Joe Scarborough Blasts Texas Officials Who Ignored ‘Warnings’ Before Deadly Floods: ‘No Passing The Buck!’

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough blasted Texas officials at state and county level who chose to “ignore” the “very clear signals” that lives were endangered despite local “complaints about an antiquated warning system” that “went unheeded for a decade.”

Authorities say 161 individuals remain missing after a devastating flooding of the Guadalupe River on July 4, suggesting the current confirmed death toll of 111 could more than double before rescue efforts conclude.

Among those missing are 11 girls from Christian summer camp Camp Mystic, which was situated along the river. Twenty-seven children and adults are confirmed dead.

The tirade came just moments after a report from NBC News reporter Aaron Gilchrist, who highlighted the growing demand for “accountability” and as details emerged that an emergency plan had only been approved by the state two days before the tragedy. ABC News also reported that since 2016, county officials discussed updating the warning system at least 20 times but never took action.

On Thursday’s Morning Joe, Scarborough unloaded on officials following the on-site report, arguing that “the state of Texas failed miserably” in protecting its residents:

The flood system, as reported, was considered antiquated a decade ago. You had not only the people of Kerrville – you had to have people in the county and people in the state repeatedly ignore these very clear signals that people’s lives were in danger, Texans’ lives were in danger, because they weren’t upgrading an antiquated system.

We heard a sheriff say in a clip that things could have been so much worse, and certainly they could have. And we salute the first responders. But also, there is no doubt: if the warnings over the past decade had been listened to by politicians in Texas – on the local and the state level – then this tragedy could have been so less worse, so less tragic.

Looking back to Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans in 2005, Scarborough said the situation in Kerr County was reminiscent of how state officials in Louisiana decided to “ignore warning after warning after warning about an old, antiquated levee system that was not able to hold back the floodwaters.”

He added:

That’s the same thing that’s happening here. They knew there was a problem. And there’s really no passing of the buck, because I’ll tell you how things happened when I represented six counties in northwest Florida. If there was a problem that people had in, you know, a hurricane coming, then somebody saw a problem, somebody would talk to a county commissioner, county commissioner would talk to me. I would get funding for whatever needed to be taken care of, and it would be taken care of.

I find it hard to believe two things right here. One, again, complaints about an antiquated warning system went unheeded for a decade. That’s number one. Number two, that the local authorities, that the county authorities, that the state authorities allowed a children’s camp to be built in a flood zone just a few years ago – in a highly dangerous flood zone.

So that’s, again, one more thing where the state of Texas failed miserably. I find it hard to believe that would happen in the state of Florida. You know, post-[Hurricane] Andrew, leaders took every precaution to make sure that building standards were raised. But again, how they knew this was a problem for a decade and still allowed Camp Mystic to expand in an active flood zone is beyond me.

Watch above via MSNBC.

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