Same failures at Robb Elementary and Camp Mystic
Preventable deaths can be prevented. With science, forecasting, and warning systems, no child should ever die in a flash flood or from a shooting inside their classroom.
When I started the K-12 School Shooting Database in 2018, Twitter was one of the primary ways that I engaged with people. For the first few years, I sent a tweet about every new incident that was added and tried to provide real time info during high profile shootings like Oxford High, Uvalde, Nashville, and CVPA.
After Elon took over, I stopped using twitter on a daily basis because I was sick of my tweets being spammed with holocaust and lynching photos, overt racism, doxing, and death threats. But seeing another senseless tragedy in Texas with 21 kids dead (at the time) felt too much like Uvalde all over again.
This pretty simple message struck a nerve with hundreds of people (or bots) who pay Elon $8/month to be verified users:
The fervor of these reactions is the same response I’ve seen after school shootings for the last eight years. For people who define their identity as gun owners or absolute followers of Donald Trump, they see any critical message as an attack on their core beliefs. When a consumer item like a gun becomes an obsession that defines someone’s identity, this is a psychological condition called “extreme overvalued beliefs”. (see: Back to School Shootings Ep 16. Can psychologists treat school shootings the same way as eating disorders?)
Extreme overvalued beliefs are rigid, emotionally charged convictions held with intense devotion that dominate a person’s thinking and behavior. In cults, these beliefs are reinforced by group dynamics, isolation, and charismatic leadership who create a closed system (like the twitter today) where dissent is punished and critical thinking is suppressed.
The big problem here is that Twitter was a way for every person to share information, elevate important content, and drive accountability. As platforms become closed and polarized, it’s less and less likely that we will fix the problems that keep allowing kids to die from preventable disasters and violence.
Preventable
In 2025, there is no reason that any person should die from a flood. We have science and technology that can forecast severe weather days in advance. Every adult, and most children, carry a cellphone everywhere that can receive emergency alerts. We have digital mapping that can identify flood zones (note: local politicians appealed and changed Camp Mystic’s flood zone to avoid insurance and flood mitigation requirements). We have sensors that monitor river depths and can model upstream impacts as storms move across large areas. No child should ever be swept away by flood waters when we know how and where floods happen.
Just like forecasting severe weather, mass violence is also preventable. Before every school shooting, someone knew something, could have said something, or flagged a warning.
Before the Uvalde shooting, the attacker made multiple online threats, posted violent imagery, and was known for disturbing behavior in school, including claiming he wanted to commit acts of violence. Despite these clear warning signs, no formal intervention or threat assessment was ever conducted because Texas either doesn’t allow or doesn’t fund these proven ways to prevent violence.
Warning System Failed
The Washington Post reports that the management at Camp Mystic received flood warnings about an hour before the water washed away part of the camp. The adults at the camp either didn’t get the alerts, didn’t understand them, didn’t know the camp was in a severe flood zone, or chose not to take action.
Per the DOJ report, staff members at Robb Elementary in Uvalde didn't get emergency alerts through a 3rd party commercial vendor on their personal cellphones due to limited cell service.
Even worse, if teachers got the alert, they needed to log-in to “Raptor Emergency Management” to get the message. Shots were fired outside Robb Elementary at 11:30am. The alert to log-in to “Raptor Emergency Management” was sent two minutes later when the shooter was already inside the building. There was no time for teachers to be fumbling with their personal cellphones as shots were already being fired.
Chapter 7. School Safety and Security. Observation 13: The poor reception (Wi-Fi and cell) issues at Robb Elementary are well documented. While the Raptor alert was promptly initiated through the system, it was not received by all teachers and staff.
Recommendation 13.1: School districts must ensure that all campus buildings where there is student activity are retrofitted for Wi-Fi communication to ensure that emergency alerts are received in a timely manner.
The national fire protection association (NFPA) sets building safety standards that are adopted across the country. NFPA 72 Chapter 24 defines the requirements for an emergency communication system. These systems must have redundant, fire protected, hardwired circuits.
Whether it's a school shooter known to police or an emergency alert system that never went out before a flood, the people most in danger are often the ones least informed and not getting a warning can be deadly.
Botched Response
Under a new policy implemented by Trump’s DHS appointee, the Secretary of Homeland Security must personally approve any expenses over $100,000, even during active disaster response. This unforced management error created a bureaucratic bottleneck as a 260,000 person agency with a $122,000,0000,000 budget requires a single person to approve every action. This catastrophic mismanagement caused a 72-hour delay before federal search and rescue teams were sent to Texas. Under previous administrations, these same teams would be activated and pre-deployed based on severe weather forecasts.
Failing to authorize FEMA search and rescue units is just like hundreds of police officers waiting around in the hallway of Robb Elementary School for more than an hour.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Uvalde Schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo are both political appointees who lack basic qualification for their jobs and hampered the efforts of more experienced staff by trying to solely manage complex operations.
Every single local and state emergency management agency has issued and responded to floods for decades. Every single local and state police department has trained for a school shooting. But all of this preparation breaks down when inept people who should never be in leadership positions botch basic emergency operations.
From "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" during the failed Katrina response, to political hacks like Noem and Arredondo, we can’t sugarcoat how profoundly damaging bad leadership is during a crisis.
Politicians Praise Themselves Anyway
But if DHS Secretary Noem taking 72 hours to approve search and rescue teams wasn’t enough, politicians also try to gloss over their failed responses with congratulatory rhetoric and praising first responders.
Just hours after the Uvalde shooting (while kid's bodies were still inside the classroom), Texas Gov. Greg Abbott praised the officers “quick response” and said “they showed amazing courage by running toward gunfire.”
After the deadly floods, Gov Abbott said:
"Who's to blame? Know this. That's the word choice of losers. Let me explain one thing about Texas. Every square inch of our state cares about football. Every football team makes mistakes. The losing teams are the ones who try to point out who is to blame. The championship teams are the ones who say don’t worry about it, we got this."
Political leaders don’t want to acknowledge they should have done more to prevent these tragedies and try to distance themselves from failures to act in the moment. But their shortsightedness becomes clearer under the spotlight of public scrutiny. They fall back on culture war tropes, vague praise, calls for prayers, and anything that will distract from accountability.
For elected politicians and appointed cronies, denying failure is a higher priority than actually saving lives.
Worst Since XXX
Uvalde was the worst school shooting since Columbine.
Camp Mystic and Kerr County are the most deadly floods since Katrina with at least 132 confirmed deaths, with over 160 people still missing.
Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, former Texas Gov. George Bush said “to the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility.” The current governor of Texas, current President, and current DHS Secretary need to do the same.
David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, Chief Data Officer at a global risk management firm, and a tenure-track professor. Listen to my weekly podcast—Back to School Shootings—or my recent interviews on Freakonomics Radio, New England Journal of Medicine, and my article on CNN about AI and school security.