Warning Lessons: Albert Pike Recreation Area Flash Flood

The National Park Service says that it will reexamine how their warning systems function in light of the 18 deaths from the flash flood that hit the Albert Pike Recreation Area located in Arkansas.

From this tragedy there are several recurring themes that come to mind:

• We as Americans are comfortable with risk. We seem to only measure it by our personal experiences. Living near a creek or river "that has never flooded in my lifetime" seems to be the measure by which we determine what is safe and what we need to pay attention to.
• Government has a responsibility and so do individuals and families. While the investigation will look into the "failure to warn" there is also the need for people to pay attention to their surroundings and react accordingly. Being asleep in the middle of the night did not help in this measuring of what is going on around you in this particular instance.
• Warnings must be capable of being given in the worst of circumstances. This location was remote, had poor cell phone coverage, the incident happened in the middle of the night. All of these are contributing factors to the death toll we are reading about and families are experiencing. To me it seems as though it was a worst case scenario for those people.

Lastly, there are sometimes no easy answers or technological solutions. As emergency managers we mourn with the survivors for those who lost their lives. Children, sisters and brothers, moms and dads. Let us individually resolve to do what ever it takes to educate our citizens where we live and work of the hazards and also work to have effective warning systems that can protect people when the need arises.

If you are interested in the topic of warnings, you can read an Op-ed on Warning I wrote a number of years ago.