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Posts posted by bolverk
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2 minutes ago, Chopper said:
Maybe we'll eventually find out if the camp even had a plan and if so how comprehensive it was. Does the county have a plan? Does the county have a plan for the camps? Does the county know if the camp had an emergency plan? Did they review it with the camp? Did any of them follow a plan? Were they all negligent? I won't hold my breath waiting for answers.
I understand why nobody wants to blame the parents but if there's nobody else checking what the camp was up to, it was incumbent on them.
Someone, maybe Troph (not sure), mentioned multiple times that overnight camps are required to be certified/inspected by the State of Texas in some manner. I have no knowledge beyond that statement, if true.
But, it would undoubtedly be good to know what that certification process entails, how rigorous it is, and to what degree and how frequently inspections occur. Absolutely no idea (but doubtful) that the county requires any sort of inspection since the State doesn't allow for many regulations of properties outside of ETJs, except in limited circumstances.
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8 minutes ago, Hpara759 said:
San Saba and Llano rivers
Yep. The last few frames on my weather app suggest that most of the energy is heading SxSW toward Junction and Menard.
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11 minutes ago, Texas Fight said:
I agree with the concept here. Ive asked a few times on these threads how often the buildings on the camps flood? When was the last time? Do you know?
The buildings and the owners are there 24/7/365. This should be known to them. If it has occured before, what have they done about it. On the other hand, if the buildings have never flooded or water has never risen that high, I think there is a different evaluation.
Those are all excellent questions that I hope are eventually answered. Unfortunately, I can't offer any.
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Just now, chainsaw said:
They didn't let her stay in the dorms? Was it a nice tree at least?
Messed up the order of the prepositional phrases. I added the detail about her staying at camp to clarify that she wasn’t some skeezy townie picking up 8th-grade bandcamp nerds.
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13 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:
I think everyone gets the idea of summer camp but didn't experience it themselves. Meatballs was a favorite movie of mine when I was a kid. However my parents sending me to camp? Nah. I don't think they really cared what I did during the summer. Typical Gen X neglect. But knowing myself, if my parents had asked me if I wanted to go to camp, I would have said no.
I was sent up to a Boys Scout camp up in the Davis Mountains a couple of times (Buffalo Trail Council) and band camp at Tech 2-3 times. The latter was a very different experience, staying in college dorms and whatnot, plus this one time at bandcamp between 8th & 9th grade I got my first blowjob from some Lubbock girl staying at camp under a tree on campus, which was nice.
Gotta tell you guys, there's a reason American Pie included that line. Bandcamp kids in the mid-80s were sex fiends.
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2 minutes ago, Pasken said:
Did I read that this is one of those places where campers aren't allowed their cell phones? What about counselors? I'm willing to bet more than a few of these Gen Z and Alpha kids know their way around the weather app.
Yes, it's been mentioned that the campers themselves were not allowed any electronic devices, including phones. At the same time, someone posted an article a day or so ago that also stated every adult on site was supposedly required to have a cellphone with them at all times.
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11 minutes ago, Texas Fight said:
Agreed this entire tragedy is not one side or the other. But people are making it such. It’s not just Perkins. People on this thread/topic are doing it. Making this event (flooding) about race, white privilege, rich, Christian, conservative, etc…. as evidence, very very little judgment or shaming on those families in RVs, tents or trailer parks.
I can't speak for anyone else here, but the locals hosting visitors (owners of the camps, the RV park owners, the city, and the county) are primarily to blame. They live there. They know the history of flooding. They chose not to have a flood monitoring system. They chose not to have a warning system. They chose not to have adequate evacuation plans. On top of that, I blame the state for not adequately funding a regional system, as well as this regime for stripping resources from the NWS.
The degree to which any of the campers themselves are to blame is nada. The degree to which any of the RVers are to blame would lie in their potential choices at the ballot box that foster negligence among all layers of government.
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7 minutes ago, Tonesky said:
Maybe I was not clear, but this misses the point. Highest all time refers to the high point. What about the lower elevations that HAVE flooded in the past. How many of those killed were at those lower elevations, and were not killed by historic flood levels? Simply saying this was unprecedented is a cop out.
Yeah, I misunderstood your question, likely my fault for not reading as closely as I should've. No idea on whether those low-lying cabins had flooded in '87 or any other time previously. Personally, I believe there was serious negligence on the part of the camp in keeping the little kids in those cabins closest to the river, regardless of the historic nature of the flood. I also blame the city, county, and state for not having an early warning system upstream and/or sirens in populated areas.
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8 minutes ago, Tonesky said:
But, were those closest to the river, like the Mystic cabin swept away, higher than the 1987 flood?
We may not yet know the details, but there is zero question that some lives were lost due to negligence.
Crossposting from the rain thread: all-time record for Hunt, third highest for Kerrville proper.
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Just now, strangulation! said:
i'm not sure who that is but i was referencing brisket
I know you were, and I'm not going to get in the middle of that. I was merely pointing out that the brand spanking new account you were quoting is GRhorn, a guy who has been banned by mods or crowdsourced more times than I can count, likely approaching 50 times now.
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1 minute ago, strangulation! said:
@Good Gravy is the same boring
shittroll over and over. just scroll past himHe's approaching 50 usernames at this point.
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15 minutes ago, CleverNickname said:
The flood was 9 ft higher than the 1987 flood. I can see how a failure of imagination would mean not prepared for that level of insanity
Have you had a chance to check up on your hole yet to see if it's become a well?
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Background on past efforts to get a warning system in place. It seems to me that a regional warning system for the Hill Country makes a whole lot of sense so that the cost burden can be shared among various jurisdictions and the state, with the latter covering a substantial chunk of the tab, because the state is fucking loaded. As we all know, people from all over the state visit the area, and they may be at even greater risk than most permanent residents, since visitors are more likely to be in the lower-lying, flood-prone river valleys.
Officials Feared Flood Risk to Youth Camps but Rejected Warning System
Kerr County had discussed buying such things as water gauges and sirens after previous flood disasters. But as with many rural Texas counties, cost was an issue.Eight years ago, in the aftermath of yet another river flood in the Texas Hill Country, officials in Kerr County debated whether more needed to be done to build a warning system along the banks of the Guadalupe River.
A series of summer camps along the river were often packed with children. For years, local officials kept them safe with a word-of-mouth system: When floodwaters started raging, upriver camp leaders warned those downriver of the water surge coming their way.
But was that enough? Officials considered supplementing the system with sirens and river gauges, along with other modern communications tools. “We can do all the water-level monitoring we want, but if we don’t get that information to the public in a timely way, then this whole thing is not worth it,” said Tom Moser, a Kerr County commissioner at the time.
In the end, little was done. When catastrophic floodwaters surged through Kerr County last week, there were no sirens or early flooding monitors. Instead, there were text alerts that came late for some residents and were dismissed or unseen by others.
The rural county of a little over 50,000 people, in a part of Texas known as Flash Flood Alley, contemplated installing a flood warning system in 2017, but it was rejected as too expensive. The county, which has an annual budget of around $67 million, lost out on a bid at the time to secure a $1 million grant to fund the project, county commission meeting minutes show.
As recently as a May budget meeting, county commissioners were discussing a flood warning system being developed by a regional agency as something that they might be able to make use of.
But in a recent interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said that local residents had been resistant to new spending. “Taxpayers won’t pay for it,” he said, adding that he didn’t know if people might reconsider now.
QuoteThe idea of a flood warning system was broached in 2015, in the aftermath of a deadly flood in Wimberley, Texas, about 75 miles to the east of Kerrville, the Kerr County seat.
The Guadalupe River Basin is one of the most dangerous regions in the United States when it comes to flash floods. Ordinary floods from heavy rainstorms occur regularly, inundating streets and threatening structures as floodwaters gradually rise. The region is also prone to flash floods, which can occur with little to no notice.
People living near the Guadalupe in Kerr County may have little time to seek higher ground, especially when flash floods come through late at night when people are asleep. In 1987, a rapidly rising Guadalupe River swept away a school bus carrying teens from a church camp, killing 10 of them.
Avantika Gori, a Rice University professor who is leading a federally funded project to improve flood resilience in rural Texas counties, said that flood warning systems are often simple networks of rain gauges or stream gauges that are triggered when rain or floodwaters exceed a certain level.
The gauges can then be used to warn those at risk of flooding, whether by text message, which may not be effective in areas with spotty cellphone service; notifications broadcast on TV and radio; or sometimes through a series of sirens.
More complex systems use forecasts from the National Weather Service to predict rainfall and model what areas might be subject to flooding, Professor Gori said.
After the 2015 floods, an improved monitoring system was installed in the Wimberley area, and cell towers are now used to send out notices to all cellphones in the area.
Mr. Moser, the former commissioner, visited Wimberley after its new system was in place, and then led efforts to have a flood warning system in Kerr County. His proposal would have included additional water detection systems and a system to alert the public, but the project never got off the ground, largely because of budget concerns.
“It sort of evaporated,” Mr. Moser said. “It just didn’t happen.”
One commissioner at the time, H.A. “Buster” Baldwin, voted against a $50,000 engineering study, according to a news account at the time, saying, “I think this whole thing is a little extravagant for Kerr County, with sirens and such.”
Mr. Moser said it was hard to tell if a flood warning system would have prevented further tragedy in Kerr County during the July 4 flood, given the extraordinary circumstance of the flooding, which came suddenly after an intense period of rain. But he said he believed that such a system could have had some benefit.
“I think it could have helped a lot of people,” Mr. Moser said.
The death toll from the flooding, now at 80, includes at least 28 children, with several girls and a counselor from one of the camps along the river still unaccounted for.
According to a transcript from a Kerr County Commissioners’ Court meeting in 2017, officials discussed how even with additional water level sensors along the Guadalupe River, the county would still need a way to alert residents if water levels were rising dangerously fast.
Sirens, which are used across Texas to alert residents about tornadoes, were considered by county officials as a way to alert people who live along the river about any flooding.
“With all the hills and all, cell coverage is not that great in some areas in Hill Country,” Mr. Moser said, adding that a series of sirens might have provided people in vulnerable areas sufficient time to flee.
Mr. Moser retired as a commissioner of Kerr County in 2021. But he said this week’s flooding there should be taken as a warning.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of places in the United States that will look at this event that happened in Kerr County and determine what could be done,” Mr. Moser said. “I think things should come out of this. It should be a lesson learned.”
Current city officials on Sunday did not discuss the earlier deliberations over warning systems. Dalton Rice, the Kerrville city manager, sidestepped a question about the effectiveness of local emergency notifications, telling reporters at a news conference that it was “not the time to speculate.”
“There’s going to be a full review of this, so we can make sure that we focus on future preparedness,” he said.
Professor Gori said that the decision not to install warning systems in the past has for many Texas counties come down to cost.
“If the county had a flood warning system in place, they would have fared much better in terms of preparedness, but most rural counties in Texas simply do not have the funds to implement flood warning systems themselves,” she said in an email.
Some simpler systems, however, like those using stream or rain gauges, may still not have allowed enough time for evacuations, given how fast the water rose in Kerr County, she added.
It is hardly unique in facing challenges.
“Rural counties are extremely data-scarce, which means we are essentially blind when it comes to identifying areas that are prone to flooding,” Ms. Gori said.
Texas has a growing backlog of flood management projects, totaling some $54 billion across the state. The state flood plan of the Texas Water Development Board called on lawmakers to dedicate additional funding to invest in potentially lifesaving infrastructure.
But lawmakers have so far allocated only a fraction of the money needed for flood projects through the state’s Flood Infrastructure Fund, about $669 million so far, even as state lawmakers this year approved $51 billion in property tax cuts.
Kerr County, in its earlier discussions about a warning system, had explored along with other members of the Upper Guadalupe River Authority the possibility of applying for financial support through the infrastructure fund. But the authority dropped the idea after learning that the fund would provide only about 5 percent of the money needed for the project.
During last week’s flooding, despite the text notifications that warned of rapidly rising waters, some residents were unsure how seriously to take the flood warnings because they are not unusual in that part of the state.
Sujey Martin, a resident of Kerrville for the past 15 years, said she was awakened by an emergency alert on her phone at about 2 a.m. on Friday. She said she had glanced at it and went back to sleep.
“It’s never this bad, so I didn’t think much of it,” she said.
It wasn’t until about 5 a.m. that she became alarmed, when she realized that her power was out, and she started reading on Facebook about flooding and evacuations, some of them just a few streets over from her. “It was raining really hard,” she recalled.
Louis Kocurek, 65, who lives in Center Point, about 10 miles southeast of Kerrville, said that he had never received an official government text alert about the flooding. He had signed up for a private emergency alert service known as CodeRED, but by the time that alert came in, his power had gone out. At that time, he said, he had known about the situation for at least three hours, warned by his son-in-law at about 6:30 a.m.
He had checked on the water level of the creek near his home and decided to stay put — even though the water in the creek rose 15 feet in 15 minutes at one point. His house sits at a higher elevation than the homes of some neighbors, and there were 11 people hunkering down at his house.
Mr. Kocurek said the CodeRED alert came in at 10:07 a.m. “At that point, you know, the roads were closed, no way to get out.” His house, ultimately, was not flooded.
Linda Clanton, a retired schoolteacher who lives on the outskirts of Kerrville, said she did not know how bad the flooding had become until her sister called and woke her up with the news at 8:30 a.m. on Friday. The next day, she was among several people taking in the widespread destruction and piles of debris caused by the floodwaters at Louise Hays Park, along the Guadalupe River on the west side of town.
She said she couldn’t be sure that even sirens would have been useful in warning people about the fast-moving water.
“We are all spread out in these hills and the trees,” she said. “If we had a siren here in town, nobody but town people would hear it,” she added. “You’d have to have sirens all over the place, and that’s a lot of money and a lot of things to go wrong.”
And the danger was not over yet.
Around 3 p.m. on Sunday, another emergency alert went out to people along the Guadalupe River, including the hundreds conducting searches, warning of “high confidence of river flooding.” Move to higher ground, the alert urged.
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4 minutes ago, C-Man said:
Oh man, I hope it didn't fuck up job interviews and stuff before he found out. At least now, if he has a sense of humor, he could make fun of it and own it. What's really fucked up, though, is how it became a stock photo without their knowledge.
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5 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:
Since I didn't grow up in TX, I just don't get this "camp culture" y'all have. Seeing that there are camp reunion committees, camp alumni chat groups, etc. just seems weird as fuck to an outsider.
This probably isn't the best comparison, but I'd say that in some ways, it's psychologically like being on a sports team. You're part of a group doing something intense together that builds strong bonds and creates lasting memories for a specific period of time, and under the guidance of coaches / camp counselors.
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15 minutes ago, C-Man said:
The story of how this guy got “famous” is hilarious.You mean, like, how was his photo selected for that story? Do tell.
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3 minutes ago, Fastbreak said:
I just read that phones, laptops, watches and tablets are banned at camp mystic. Maybe that also had something to do with it…
That's true for the campers, but I read that all adults were required to have their cellphones with them at all times.
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2 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:
A friend worked as a hospice nurse. She claimed that religious patients generally had an easier passing than non-religious types. I think calls for prayers are meant to assuage, not to affect change.
I recall a study a few years ago that showed hospital patients tended to fare worse when they knew people were praying for them. If I remember correctly, they hypothesized that it made patients feel stressed and/or have “performance anxiety” about their recovery. Of course, these weren’t hospice patients being questioned about their belief in a god.
From the experience I gained taking care of my mom for a few months when she was getting hospice care, I think her devout belief did give her some comfort, knowing that she would soon pass and be with my dad.
So maybe the takeaway is don’t expect god or prayers to intercede in whether you get well or sick or live or die, except to make you feel more mentally prepared in the end.
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40 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:
I fucked up and did not list the POC. Oh well, there are a few C-notes.
I fucked up and forgot to add the notification for Angie.
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@Bob Lives! Many thanks for your generosity. Happy to have put in my two bits.
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38 minutes ago, Dnaguy said:
I can’t understand why / how the numbers keep changing. It’s so frustrating.
There needs to be one, ONE consistent death toll and at least a confirmed number of those unaccounted for. There needs to be the state controlling this effort and our STATE leadership taking the reins.
The PR aspect of this continues to flounder.
The lack of organizational leadership is apparent to me. The state wants to blame the county so they aren’t trying to control the message.It’s so fucking obvious they don’t want any dead kid stink on them so they are sitting back.
I hate everything.
This is what I was asking for last night, and all I could find was a partial list in the Houston Chronicle. Logic would dictate that someone on the state’s disaster response team would be able to compile and publish a consolidated list of a) the deceased who’ve been identified and whose families have been notified, b) a list those who are known to be missing for BOLO reasons, and c) a list of the number of unidentified bodies.
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1 minute ago, troph said:
You probably would have too even though I think your critical thinking skills are often lacking. Sorry I’m fucking pissed. It wasn’t negligence it was gross negligence.
Yeah, I don't think there's any way of getting beyond the conclusion that the camps likely fucked up. You would think, given the awesome responsibility to take care of 750 children, that someone(s) should've been assigned night duty to make sure the camp was safe at night, watching the gates, being weather aware, guarding the grounds, etc.
I'm sure someone had that assignment, but it's clear they were not the right person for the job. As you've reiterated, anyone taking that job seriously should've had the wherewithal to know the terrain, the history of flooding, and what the weather was doing to not have a bunch of kids crammed into low-lying cabins during a flash flood watch/warning.
At the same time, everyone -- including those at the RV campsites -- was failed by local and state authorities for not having a warning system in place, along with the DOGE's haphazard hack of NWS funds.
Systematic failure all the way down the line.
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4th of July Texas Flood
in Cloak Room
Posted
Came across this on Reddit where someone has put together a precise timeline of the floods.