes, wind and rip currents.
Many warnings of flood risks go unheeded
Last year, Hurricane Ida and its remnants were deadly in the Northeast.
Ida’s rains hadn’t arrived when Paul Rosenberg, mayor of Rye Brook, New York, walked his dog Leo on the morning of Sept. 1. He greeted his neighbor Fran Bailie, 76, as he did most mornings.
“She was out there every morning, rain or shine, hot or cold, walking at a clip, swinging her arms,” he said. The energetic grandmother and her husband, Ken, 78, both professors in the computer science department at Iona University, lived four houses down.
“We all knew there were going to be bad storms later in the day,” Rosenberg said. “Never in a million years could I have imagined that would be the last time I’d see her.”
Rain fell in massive quantities, dropping 4 to 9 inches across Westchester County in a matter of hours. He said a high tide pushed into Long Island Sound, into which the town’s namesake brooks flow, turning normally placid streams into raging torrents.
Authorities said that as the Bailies were on their way home that evening, their Cadillac Escalade SUV flooded less than 2 miles away. Rosenberg said a brook had risen out of its banks and taken over a road.
“When you think about a brook, you never think of catastrophic flooding,” said the mayor, whose town lost a new $1 million fire truck after firefighters responding to a call encountered deeper water than expected. “You never think of flooding that’s going to take a life.”
Ida was blamed for 15 vehicle-related flood deaths. That includes Connecticut State Police officer Brian Mohl, whose car was swept away as he responded to an emergency.
Rosenberg is concerned about the increasing frequency of severe rainfall events like Ida and rising sea levels. Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said this week they expect an average of 10 to 12 inches of sea level rise over the next 30 years along the U.S. coast.
USA TODAY investigation: A summer of extreme weather reveals stunning shift in rainfall
As seas rise and the warming climate pumps more moisture into storms, it is going to be more important than ever to make people aware of flood dangers, said Jonathan Sury, project director at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. “We need better messaging and more awareness about climate change in general, the severity of these storms and their unpredictable nature.”
For weather service meteorologists charged with warning people, the vehicle flooding deaths are particularly frustrating because they’re often preventable, said Kate Abshire, a hydrologist who specializes in flash flooding for the weather service office that sets flood warning policies.
“You do everything right, you get the warnings out, and then you hear them trying to locate people that might have been at a low water crossing,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking.”
To improve their messaging, the weather service and others spend a lot of time trying to figure out why people make decisions that put them in harm’s way. “A lot of times, it’s vehicles entering the water, it’s people making that decision not to turn around, and that’s what’s really tough,” Abshire said.
Over the past couple of years, the agency has tried to encourage people to know the risks and avoid being on the road unless they must, Abshire said. “The ultimate goal is to have people make decisions to keep themselves safe in these situations.”
Sometimes, people take a calculated risk because they believe it’s worth it to get to a safe location sooner, said Hatim Sharif, a civil engineering professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio who has studied the issue for more than 15 years.
People need to realize that it’s “better to stay in place, shelter in place until the danger is past,” he said.
People often underestimate the dangers of the water and overestimate the abilities of their vehicle, he said. They see a road is flooded but take a risk to cross and wind up in a deadly situation. They may misjudge the depth of water over a road.
“Even during the day, you cannot estimate how deep the water is or (how) fast it is moving,” he said, and at night, it’s even more difficult to judge road conditions.
People don’t realize a road they travel every day has the potential to flood or wash away.
In Texas, the weather service and other groups partnered to form a flash flood coalition to help reduce deaths. Sharif said the efforts are helping. He said even though the state’s population is increasing, the rate of deaths is not.
In some ways, it’s difficult to know when the messages are successful, said Paul Yura, warning coordination meteorologist for the Austin weather service office, who didn’t have statistics to show how many times people turn around and avoid catastrophe.
Yura is optimistic that improvements in weather and flood forecasting models will help, in terms of getting messages out to people’s cellphones faster and being more specific about when and where flash flooding may occur.
“No one thing is going to be the answer,” he said. “It takes warnings from the weather service, it takes people to heed the warning, and then sometimes Mother Nature will throw a whole wrench into things.”
For Rye Brook Mayor Rosenberg, Ida was a lesson he’ll never forget.
“Every now and then, especially during the fall and spring, my Alexa device will tell me the weather service has issued a flash flood warning. I can promise you we never paid attention to that,” he said. “Now I will. We need to pay more attention to it and really take these horrible rain events more seriously.”
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