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and also those who listen. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Right now, crews in central Texas

are waiting through debris and on and off rain in the search for those still missing after

catastrophic floods. In the early morning hours of July 4th,

while the country was preparing to celebrate, the Guadalupe River rose in some places between

30 and 40 feet, killing more than 130 people, including dozens of children at a summer camp,

with another hundred or more still missing. In the days

that followed, FEMA reportedly failed to answer nearly two-thirds of the urgent calls for help. Local

officials relied on spotty cell phone alerts that came too late, and now they're under intense

scrutiny for those delays. Meanwhile, with the National Weather Service

hit by budget cuts, there's real concern this disaster could have been better predicted,

and that more lives might have been saved. My guest today is investigative journalist

Abram Lustgarten. In his latest article for ProPublica, he writes about the horrifying

details of this latest catastrophe

and the broader story about America's shaky relationship with climate change,

highlighting how unprepared we really are.

He writes that the floodwaters didn't just wash away cabins and homes.

They expose dangerous gaps in our warning systems and local infrastructure and federal

...