It was. Our home in Kingston had water just below the first floor ceiling. I can still smell the stink from the Susquehanna.
Horrible situation south of Austin... Girls summer camp washed away by flash floods...
- Thread starter EricStratton-RushChairman
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Are you posting by voice? I know we had a tendency to pronounce "creek" as "crick" back in PA, but I've never seen anyone try to type it out that way.
No, I say crick. It is my home language. Anyone who grew up on the Sock says crick. I grew up on the Sock and in the Pennsylvania Wilds before they were called Wilds and the Loyalsock Forest existed.
Lots of people who grew up where I did SAY "crick" ... I even used it interchangeably with "creek" when I lived there .. and I didn't live in your area ... it's widespread.
The point was, no one SPELLS it "crick." Anywhere. You type out "creek," and if you read it, you pronounce it "crick."
I just thought, perhaps, you were doing some kind of talk-to-text thing.
YES psu....
devastating for Wyoming Valley,
My fathers-in-law house was flooded 10 feet depth above the ground.
1.4 miles from the Susquehanna River.
click on pic
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There was a bar along 322 in the narrows south of lewistown 30 or more feet above the juniata river with a line on the wall 6 feet above the floor showing the flood level during Agnes. Amazing.
Part of the issue is that these river basins are very localized and flood warning alerts often cover a whole county. These storms can flood very different areas if the big rains shift just a few miles to a different basin. As I mentioned before, I received many flood warning alerts for this storm. I don't live anywhere near any flooding, so I know I can safely ignore them wrt my home, but to be mindful of traveling anywhere near creeks that are known to flood. The camp directors would have known not to ignore these alerts if they were for the Guadalupe, but between the weather forecast being for lower rainfall totals and human nature of knowing these alerts often don't apply to oneself, and these camps having experienced this many times before with lower flood stages all were likely contributing factors that resulted in evacuations not taking place until the last minute, after which it was too late for many. What I don't understand is the lack of a river basin specific alerting system. Once it's known where the flooding is happening then all areas downstream need to be alerted. Based on some old meeting minutes from these counties that surfaced today illustrating some past discussions about flood warning systems. It seems they relied on word of mouth from locals to notify others, completely ignoring that visitors might also be in danger. They also, to put it as kindly as possible, seem to have made some poor decisions to reject government funding based largely on political affiliations. Hopefully lessons will be learned and changes will be made. It's a shame it had to come at such a devastating cost.
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From Axios this morning regarding warning systems, history of flood casualties etc. a pretty interesting and quick read ( facts without political comment, so don’t get triggered ) :
While Texas state leaders have prioritized spending on border security and property tax cuts, they have been far more reluctant to fund flood management efforts, Axios Austin's Nicole Cobler writes.
While Texas state leaders have prioritized spending on border security and property tax cuts, they have been far more reluctant to fund flood management efforts, Axios Austin's Nicole Cobler writes.
- Why it matters: Texas leads the nation by a wide margin in flood deaths.
- Camp Mystic, a private Christian camp for girls, confirmed that 27 campers and counselors had died following the flooding.
- Local officials in areas like Kerr County — where the worst of last weekend's flooding took place — have struggled to secure funding for basic warning systems and have instead relied on National Weather Service text alerts and word-of-mouth to alert residents rather than costly outdoor siren systems.
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Those are systems designed to alert people in situations where normal broadcast alerts wouldn't be able to be put out in time. That wasn't the case here - alerts went out, but nobody reacted.
It's still early but interviews would lead you to believe this was a camp management issue. People in camp received flash flood warning alerts in time to do something but they didn't. Similar to what others have shared about their experiences with flooding, they probably thought they were safe where they were at. I would hope the camp had an emergency response plan that would tell the staff what to do and where to go when flash flood warnings were received. So far, it sounds like they either didn't have one or didn't follow it for one reason or another. I'm sure an investigation will get to the bottom of it.
While Tgar does not disagree regarding this specific event, it’s pretty clear there is a systemic deficiency regionally that has never been addressed for the safety of Texas citizens Living in the Hill Country.
Indeed.... I remember the flood in the '70s and wiped out all the campers and homes along Elk Creek and Hoagland Branch. So many places along the creek I remember being a young boy riding up to our house after the flood and everything was gone. Elk Creek and Hoagland Branch were both quiet but there was so much debris high up in the trees along the creeks running down to the Loyalsock. Floods like that happened several times over the years. My grandfather built our house in 1950 (before Northeast extension and I-80 were built) along Elk Creek but high up away from the creek eventhough we have creek front property. Everything including homes on the Sock were leveled. Not even any markings that they were there. Nature gives and takes. Yes I still call it crick eventhough I live in south Florida now.
I don’t want to check the news anymore.
Headline: Texas man haunted by desperate screams of children during deadly Hill Country flash floods
Scroll down at the following link:
www.foxnews.com
Headline: Texas man haunted by desperate screams of children during deadly Hill Country flash floods
Scroll down at the following link:
Texas flooding death toll surpasses 100 as Camp Mystic campers, counselor remain missing
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said his state "will not stop until every missing person is found" following devastating flooding in central Texas over the Fourth of July weekend that left at least 105 dead. Five young girls and a counselor from Camp Mystic in Hunt remain missing Tuesday.
www.foxnews.com
Clinging to rafters: How staff at all-boys camp in Texas saved hundreds from floodwaters
Taking swift action, counselors at Camp La Junta in the Texas Hill Country managed to evacuate hundreds of children from a raging flood.
www.usatoday.com
Nearly 400 at an all boys camp about 5 miles upstream from Camp Mystic were safe and accounted for. The staff were heroic in their efforts to get the boys to safety.
Here is interview from two boys that are close friends of the family. Their Mom and Grandmother are very close to my wife and I... have had these two boys over for cookouts. Really amazing attitude...Clinging to rafters: How staff at all-boys camp in Texas saved hundreds from floodwaters
Taking swift action, counselors at Camp La Junta in the Texas Hill Country managed to evacuate hundreds of children from a raging flood.www.usatoday.com
Nearly 400 at an all boys camp about 5 miles upstream from Camp Mystic were safe and accounted for. The staff were heroic in their efforts to get the boys to safety.
2 Camp La Junta campers share how they survived Kerr County floodwaters
The memories of going away to summer camp typically last a lifetime. For brothers Piers and Ruffin Boyett, their memories at Camp La Junta will carry a new meaning.
www.ksat.com
The first sentence is certainly one way to put it. Do you think there was a strategy at all? Because where I am standing there doesn't seem to have been a strategy at all for any of the DOGE cuts.
Texas has an absolutely horrendous track record of handling literally anything involving nature. They can't do winter. They can't do summer. Maybe they're better in the spring and fall?
Having lived in Texas for most of last 35 years I have to respectfully disagree a bit. First of all, no one below the 35 parallel does winter well. We get 48-72 hours of winter every year, not fiscally responsible to acquire winter weather equipment for 3 days of snow/ice. Population has grown from 20m to 30m in last 25 years. Not sure why you claim we don't do summer well, we do summer fine. I have never seen rolling blackouts like they have in Cali.
I will agree that ERCOT dropped the ball in the 2021 freeze by poorly planning power plant maintenance shut downs, but the temps in that 3 day period hadn't happened in 75+ years. We have state of the art tornado warning systems... we had one rip right through highly dense neighborhood in north Dallas 5 years ago and no one was seriously injured due to proper early warning. Harvey dumped FIVE FEET of rain in under 24 hours on Houston, no way to prepare for that.
I am of the opinion that the major failure with recent flooding is basic human inability to grasp worst case scenario. Camp Mystic literally moved to higher elevation after last 80s flood believing they were safe distance. Kerr County commissioners are the ones who should be held responsible as they failed to fund better worse case warning system. At the end of the day we here in Texas get to deal with hurricanes, forest fires, tornados, floods, hail... basically the worst mother nature can unleash other than earthquakes. If you are looking for a state that is a shiitshow in handling mother nature look no further than Cali.
It was a tragic event. Glad the family you know is safe but right now it not a good time to be pointing fingers at other States.
Rather than focusing on things like warning systems and the such, given what we've been told so far about the history of these things, and the location of the camps, my main questions would be toward the camp owners/directors that set these places up, and apparently didn't have anything adequately set up to warn their campers, or get them to safety ... and the parents that let their kids go to these places.
I know you can't protect your kids from all risks of harm and it's easy to second guess when tragedy strikes ... but this does seem like a situation where there was an obvious and known risk, there wasn't much done to mitigate this risk and, in fact, there wasn't much of an action plan in place if the risk manifested itself as an actual dangerous event. No cell phones, no cell phone service, in a remote location known to be prone to flooding, where you're housing many children. Perhaps there was an "adequate" action plan in place, but this was just so catastrophic that nothing would have worked, but this is where I'd be putting my focus.
Is the responsibility on someone to set off a siren on behalf of the State, country or town, or on others more closely tied to the situation?
There was a flood management expert on CSPAN this morning.
There is a fine line between blame and an after action report meant to identify weaknesses. I won’t comment on where that line should be because I’m not smart enough to know where the line is.
What he said was:
1). NWS issued watches and warnings properly. Whether those warnings were communicated to the people who needed to hear them is a different question.
2). Sirens are a great idea and should have been in place. FEMA denied a grant request for sirens in 2017, and the Kerr county or city government voted down a proposal to install sirens a few years later since they didn’t have the funds
I was didn't mean to "point fingers' as in blame another state, although i lived in bay area for 8 of my adult years and can speak to both state's handling/mishandling... it was more about countering what i thought was misguided comment about TX and how natural disasters are handled. No two states take more of a beating across the board than TX and Cali (FLA up there as well)... I just believe Texas sucks less than Cali
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Again, this is focusing on the wrong things, IMO.
Your post was about NWS (fed govt) and FEMA (fed govt) and county/city gov't.
I'm looking more at the parties more closely responsible for this situation existing. The camps, that set up and operated said camp sites, and the parents who send their children there.
Yeah, it's great to have "backup" in the form of government to help you out, but primary responsibility should be on the people directly involved. Obviously not the children ... but the rest of the decision makers.
Government is there to handle things citizens can't handle on their own, and as "backup," yet we immediately look at "why weren't people warned?" when we should be first looking at "why were the people there in the first place" and "what else could the service providers done to mitigate harm when an emergency arises?"
That's not at all to say that individual citizens and companies should generally be responsible for themselves in a natural disaster/flood management situation ... it's just that I see a lot of particular dangers that could/should have been avoided here at the personal level (again, obviously not the kids themselves) ... and when people act more responsibly, that makes any larger response from an entity like a government easier to manage. It's not that unlike folks who refuse to evacuate during an expected horrible hurricane ... and then look toward the government to bail them out if/when things go south.
"Let's put a bunch of kids in a flood prone area, without technology for contact with the outside world, or an adequate evacuation plan/shelter in case of emergency and then wonder why others didn't possibly do enough to warn us."
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The daughter of a long term colleague and Austin friend of mine was at Camp Mystic. She’s one of the older girls and her cabin was on higher ground with the rest of the older campers. She was evacuated by helicopter Friday late afternoon after enduring about 12 hours of hell as many little girls she was (figuratively) an older sister to were missing (and none have been found, so presumed dead).
It’s a horror show - total dead might reach 200.
Trying to be neutral here, but the initial press conference by the politicians were a disgrace. 20 minutes of back slapping and sycophantic name-dropping before getting to the details people cared about. A San Antonio news anchor had the guts to call out the grandstanding, but I’m sure she’ll be fired/demoted after stepping out of line.
It’s a horror show - total dead might reach 200.
Trying to be neutral here, but the initial press conference by the politicians were a disgrace. 20 minutes of back slapping and sycophantic name-dropping before getting to the details people cared about. A San Antonio news anchor had the guts to call out the grandstanding, but I’m sure she’ll be fired/demoted after stepping out of line.
Those meeting minutes from 2016 are pretty damning. Small minded morons from the community asserting that taking money from the administration at the time was ceding sovereignty to communists and a few commissioners who are simpletons pretty much ignoring common sense concerns from the Sheriff and emergency management staff. The biggest dumbass, Commissioner Baldwin, passed away about 3 years ago so doesn’t have to answer to idiocy like this:
“Moser, who retired from the commission in 2021, told CNN that his efforts to improve the local system hit wall after wall over the years. After massive flooding elsewhere in the Hill Country region in 2015, Moser said he studied how nearby Comal County had installed sirens, adopted plans for shutting off low-water crossings and made other flood preparations.
He suggested that Kerr County follow suit. But some locals questioned where the funding would come from, while others worried about noise: “Some people didn’t like the concept of sirens going off and disturbing everybody,” Moser said.
One of his fellow commissioners, H. A. “Buster” Baldwin, voiced those concerns at a 2016 meeting.
“The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of night, I’m going to have to start drinking again to put up with y’all,” said Baldwin, who died in 2022, according to a transcript of the meeting”
It’s going to be a very rough ride for the survivors.
At this point, I have come to conclusions. Do not locate a camp for children in a known severe flood zone. Duh. Secondly, if you still choose to do so, camp leadership has responsibility of reading and interpreting weather forecasts to make informed decisions. Those camps failed in their responsibility to do so.
And for the first responders on the ground. Nightmarish. God bless them.
Part of Camp Mystic was situated in a very clearly marked floodway.
Apparently someone upstream called Kerr city at 04:22 and told them the situation was desperate and to sound the alarm. “I need to check with my supervisor.”
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