How Does The 2025 Texas Flood Get Such Catastrophic?
Do you know?
- The Texas flood in 2025 hit Kerr County the hardest.
- More than 130 people lost their lives in the 2025 Texas flood.
Mother Nature is an inconceivable force. When it decides to judge mankind, no one can escape. The people would choose the verdict, as human knowledge can now handle all sources of natural disasters; any bad scenario would be the fault of humans, not nature.
As for the scale of the Texas flood in July 2025, how much of it is due to human factors? How did this flood come about? How severe is the disaster? And how much of the devastation could have been prevented?
The Origin of the 2025 Texas flood
The root cause of the disaster, I believe Hong Kong people and even East Asians are familiar with: typhoons.
Typhoons, or more broadly speaking, tropical storms, bring strong winds and heavy rain wherever they go.
However, even when tropical storms dissipate, we cannot let our guard down.
The remnants of tropical storms can also be terrifying.
When Typhoon Hato hit Taiwan that year, its massive remnants headed westward, pushing our drainage system in Hong Kong to its limit, causing flooding around us. The government even called this a once-in-five-hundred-years event.
Looking back at the photos from that year, it was truly terrifying.
And what the southern United States faced this time was also the remnants of a tropical storm, which was Barry.
It formed on June 28, 2025, made landfall in central Mexico on the 29th, and dissipated by the 30th.
However, when Barry's remnants drifted to the western United States, they formed a mesoscale convective system, triggering heavy rainfall.
It is natural for heavy rain to cause rivers to rise.
However, central Texas is a famous flood corridor, with shallow soil, sparse vegetation, and steep terrain. The land does not absorb water well, so rainfall often directly flows into the rivers, causing them to rise rapidly and leading to floods.
Guadalupe River - the focal point of the Texas flood
The most prominent river in the 2025 Texas flood is the Guadalupe River, whose source is in the hard-hit Kerr County.
It rose rapidly during the downpour on July 4, increasing by over 7 meters in just 30 minutes.
When the Guadalupe River flooded, it was late at night, and unfortunately, the area is known for riverside resorts. As a result, the resorts were suddenly submerged by the flood. Those who woke up from their sleep could barely escape. Only those who could climb onto the rooftops had a chance at survival.
The most notable tragedy of the flood was at Camp Mystic. Known as the "Camp Mystic," it is a renowned Christian girls' summer camp in Kerr County, established in 1926 and operated by generations of the same family. Many people from within the state send their daughters there, including politicians, and some families even put their children on the waiting list years in advance. However, the camp, known for activities like swimming and canoeing, had many accommodations just over a hundred meters from the riverside.
As the Guadalupe River surged at night, Camp Mystic was directly hit by the flood. While older girls were fortunate to be accommodated on the higher "Senior Hill," younger girls had to face the brunt of the flood in the riverside cabins, which was a dire situation.
Fortunately, a camp official, Richard Eastland, seemed to have received a flood warning from the National Weather Service at 1:14 AM, closely monitored the river's movements, and began evacuating campers between 2:00 AM and 2:30 AM, striving to minimize casualties. However, he tragically drowned during a rescue mission in one of the cabins in the riverside children's area.
In the end, including Eastland, 27 people died at Camp Mystic.
By July 7, Texas reported at least 78 deaths and 41 missing persons due to the flood, with Kerr County alone accounting for 68 deaths.
By July 15, the death toll in Texas rose to 132, with 101 people missing. In Kerr County, the number of deaths increased to 107, including 37 children.
The exploitation of the flood
Although the Texas flood was a tragedy for the United States, being a country that upholds freedom of speech, some people took advantage of the disaster and the dead for personal gain.
It is important to note that Texas is a Republican stronghold, and since the return of Trump, many Democratic supporters have been hostile towards the "red states." After the flood, these people actually mocked the situation in Texas, making cold and vicious remarks online.
There is also a left-wing political influencer, Destiny, who claimed that the Texas flood was sponsored by a VPN, which many people found outrageous and criticised him so much that he deleted the post and apologised. However, in the online world, controversy sells, and making such callous remarks to increase traffic is akin to profiting from others' suffering.
Another Texas influencer, a somewhat irrelevant man, came out and said that the Texas flood "was a relief for children because in the future they will be ruled by AI, and they won't have a future when they grow up"... It's all nonsense.
It is hard to believe that they are compatriots, the talk of getting through the national disaster together seems insignificant in the face of extreme political division.
Those critical of Trump would say that the DOGE cut funding for climate change researchers, which is why they couldn't handle extreme weather disasters, even claiming that the lack of phone warnings was a result of the funding cuts.
However, looking at the facts, Texas authorities did issue phone warnings, but the issue might lie in infrastructure problems, whether the warnings were received or not depends on luck.
The problem is that in the face of disaster, some people turn it around, exploit the events for politics and ignoring how many innocent lives are lost.
Who is accountable for the outcome of the flood?
So, is there really no one to blame? Not true!
In fact, Kerr County has always planned to build an outdoor alarm system, but it was unable to do so due to a lack of funding.
While surrounding areas installed outdoor siren warning systems, Kerr County did not, as both the state and federal governments considered it expensive and unnecessary for such a small county with fewer disasters.
And when the flood came at night, outdoor warnings would have been preferable over phone messages.
When Kerr County became a hard-hit area, there was really no one to blame. This is the most negligent place in terms of disaster prevention, perhaps the most neglected in the whole state.
Relying solely on phone alerts for flood warnings goes against human nature. The entire area is a flood hotspot, issuing warnings frequently, akin to crying wolf. Having warnings is as good as having none if the threat isn't imminent.
Outdoor sirens actually reflect the situation more accurately, but their setup costs are significantly higher than phone alerts because they fall under infrastructure.
Neglecting infrastructure is clearly the responsibility of the state government.
Now that the consequences have become evident, the state government should prioritize improving flood prevention infrastructure in Kerr County.
Conclusion: facing natural disaster, life-saving is always a priority
In the end, while we will never surpass natural disasters, we must not be complacent. Every time a disaster strikes, we must focus on disaster relief and recovery.
However, minimizing casualties is our responsibility, as human lives are at stake.
Investing more in reliable infrastructure to prevent casualties may be costly, but it's necessary. Choosing to cut costs in areas with high risks is akin to gambling with the lives of locals.
Given this choice between saving money and ensuring survival, there is only one option.
If you don't choose, you may encounter your own Guadalupe River.
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