Alert System Lags in Sunday Flood Response

According to the timeline laid out by rescue workers and city officials, it wasn't until roughly 18 minutes after rescuers were dispatched to the shores of a rapidly rising Rappahannock River that an alert warning of flash flooding was sent to email and text message city emergency alert subscribers. The Sunday flooding followed heavy rains and flash flooding in Culpeper on Saturday. The resulting river surge caught 18 swimmers and four dogs off guard, stranding many for over an hour on high ground as a previously calm Rappahannock suddenly turned into a torrent. 

Rescuers spent over an hour plucking the two and four legged victims from the raging river. Each one rescued told a similar tale of the river  becoming an overpowering torrent in a short time. 

The city of Fredericksburg currently contracts their text messaging and email alert system through the company Cooper Notification, which manages Fredericksburg Alerts. The system is designed to be an emergency alert system, but is used for a variety of other purposes. Notices about school life, calls for volunteers for city projects and information about park closings are all frequently sent out to subscribers depending on their preferences. 

The system is set up so that some important notices, classified as R-16's, are distributed automatically. These include tornado, flood and thunderstorm warnings. 

According to Fredericksburg Fire Department Battalion Chief Brook Altman's post-incident report, rescuers were first dispatched to the riverside at 2:30 p.m.  on Sunday. According to Fredericksburg police and fire spokesperson Natatia Bledsoe, at 2:40 p.m. Bill Micks of Virginia Outdoor Center called the police dispatch center to report a sudden rise in water on the river. The dispatcher called Deputy Fire Chief Mark Bledsoe at 2:42 p.m. who instructed the dispatcher to send off a warning over the Fredericksburg Alert System. At 2:48 p.m. a message was sent out on the system reading "the Rappahannock River received a large amount of water upstream in Culpeper. A sudden flash flood is expected in Fredericksburg. Take appropriate action."

While flash flood warnings were issued for the Fredericksburg area on Sunday, those notices did not make it through Fredericksburg's Alert System. Fredericksburg police spokesperson Natatia Bledsoe said that she was unaware of any flood warnings sent prior to 2:48 p.m.

According to Rusty Dennen at the Free Lance Star, the Stafford County Fire and Rescue Department received a flash flood warning at 2:45 p.m. This was two minutes before Stafford rescuers received their first report of distressed swimmers. Stafford County did not issue an alert on its system until 2:59 p.m. 

In both cases, the alerts were issued too late to be useful to those stranded on the rocks and islands in the river.