I remember many so many fun hours floating down the Guadalupe River just south of the Canyon Lake dam all the way down to New Braunfels.
It’s so beautifully scenic as the river cuts it’s way through the Texas Hill Country toward one of the area’s largest towns showing off it’s German name (trust me, there are many more) with nice sweeping curves and the occasional bit of gentle rapids before you find yourself at the pick-up dock way sooner than you really wanted because it’s such a relaxing trip and a great way to cool down on those blast furnace hot Texan summer days.
Even when the river is crammed full of tubes, it rarely seemed too crowded and at least back then pretty much everyone was friendly and neighbourly and if your parents weren’t looking and you looked older than 12, you just might find a can of Lone Star beer in your hands from the friendly occupant of a tube with the cooler tied on it as they’re passing you by.
So you can imagine how hearing the news mentioning Guadalupe River (which we’d often call “what a loop, eh” when we were purposefully ignoring the proper Spanish pronunciation of the river’s name) and those wonderful and idyllic memories turn to horror when it became obvious the story was that the river was more than living up to it’s other name…”Flash Flood Alley”.
In fact, that’s one of the reasons the Canyon Lake dam was constructed in the first place to control flooding downstream to New Braunfels and beyond as the river meanders quite a bit until spilling into the San Antonio Bay near Corpus Christi as well as provide a massive reservoir for an area that is generally known for bone dry droughts punctuated by torrential downpours that often last hours if not days and not always because of a tropical system floating inland and stalling as it did in this case.
The advance warning of the potential danger of catastrophic flooding as the results of the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry sitting over the hills never came. In fact, it seems shocking that they still don’t have advance warning systems along the Guadalupe River some 45 years after I had gone tubing on that river which was only a couple of years after the flooding in 1978 that claimed 33 lives!
Compounding that were the many budget and staff cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS) which almost certainly contributed to the lack of advance warning.
Camp Mystic and the other summer camps and low-lying areas near the Guadalupe River about 70 miles west of Canyon Lake near Kerrville never had a chance when the storm sat right on top of them and those flood waters came rushing through the canyons carved out of the limestone forming perfect channels for the water to overwhelm anything in it’s path.
And so in a matter of minutes, “Flash Flood Alley” claimed many lives including quite a few young girls who were camping at Camp Mystic and that number is almost certainly going to go up over the coming days.
One can only dare to dream that their deaths were not in vain and that the draconian cuts to the agencies studying the climate and predicting the weather that are essential for the preservation of life should be reversed immediately if not sooner!
If that miracle ever happens, it’ll still be cold comfort to those who have lost loved ones and everything they own that was swept away in the rushing flood waters.
I can hope that their families may find peace and solace and may the memories of those who perished be a blessing to us all. 🙁