“Texas is grieving right now,” the Republican senator Ted Cruz said on Monday morning. Cruz conducts himself with the rhino hide of a savvy political survivor but he appeared to struggle with his composure as he described the impact of the July 4th flash flooding, which destroyed lives and homes in the Hill Country of central Texas.
By Monday evening, the official death toll had reached 109 and is expected to rise. Kerr County suffered the worst, with at least 87 fatalities, including 27 children and counsellors at Camp Mystic, a Christian girls’ summer camp for about 750 located near the south fork of the Guadalupe river bed. Ten girls and a camp staff member are still missing.
“The pain, the shock of what has transpired these past few days has broken the heart of our state,” Cruz said.
“The children, little girls who were lost at Camp Mystic – that is every parents’ nightmare.”
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The cataclysmic images of the destructive power of the sudden torrent of river water that ripped through Kerr County, about 50 miles northwest of San Antonio, in the early hours of Friday morning were captured by drone, by graphic and by camera phones wielded by stricken holiday makers and locals.
An entire summer’s worth of rain water was dumped on the region within hours. The Guadalupe river had swollen by 22ft within a few hours. Several Kerr County residents, including Kerrville City mayor Joe Herring Jr, said they did not receive phone alerts in advance of the deluge. Whether that communication failure was down to poor network coverage has yet to be ascertained.
Even as the Herculean search and rescue – as it was still officially termed on Monday night – continues, further flood-level bursts of rain were threatened. Stories of extraordinary feats of courage and selflessness by both professional responders and volunteers made it clear that the death toll might have been much worse but for a series of extraordinary interventions.
That the tragedy occurred on America’s date of national celebration deepened the terribleness of the event. And because July 4th is a day of distraction and parties and parades and fireworks, it wasn’t until late in the evening that the scale and volatility of the flood began to register across the country.
President Donald Trump announced at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday he and first lady Melania Trump would tour the stricken region on Friday – some equivocation the previous day likely because of the extreme nature of the ongoing weather and the ongoing operations.
In January, the wildfires in LA. In July, the Texas flood. Once again the shocking power of America’s weather and nature patterns had revealed its frightening capriciousness. And beneath the genuine expressions of sympathy from political figures, the undercurrent of partisan politics was never far away.
When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt held her briefing on Monday, she began by offering sympathy and prayers for the victims before offering a strenuous defence against any attribution of blame to the Oval Office.
“Unfortunately, in the midst of this once-in-a-generation natural disaster we have seen many falsehoods pushed by Democrats such as senator Chuck Schumer and some members of the media,” she said.
“Blaming president Trump for these floods is a depraved lie and it serves no purpose during this time of national mourning. Here are the facts. In the lead-up to this tragic natural disaster, the National Weather Service [NWS] did its job and executed timely and precise forecasts and warnings.”
On the day after the disaster, the New York Times had reported Tom Fahy, the director of the NWS union, as saying the San Angelo office was down a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster and meteorologist in charge, some of whom had taken the redundancy packages offered during the paring back of federal staff agencies under Trump’s administration. Senator Schumer had formally asked for an investigation into whether staff shortages might have contributed to the death toll in Texas.
“People were sleeping in the middle of the night when this flood came,” Leavitt pointed out.
“That is an act of God. It’s not the administration’s fault that the flood hit when it did. But there were early and consistent warnings and again the National Weather Service did its job. On July 2nd there were initial notices – potential weather and flooding risks were issued. On July 3rd escalating warnings throughout the day with a flood watch issued at 1.18pm, and then later at 6.10pm on July 3rd the Weather Prediction Center warned of excessive rainfall and a high likelihood of flash flooding. At 6.22pm, July 3rd, NWS issued a hydraulic warning highlighting considerable flooding risks including Kerr County and then there were the flash flood alerts at 11.41pm, 1.14am and then another flash flood emergency warning at 4.03am, just before the flood hit. So those were all the warnings that went out to the affected area and region.”
It’s true that the timing of the rainstorm combined with the overwhelmingly swift rise in water levels meant those in the path of the flood were asleep and caught in a particularly vulnerable moment. However, the breakdown between the NWS issuances and the lack of on-the-ground awareness of what was coming will demand further scrutiny in the weeks and months to come.
Texas lieut gov Dan Patrick acknowledged on Monday that such a flood warning system might have saved lives and vowed that the state will foot the bill for it if local governments are unable to foot the cost. Tom Moser, a former Kerr County commissioner, told CNN on Monday night that he had advocated for a flood-warning system for years but moves were thwarted by the cost, estimated to be a million dollars. The Guadalupe river is peppered with children’s summer camps similar to that of Camp Mystic. And it has repeatedly been described as “Flash Flood Alley” since Friday.
The tragedy highlights the tensions between the stripping back of federal investment in agencies by the Trump administration and the inevitable additional pressures the policy will place on state and local resources. It coincides with a week when Elon Musk, the jettisoned champion of the Doge political philosophy, is at verbal war with the White House, threatening to establish an alternative political party to fight the Republican Party to whom he contributed $270 million in last year’s election.
However, the phenomenal volunteer and emergency response to the floods in Texas is the latest in many examples of how adversity seems to draw out the very best qualities of American society, in both its resilience and collective generosity.
But as the mourning continues in Texas alongside the ongoing search efforts, it is clear that the families of those lost will want answers as to whether they had received advance warning of the flooding, and if not, why not.
“Listen, I think any time you are dealing with major rivers, there is a risk of flooding and there has always been a risk of flooding particularly on the Guadalupe river,” Ted Cruz said, somewhat wearily, on Monday.
“I will say in the wake of every tragedy, there are things that are predictable. One of the things that is predictable is people engaging in partisan games and trying to blame their political opponents for a natural disaster. I think this is not a time for partisan finger pointing and attacks. Now, after we come through the search and rescue, after we come through the process of rebuilding, there will naturally be a period of retrospection where you look back and say: okay, what exactly transpired? What was the time line? And what could have been done differently to prevent this loss of life? And that’s a natural process.
“There will be another flood, there will be another disaster. And I hope next time there will be in place processes to remove especially the most vulnerable from harm’s way.”
