Texas Flood. The Horror Of It All.
If your first instinct upon hearing that a devastating flash flood swept away a Christian girls’ camp in Texas is to blame President Trump, you are a terrible person.
A ghoul.
An ugly American.
Reconsider your life choices and at least have the decency to shut up until all the bodies are recovered.
Ordinary, decent people across the country and around the world - including Pope Leo - were praying for the flood victims. We were begging God for miracles and strength for the families that lost loved ones.
Can’t we all just grieve without finding someone to hate?
Apparently not.
At the same time many of us were on our knees in church, political hacks, atheists and demented morons were gleefully pointing their fingers at Washington.
This is reminiscent of the rush to blame Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy for the catastrophic air crash in Washington D.C. on January 29 that killed 67 people.
The new administration had been in office for nine days. That didn’t stop the leftist vultures from circling and claiming that Trump was somehow responsible for a helicopter that flew into a commercial jet.
How did we get to this place where Americans no longer come together when a tragedy strikes?
Last weekend’s flood was an indescribable horror. Flash floods happen, especially in this part of Texas where there have been at least four catastrophic floods in the past 50 years including one in 1987 that killed 10 teenagers at a summer camp. This weekend’s flood was a monster. The ground was already saturated from earlier rains and then the skies opened and dumped another 10 inches on some areas.
The National Weather Service issued a watch and then a warning to the town of Hunt in Kerr County where Camp Mystic is located, but no one could have predicted the ferocity of the Guadalupe River which rose a startling 26 feet in 45 minutes while most people were asleep.
Yet when the tragic news broke some on the left did a gruesome happy dance on the bodies of little girls even as rescuers and frantic parents were searching for their children.
Following the immortal words of Rahm Emanuel - “never let a crisis go to waste” - they used the dead girls to attack their political enemies. Or worse, to suggest that Texas Trump voters were getting what they deserved.
Think I’m exaggerating? Get a load of the twisted crap that flooded social media on Saturday. I had to turn it off and stay away for a day. As disturbing as the news was, the sick schadenfreude reaction from the left made it all worse.
Here’s a small sample, have a look:
There may eventually be blame to hang on the Trump administration. There will have to be a careful review of how this excruciating loss of life could have been avoided.
Yet there were many warning that a tragedy was waiting to happen in this rural county.
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.
If FEMA doesn’t immediately spring into action in Texas, that’s another cause of concern.
And many of us are wondering if flash flood warnings are too common. In Tidewater, Virginia we get multiple flash flood warnings that most of us ignore. Perhaps there should be a different caution when the danger is from rapidly rising rivers.
But even The New York Times, which drags Trump every chance it gets, had to concede that there were multiple causes of the tragedy. While there were vacancies in some positions at the Weather Service, many of those predated the Trump administration and it’s not clear that full staffing would have made a difference:
Texas officials appeared to blame the Weather Service for issuing forecasts on Wednesday that underestimated how much rain was coming. But former Weather Service officials said the forecasts were as good as could be expected, given the enormous levels of rainfall and the storm’s unusually abrupt escalation…
In an interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive, and local residents are resistant to new spending.
“Taxpayers won’t pay for it,” Mr. Kelly said. Asked if people might reconsider in light of the catastrophe, he said, “I don’t know…”
The tragedy began to unfold in the early hours of July 4, when more than 10 inches of rain fell in some areas northwest of San Antonio, including in Kerr County, where more than 850 people were evacuated by rescuers. As of Saturday evening, 27 girls from a Christian summer camp remained missing.
That night, Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, appeared to fault the Weather Service, noting that forecasters on Wednesday had predicted as much as six to eight inches of rain in the region. “The amount of rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts,” he said at a news conference with Gov. Greg Abbott. ..
But what makes flash floods so hazardous is their ability to strike quickly, with limited warning. Around midnight on Thursday, the San Angelo and San Antonio weather offices put out their first flash flood warnings, urging people to “move immediately to higher ground.” The office sent out additional flash flood warnings through the night, expanding the area of danger.
It is not clear what steps local officials took to act on those warnings. A spokesman for the Kerr County emergency management department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Late Sunday this news report destroyed the Democrat narrative about the flood.
It’s sad that bitter politics has eaten away a chunk of America’s humanity. We need to learn to grieve together again.
Many of us who are still praying for the little girls and their families. This sort of horror supersedes politics. Correction: It SHOULD supersede petty politics.
