0 to 26 foot floods overnight.
I fear there will be more dead kids
The article said the river rose 26 feet in 45 minutes.
That is mind boggling.
That’s a two story house of water
F*cking hell! That is terrifying and devastating. Poor children and families.
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It’s awful. And of course happened at night. It was a huge amount of rain in a short time. Not sure how much warning they had.
It’s not too far from us. Heartbreaking.
Evidently an entire RV park is just gone wiped clear away.
I’m curious why they haven’t deployed military assets to do search amd rescue.
That area of Texas has a lot of “low water crossings” on the roads. Basically, when the roads cross a creek, the water runs over the road, not under it. I have deer hunted there on several occasions when it rained overnight. You cannot then cross the road and are stuck there, in place, for days until the water recedes. Often when the water is building or receding people misjudge how deep it is and try to cross, only to get swept downstream.
Lots of public roads go through private property. Many have “bump gates”. It is a swinging gate (on a public road) where you ease up to it and push the gate with your bumper. As it swings back you quickly go through. The gate will then swing back in line with the fence.
I have been on deer leases where you had 5 or 6 bump gates and several low water crossings to get to it.
A tragedy
I assume flash flooding is not uncommon and rain was forecast
A very sad state of affairs
Good lord. Those poor kids.
If it’s possible to keep this apolitical that would be great. The authorities seem to be pointing fingers at the National Weather Service forecast here for its inaccuracy. I get that like every other agency in the federal government there were layoffs and it’s easy to point fingers, but from a layman’s perspective, why would these kids be camping in a flood plain with this kind of surge capacity in the first place? Was this a 100 year type event or were people just playing fast and loose with the weather report, or both?
https://x.com/ronfilipkowski/status/1941440194080833828?s=61&t=nsVXZiCUm1aguM6ABLo7hA
This strikes me as a local planning failure more so than anything. Don’t sleep in flood plains, as a rule? I don’t want to speculate much but it’s hard to imagine how a kids camp could end up where they were given the atmospheric and topographic conditions.
Someone had to know this was a bad idea.
Awful. A story I read said the camp sits in “Flash Flood alley”
Obviously this doesn’t happen every year, but would think that have layers of prep and evacuation plans.
I have an aunt and uncle from Belize staying with us. They have friends from that area. They read a text message from my cousin who had some friends camping along the river. They saw how fast the river was rising and jumped into their car leaving everything behind and drove as quick as they could for high ground.
They were the fortunate ones.
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This
I wouldn’t say the camps are in flood plains. The photos Cathy posted are from a park in the town of Kerrville, not where the camp was. (Though that is where the Kerrville triathlon transition area is.)
The rivers rose more than 10 feet in a matter of hours, in the wee hours of the morning. Warnings were put out, but that storm stalled and dumped way more than I think anyone expected. Were warnings heeded, or, as is often the case, not given much concern? Have already seen SM posts that they get “so many warnings, they don’t believe them.”
Another part of the storm stalled just west of Austin last night, after we were thinking it was settling down, and there are water rescues happening near Austin right now.
My heart is breaking for all the families, esp the kids. I hope some of them are found alive.
Just read a story of a colleague’s 98 year old dad escaping, but just barely.
We’ve been in drought here so long. This is often how we get water back in our lakes (i.e., our water supply). It’s an awful event, but also beneficial in a way.
This was the weather situation at 3:14 a.m. the morning of the flood. How that would be broadcast to the camps and such, I don’t know.
Awful. Nature and society always exist in tension and it’s unfair to presume negligence without knowing the relevant details so I’ll keep quiet and learn at this point. My heart breaks for these families and communities.
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A fucking national weather service radio? Don’t give me that act of god nothing to be done bullshit. This entire debacle could have been prevented by mere baseline competence
I was just reading updates on NYT. In addition to the missing girls at the camp there’s apparently an unknown number of folks likely missing from a nearby RV park. The park is gone and officials have no idea how many people may or may not have been there. I guess there’s usually a lot of holiday campers.
I don’t
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