I keep hearing Flash Flood Alley and most dangerous flood plain in the US. Yet a community that makes quite a bit of money from tourists and campers and their parents in the months most likely to have flooding did not want to pay for a warning system bc it was too expensive. It reminds me of the movie Dante’s Peak where a town resides in the valley of a volcano. 🌋 Of all the things I have heard of the past couple of days I think this stubbornness that “well it floods a lot here but it won’t ever get that bad” mentality was a ticking time bomb. It is the mentality.
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Camp Mystic sits on a strip known to locals as “flash flood alley.”
“When it rains, water doesn’t soak into the soil,” said Austin Dickson, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, which was collecting donations. “It rushes down the hill.”
Decades prior, floodwaters engulfed a bus of teenage campers from another Christian camp along the Guadalupe River during devastating summer storms in 1987. A total of 10 campers from Pot O’ Gold Christian camp drowned after their bus was unable to evacuate in time from a site near Comfort, 33 miles (53 kilometers) east of Hunt.
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power of nature + local mentality that they will never have the ultimate disaster despite living in their words the most dangerous flash flooding alley in the US is the main factor (not the only one) but it seems that way to me. We all know there are other factors. But this was a disaster waiting to happen. And it seems like the locals owed in my mind their tourists, their campers and families of the campers on the backs of whom they make a healthy monetary cash influx an early warning system in that county to keep them all safe. And now July 4th will be symbolic for tragedy. And they didn’t want to spend the money on a necessary system that could have spared many of the deceased who aren’t even old enough to vote, and in many cases aren’t even big enough to ride most of the rides in theme parks.
that’s how I see it. I’m pissed and hurt and like many of you need to take a break from the tragedy and find some peace. There has been zero word from my two cousins (who each have a friend missing a child) on the two girls that have not yet been found. Keep praying for a miracle despite all evidence to the contrary. The numbers are rising.