When Jacqueline White moved to the banks of the Guadalupe River in Comfort, Texas, two years ago, she could not imagine living in a more picturesque spot. On July 4, catastrophic floods turned it into a death trap.
“I don’t think I can live there any more,” said White, who is now staying with her sisters in the coastal town of Rockport. “We’re going to have to move a lot further away from the river.”
The people of the Texas Hill Country are reeling from a flash flood that swept through the region on Independence Day, inundating summer camps and trailer parks and destroying dozens of homes with a savagery that locals are struggling to fathom.
At least 120 people were killed, but many expect the death toll to rise significantly — 161 people remain unaccounted for.
Kerr County, the area worst affected by the flood, is full of holiday homes nestled in spectacular scenery that is one of the biggest draws of the Lone Star State’s tourist industry. It is now synonymous with one of the worst — and most lethal — US natural disasters in recent memory.
White and her children were evacuated to safety in the early hours of July 4. In their absence, a wall of water lifted their cabin and deposited it about 6 meters away. It now lies at a tilt, like a toy cast aside by an impatient child.
White was lucky: she got to safety and so did her mother and stepfather, who live next door. But further to the west it was a different story. At Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp for girls in nearby Hunt, 27 campers and staff members were killed in the flood.
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Some have criticised the authorities, saying state officials had failed to invest in adequate flood control and early warning systems.
But locals are stoical. “People keep pointing the finger at others, but I live on the river — and I know it can go up,” said Woody Chambless, White’s stepfather, as he cleared piles of rubbish and tangled tree roots from the ground floor of his house. “You have to take some responsibility.”
The destruction is on an unimaginable scale, especially around Hunt and nearby Ingram. Local officials have spoken of piles of debris 20ft to 30ft high that they warn could be full of dead animals and human body parts and are so big they can contain a recreational vehicle. They speak of flood lines 30ft up on tree trunks and rescuers combing through wreckage on their hands and knees.
Cheryl Chambers owns nine recreational vehicles that she leased out to holidaymakers at a campsite in Comfort. Eight of them were washed away in the floods. Some were retrieved and stand forlornly on the riverbank, wrecked and mud-spattered.
Many of the stately cypresses that once crowded her RV park were also swept away in the torrent, while others were reduced to disfigured stumps. A few remain, brown with mud and bent over at a perilous angle, as if twisted by a hurricane. “They will be our memorial to the flood,” she said.
“We weren’t prepared for something of this magnitude, but it’s tiny compared to what happened at other camps — we got evacuated, and we had no fatalities,” Chambers said.
She walks down to the Guadalupe now and again to see if any bodies have washed up on the riverbank, taking care to avoid the water moccasins — venomous semi-aquatic snakes — that appeared on land in the wake of the flood.
Despite the destruction, she is confident the disaster would not dent the region’s enduring popularity. “This is too beautiful of an area not to share it with everybody,” she said.
With its verdant hillsides, natural springs and clear, fast-moving rivers, the Hill Country has been cherished by generations of Texans. In a state where summer temperatures regularly exceed 40C, it is an idyll and a refuge. Many yearn to buy a parcel of land and build a house there, among the creeks, streams and 100-year-old oak trees.
For decades, children have been coming to summer camps on the banks on the Guadalupe River.
But the area has long been nicknamed “flash flood alley”, and is now a forlorn sight. Weather analytics company AccuWeather has estimated the floods will cost the region $18bn-$22bn from damage to homes and infrastructure as well as disruption to commerce and tourism and the long-term healthcare costs of survivors.
Hunt, home to Camp Mystic, is now a graveyard of trees laid low by the torrent. Crumpled cars destroyed in the disaster rest in lines along Highway 39, Kerr County’s main artery, next to the bare concrete slabs left by houses whipped away by the surging floodwaters. A sign at the roadside says “Jesus wept”.
Some 2,200 personnel — some on horseback, some on foot — pick through the wreckage of homes, trees and infrastructure looking for dead bodies. The search area has been divided into grids, with each 1.2 mile segment taking one to three hours to comb through.
“It’s extremely treacherous, time-consuming. It’s dirty work, the water is still there,” said Lieutenant Colonel Ben Baker of the Texas Game Wardens. “We’re having to go layer by layer.”
Betty Matteson, a 94-year-old resident of Hunt, spent July 4 hunkered in her attic with seven other family members as the flood waters rose around her house.
“My grandson said, ‘would you like me to pray?’” she recalled. “And I said yes.” Minutes later, he looked out to see the water had begun to recede.
Her house, which she has lived in for 38 years, will have to be “gutted”, she said. Much of it was filled with contaminated water that stank of urine, buckled the floor and was absorbed by the walls.
Like many in the area, Matteson has no flood insurance. “We’re going to have to start over,” she said.
In contrast to places on the coast such as Galveston, counties in central Texas have very low insurance coverage. In Kerr County just 2 per cent of homeowners are covered under the federal flood insurance programme, NFIP, data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency shows.
Across the more than 20 counties named in the state’s disaster declaration, NFIP coverage is in the single digits.
Standard homeowners’ and renters’ insurance policies exclude flooding — private insurers have long considered the peril an “untouchable risk” because of the challenges of modelling it, according to the Insurance Information Institute.
“Whether we can rebuild will all depend on the generosity of others,” said Matteson’s grandson, Barry Adelman.
But his grandmother is determined to stay. “I love it there, especially the cypresses in my backyard,” she said. “It’s so peaceful, it’s my home and I would love to go back.”
Others, though, are struggling in the face of the damage. Brian Olsen, who runs a dog kennel called Paws on the River and rents out a small collection of holiday cabins in Ingram, wells up when he thinks back to the early hours of July 4.
“I lost $500,000 in terms of property damage and lost income — all in the space of 45 minutes,” he said, clicking his fingers. “I’m 61 — everything I had was in this business.”
He also lost most of his personal belongings — photo albums, college diplomas and other mementos. A few muddy clothes that he managed to retrieve hang on his fence, drying in the intense Texan sun. Dead fish are on his driveway and huge mushrooms have grown in his yard after the flood waters receded.
Despite the havoc wrought on his home and his business, Olsen said he will probably remain. “Who’s going to buy this place from me in this condition?” he asked. “I have no alternative but to rebuild.”
Additional reporting by Lee Harris in London
