As a resident of the State of Texas, I have been watching all this rain, and I am astonished about how much damage has been done. The last time it rained like this was 2007, for those who remember, and it rained very politely from 8:00am until 5:30pm, but not on the weekends. I am completely serious, and even more, it rained for almost all of June and July. Back then, I knew a farmer, and other than root rot, there were very few consequences for most of the surrounding areas. Central Texas has been in a long drought, so I figured that rain would be the best thing for a highly depleted water supply, and I never thought there would be circumstances this tragic. Sadly, the only reason that this completely avoidable tragedy is happening is because a bunch of decision-makers refused to hear “No!” when they needed to, and now children are paying the ultimate price.
The National Weather Service is not just a fun widget for The Weather Channel; it legitimately serves a purpose of alerting people to make arrangements, even to flee when necessary. Because of funding cuts, people are losing access to alerts that made it possible for individuals to find safety, being surprised when trapped by flood waters. Thursday, Austin had a very brief sprinkle that would almost not be called rain. On Friday in Austin, the rain was beginning to be intense, but not too bad, and Central Texas has extensive creek, river, and aquifer systems that usually need to fill up before flooding becomes too much of a problem. Simply put, it takes a lot of time to hit danger, and frequently, there is plenty of time. However, there were already people in counties south of Austin that were beginning to seriously flood, and deaths were beginning to be counted. There were no National Weather Service warnings on Thursday or Friday, likely because of those aforementioned water systems.
Saturday, there were warnings almost every hour on the hour, to the point where I was almost getting tired of hearing them. The death toll was rising, and people from Fredericksburg almost to Johnson City were beginning to come up missing or death. Apparently, even the lack of water, long-standing drought, and high heat–because it was hot before and after the rain–were not enough to quell the floods. I like watching the weather, and what was surprising to me was the indication that the rain was going to stop, and then the rain continuing to fall. Every time I checked the weather, I expected that the rain was going to stop, but the rain continued to storm all Saturday. At this point, I realized that this flooding was a climate event, instead of merely a passing shower, and just like the freezes in 2021 and 2023, Central Texans are not prepared to handle extreme weather.
Unsurprisingly, most of Central Texas is quite conservative, and the neoliberal society in Austin is not much better. People are under the impression that reality is whatever they say it is, and there is little arguing with closed minds from both sides of the political spectrum. This flooding is the second major climate event this year that has occurred where readiness has been delayed because people think that living a long time is the same as navigating a rapidly changing ecosystem. Nobody ever thinks it can happen to them, and now there are more people being lost and killed because some clowns thought it would be funny to defund information that threatened their “beliefs.” Facts do not care about politics or feelings, and the fact that people chose to jeopardize their safety over a need to control is truly devastating.
Additionally, people are being very quiet about the fact that there was development on flood plains, when several people told developers not to build on flood plains. Despite reams of evidence to the contrary, municipal entities and developers are still obsessed with the idea that housing prices will go down if people just keep building. There is a very simple way to create affordable housing: charge less. The end. There was no reason for any of these communities to be in danger, and the only reason they were is because simple-minded creeps believe that they should have the right to do whatever they want. On the Kerr County website, there is even an application for floodplain development, meaning that people can only expect this kind of event to continue. Greed has killed more children than abortion ever could, but nobody is talking about stemming greed so that people are not forced to die because monsters cannot control their desire for “more.”
Finally, building in the middle of nowhere is always a bad idea, especially considering that extending services that far is a waste of resources. Other than potential farms, there was no reason for people to be in the middle of nowhere, even if they felt entitled to not be near the “common folks,” which can easily be translated as Black people. This kind of catastrophe is what happens when people demand to be placated with a community far away from others with the same opportunities. Building “nowhere” is expensive, and usually the properties built to give people the “dream of homeownership” are not constructed well, since they are designed to sell quickly, not last. People are going to need to accept that everyone around them is not required to cater to their whims, and I hope this tragedy brings more people back to reality about what is possible when nobody can predict the weather anymore.
There are already calls for people to help with the tragedy, and I have mixed feelings about it, due to all of the poor decisions that went into this developing problem. Children dying is devastation, and there is no getting around that, as is the missing fire chief who was assisting in rescues. However, what is everyone else expected to do when people willingly put themselves in harm’s way, regardless of the consequences? Is everyone demanded to continue fixing this problem when so many people could have accepted that they cannot live the way they want to without issues like this? I am convinced that I will not like the answer to this question because it likely ends with entitlement, but this is another example of people refusing to consider the consequences of actions based on their belief that they have answers they lack.
Chasing A Dying Empire 