While after the heavy flood in Texas, who has so far cost 68 people, the search for at least eleven girls continues unabated, the authorities blame each other for the disaster.
The National Weather Service (NWS) would not have warned on time. The Trump government is said to have encouraged the drama with substantial cuts at the NWS, where more than five hundred weather experts have been dismissed in recent months-the service is now trying with temporary contracts and the return of pensioners the shortage of people to catch. According to the NWS itself, there is indeed warning, but local authorities have not taken those warnings seriously.
In the meantime, there is feverishly searching for missing. According to The Washington Post At least 850 people are saved. According to the emergency services, how much is still missing – except the 27 children of Zomerkamp Camp Mystic – cannot be said exactly. The hope is that some people have been able to bring themselves to safety in a tree or in a higher spot, but the longer the search takes, the chance that missing people have finished it alive.
On The website of Camp Mysticwho did not mention the disaster on Sunday afternoon, are many photos of cheerful, canoeing, swimming, dancing mostly young girls. Desperate parents whose child was at this Christian summer camp came to the area awaiting information about their children. Emergency services warn that people should not start looking for themselves in the still very dangerous area.
Saturated soil
In some parts of Kerr County a lot of rain is expected again. Meteorologist Jason Runyen from the local department of the NWS warned in The New York Times That the soil is now so saturated that a small amount of extra rainfall will also cause new floods. Runyen expects that the danger and the chance of heavy rainfall will certainly last until Tuesday.
The flood took place in the night from Thursday to Friday. Within a few hours, there were dozens of centimeters of rain in Kerr County, more than usually falls in a few months. The soil in the hilly area is dry and hard, so that it can absorb little water. This special geography According to the website Battery A wide strip that runs from San Antonio in the south, via Austin to Dallas in the North also ‘Flash Flood Alley‘ named.
In the vicinity of Kerrville, where the Mystic Summer Camp is also located, the rainwater flowed rapidly to the River Guadalupe on Thursday night. In the area where most victims are corpses, the river also gets water from two tributaries. The result is that the Guadalupe can easily go beyond its banks there. A graph on the website of the NOAA, the American weather and climate institute, shows how quickly the water level in the river rose in those fatal hours, from about half a meter to more than seven meters above average, in less than an hour.
The Guadalupe river flows over a bridge in Kerville.
Increase extreme showers
Climate scientists expect that the chance of this kind of extreme showers in Texas, and throughout the US, will increase because of global warming. The atmosphere contains more moisture that causes a kind of water bombs at unexpected moments. It happened earlier in 2021 in Germany, Belgium and the southern Netherlands (in total around 220 dead), in 2023 in Libya (many thousands of deaths) and last year in Valencia (230 dead).
Thursday afternoon at eighteen minutes in one, the office of the NWS in Austin/San Antonio formally warned For ‘a damp tropical air mass in combination with a slowly moving storm system [dat] Will ensure spread to widespread showers and storms, with possibly heavy rainfall ”. Certainly until Friday morning, vigilance is offered, according to the sensitive areas, people must prepare according to the warning to ‘take action’ if necessary.
It is unclear why the summer camps, the campsites along the river and residents of the area that have ignored warnings. A judge from Kerr County says there was insufficient reason for an evacuation. “We always suffer from floods here,” he said The news website Wired. “If it rains, we get water. We had no reason to believe that it would look a bit like what happened today.”
Also view this photo series about the floods in Texas