The Girls of Guadalupe

Texas has long been the leading U.S. state for flood damage, hence the Stevie Ray Vaughan song “It’s Flooding Down in Texas.” The Guadalupe is not a large river, normally no more than about 25 yards wide from dense cypress-lined shore to shore and normally plodding along at 500 to 2,000 cubic feet per second (cfs), or even lower in drought years.

In the mid- and late 1970s, I often paddled the Guadalupe with fellow University of Texas at Austin students in old surplus Grumman canoes. Our favorite stretch was a 17-mile run with a few Class II rapids and one Class III (Hueco Falls). On one trip, I don’t recall if we missed the weather warnings (before our current era of multimedia saturation, if you missed the TV news at 6 and 10, or didn’t read the daily newspaper, you were in the dark) or if we discounted them in our youthful eagerness to get out of Austin and have some fun despite the probable rain.

We had not been on the river long when the sky erupted in a torrential downpour — a hard, pelting “frog floater” with lightning cracks and rapidly rising water. The Class II rapids were washed out but the splash and driving rain were flooding the canoes, making them impossible to maneuver. We couldn’t bail fast enough and soon flipped. The current was so strong that we couldn’t swim the boats to the washed out “shores.” So we just hung on to the upside-down canoes in our PFDs, floating fast along with the increasing tree debris. Twice we managed to find an eddy and bail out, resumed paddling and then flipped again. That’s how we spent most of the trip — floating like flotsam — until the take out, requiring a hard eddy turn before a low-water bridge, difficult enough in normal conditions. The tunnels in low-water crossings are potential death traps, often filled with tree debris forming a weir that will trap and drown people. With a water-logged canoe and the swift current, we couldn’t make the turn — both of us leapt out of my canoe on top of the low-water dam as the empty canoe floated through beneath us. (Our partner’s canoe snagged some trees before the bridge.) I don’t recall the exact max flow that day, but I’m sure it was under 10,000 cfs. We considered this a once-in-a-lifetime “Deliverance” trip.

The monster that hit on July 4 was another order of magnitude: the Guadalupe rose an astounding 26 feet in about 45 minutes, peaking at 166,000 cfs. There are no good photos or video of the peak flow in the dark early hours, but the next morning the swollen Guadalupe looked like the Amazon or Orinoco. It appears to have set a high-water record, although deadly flooding is not unprecedented: flash floods in the Texas Hill Country killed 10 in 1987 and 215 in 1921. All three were precipitated by the remnants of tropical cyclones in the Gulf combined with moisture from the Pacific Ocean.

Despite the cuts of 600 staffers at the National Weather Service by Department of Government Efficiency, the NWS was on top of this, issuing 22 flood warnings for stricken Kerr and Bandera counties, including urgent ones at 1:14 a.m. and 4:03 a.m. on July 4, followed by three more urgent ones after 5 a.m. by cellphone: “This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!” It appears none of these warnings were transmitted to Camp Mystic and other campers by Kerr or Bandera county officials. A counselor at another Christian camp on the river, the Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly, noticed high water at 1 a.m. and evacuated all 70 children to higher ground, saving them.

“The National Weather Service weather forecasts offices in San Angelo and San Antonio got the forecast right,” said Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization. “The forecasters did their jobs.”

But Fahy has taken issue with some budget cuts enacted by this administration. He told CBS News that reduced funding for critical weather programs focused on the last level of warnings disseminated to the public are to blame for much of what happened in Texas. Some of the programs Fahy cited that have been suspended relate to coordinating between NWS meteorologists and state, local and county emergency management officials and public safety officers.

There is no doubt that natural disasters are growing stronger and more frequent with continued global warming, whatever the causes. In my resolute, nonbinary mode of thinking, I’m convinced it’s anthropogenic carbon dioxide exacerbating a natural warming trend. (The Three Gorges dam in China recently opened all 13 floodgates to ease pressure, causing massive flooding downstream.) Growing human population means more people will reside and/or recreate in danger zones, requiring more resilient infrastructure and precautions (I doubt Camp Mystic will be rebuilt anywhere close to the river).

Which means budget and personnel cuts to NWS and climate science by DOGE and the Trump budget bill are particularly stupid and untimely, as is the elimination of subsidies for renewable energy and more energy efficient infrastructure. “Just Stop Oil” is a naive pipe dream, but every pound of atmospheric CO2 saved helps, for many reasons beyond avoiding a theoretical apocalypse. “Drill, baby, drill!” is the cry of a gluttonous ignoramus, his pretext of saving public funds due to our $37 trillion national debt belied by his budget-busting bill with more tax breaks for billionaires and a record-breaking $1 trillion for the Pentagon, one of the biggest CO2 polluters on the planet.

This was a Black Swan event, unpredictable for now. The “100 Year” floods may soon become the 50-year or 25-year or once-per-decade floods. Already, weather forecasts are far beyond what they were in 1921, and it’s probable that they will improve in the future with more climate research and the light-speed data-crunching analyses of artificial intelligence. 

“We need God more now than ever,” said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Really, guv? Most of those washed away in the Guadalupe were Christian adults and children who prayed every day and night in those camps. Your God, if He exists, is either a derelict or sadistic asshole. What we need now more than ever are not useless prayers but the funds and clear-eyed foresight to adapt to our changing climate and mitigate the worst tragedies. We would be better served by investing in siren warning systems for flash flood zones in America in lieu of infinite bombs for Israel and Ukraine.