This will be the last time I post about the flooding here in Texas, but I wanted to share something that’s been weighing on me.
Tonight, my heart is heavy. My family member—one of the rescue workers—called to check in, his voice kept breaking as he tried to describe the loss of life & devastation he'd witnessed.
My soul aches for the mothers and fathers of the little girls who are still missing… and for those who have already faced the unimaginable. But even in the heartbreak, I’ve seen the faces of heroes.
💔A camp director who rescued five girls being swept away by the river—he made sure they were safe, then passed away in the flood.
💔Teen camp counselors diving beneath floodwaters to save young boys as their cabin filled—lifting them to the rafters, then out through the roof.
💔A neighbor who spotted two elderly people trapped in a car as the waters rose—and got them to safety.
💔Rescue crews working tirelessly, pushing aside their own grief and fear to save as many lives as possible.
Tragedy can shatter us. It can bring us to our knees. But even in the darkest moments, the light of humanity still shines through.
It’s still here—kindness, bravery, and love. People rising up to help strangers while everything else is falling apart.
So, tonight, I choose to focus on that. On the good. Hope. On loving each other more fiercely. Holding each other tighter. And remembering what really matters.
I'm genuinely so relieved that 2025 is over I genuinely almost did not survive.
I went from starting the year with major physical health decline, to almost starting nomad life in spring rather than fall but it was delayed for various reasons after packing up my entire apartment and moving everything into storage, to dealing with major grief and shock, crying all day every single day for over a month, to the air conditioning in my empty apartment breaking during the hottest part of the year in one of the hottest parts of the US, to finally moving out and starting nomad life and being so happy living my trailer park princess dream life, to surviving a flash flood being saved by search & rescue and losing most of my gear, daily belongings, and potentially vehicle (but miraculously no people or dogs were injured)🫠
In the last nine years, federal funding for a system has been denied to the county as it contends with a tax base hostile to government over
Kerr County is the Texas county most affected by the deadly flash floods last week.
Texas has been run by Republicans for 30 years. The state's emergency agency rejected a plan which the county submitted.
“I think we need a system that can be operated or controlled by a centralized location where – whether it's the Sheriff's communication personnel, myself or whatever, and it's just a redundant system that will complement what we currently have,” (W.B. "Dub") Thomas (Kerr County’s emergency management coordinator) said that year.
By the next year, officials had sent off its application for a $731,413 grant to FEMA to help bring $976,000 worth of flood warning upgrades, including 10 high water detection systems without flashers, 20 gauges, possible outdoor sirens, and more.
“The purpose of this project is to provide Kerr County with a flood warning system,” the county wrote in its application. “The System will be utilized for mass notification to citizens about high water levels and flooding conditions throughout Kerr County.”
But the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which oversees billions of FEMA dollars designed to prevent disasters, denied the application because they didn’t have a current hazard mitigation plan. They resubmitted it, news outlets reported, but by then, priority was given to counties that had suffered damage from Hurricane Harvey.
And then the heavily MAGA county shot itself in the foot by rejecting aid from the Biden administration. (emphasis added)
In 2021, Kerr County was awarded a $10.2 million windfall from the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, which Congress passed that same year to support local governments impacted by the pandemic. Cities and counties were given flexibility to use the money on a variety of expenses, including those related to storm-related infrastructure. Corpus Christi, for example, allocated $15 million of its ARPA funding to “rehabilitate and/or replace aging storm water infrastructure.” Waco’s McLennan County spent $868,000 on low water crossings.
Kerr County did not opt for ARPA to fund flood warning systems despite commissioners discussing such projects nearly two dozen times since 2016. In fact, a survey sent to residents about ARPA spending showed that 42% of the 180 responses wanted to reject the $10 million bonus altogether, largely on political grounds.
“I’m here to ask this court today to send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House,” one resident told commissioners in April 2022, fearing strings were attached to the money.
In the eyes of some politically hyperventilating Kerr County residents, it's better to have flooding than money from the "most criminal treasonous communist government". FYI: "communist" = anybody to the left of "Lyin' Ted" Cruz.
Probably over 200 people are now dead in Texas because of the flooding. This is unequivocally a MAGA Republican disaster. Self-delusional politics and administrative ineptitude were given priority over public safety; from Kristi Noem to timid Kerr County officials, this reeks of tragic idiocy.
पूर्ण संत रामपाल जी महाराज जी की अन्नपूर्णा मुहिम से मिली हरियाणा के गांव के गरीब असहाय परिवारों को राहत। उनका जीवन ही बदल गया। अधिक जानकारी के लिए देखें Annapurna Muhim YouTube Channel
Lower Falls at Bandelier National Monument on 12/15/24. A flash flood after the 2011 Las Conchas fire wiped out all the sediment used to build a trail to the bottom. No one has been able to find a safe way down on foot since then. You can very carefully stand off to the basalt side to see it from the top, or access outside the park and walk many many trail less miles to see it from the bottom.
Left photo is pre fire from the now wiped out switchbacks. Right photo is from a few years after the catastrophic flooding from a brave soul who bushwhacked along the Rio Grande. Note the house sized boulder at the top was washed away by the flood!
About 3/4 of the length of the canyon burned, followed immediately by heavy monsoon rain. There were multiple catastrophic floods with thousands of cubic feet of water per second in an area that normally flows at 0-3 cubic feet per second. In some places the fire burned so hot that the volcanic soil turned to glass. Some of the park’s picnic tables washed up dozens of miles down the Rio Grande in the Cochiti Reservoir.
Even 13 years later, a large flood happened this summer in this canyon that wiped out nearly all the footbridges and carved the canyon so deep near the upper falls that the pool at the base can no longer be access by foot. See the new ledge created in the left photo below. Compare to the right photo from spring 2024- all that vegetation got washed away
