Officials in Kerr County, Texas, had long been concerned about kids’ summer camps along the banks of the Guadalupe River,
an area known as “flash flood alley.”
The camps in the idyllic Texas Hill Country, where children from the surrounding big cities of San Antonio, Austin and Fredericksburg came to fish, horseback ride, and snorkel, relied on a word-of-mouth system from camps further up river when it came to flooding, according to
The New York Times.
But in 2015, a flood in Wimberley, 75 miles east of Kerrville, killed 13 people and hundreds of homes were destroyed and damaged when
the Blanco River crested to nearly 30 feet in a matter of hours.
It brought the dangers of flash flooding front of mind for officials in Kerr County who debated at local meetings whether to bolster their flood emergency system with weather sirens now used by other cities.
Tom Moser, a former Kerr County commissioner, proposed that Kerrville establish a similar system to one that had been put in place in Wimberley.
But it was deemed to expensive by fellow commissioners.
Camp Mystic, the Christian girl’s camp, reported that 27 campers and staffers had been killed in last week’s flash flooding
news.yahoo.com
“It sort of evaporated,” Moser, who retired in 2021, told
The Times. “It just didn’t happen.”