Update at 4:27 pm
I have added our thermometer for World Central Kitchen to the sidebar.
*****
I know this is hitting Subaru Diane hard, and I know we have a lot of BJ peeps from Texas. Love and hugs to all of you and to all these communities that are suffering an almost unimaginable loss.
I hate to link to the NYT but they seem to have the most complete coverage, and it’s not behind a paywall, so here we go.
Desperate Search for Missing in Texas Floods as Death Toll Rises to 70
11 girls from the summer camp are still missing, and the weather forecast includes more rain and possible flash flooding in other parts of Texas.
Hundreds of searchers were combing wide swathes of Central Texas on Sunday morning looking for any survivors of devastating floods, including girls still missing from a riverside summer camp, as the confirmed death toll climbed to at least 70 and forecasters warned that downpours would continue in areas already reeling.
Eleven campers and one counselor from Camp Mystic, the girls’ summer camp in Kerr County, remained missing on Sunday, according to Larry Leitha, the county sheriff. The sheriff also said that 22 of those found dead had not yet been identified, including four children.
Of course, the media wasn’t conveying concerns about flash flooding in TX until this ghoulish incident occurred, and now they are all over it, which makes me sick, but that’s the way most of the media works.
Also, of course, they are busy playing the blame game.
Crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas on Friday morning, prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose.
Texas officials appeared to blame the Weather Service for issuing forecasts on Wednesday that underestimated how much rain was coming. But former Weather Service officials said the forecasts were as good as could be expected, given the enormous levels of rainfall and the storm’s unusually abrupt escalation.
I’m sure it’s too early to politicize this horrible event, but this is what happens when you slash and burn the government entities that keep us safe, on so many levels.
It’s impossible not to feel for these families and these communicates. At the same time, I wonder if this would be getting the same traction if it were a summer camp for the kids of migrant workers. Actually, I don’t wonder at all. I’m sure the coverage would be a combination of “oh well, these things happen” and ” they were irresponsible.
I have been kind of assuming that everyone who is missing at this point will likely not be found alive, yet there’s a story about a woman who was rescued after the flash flooding “swept” her 20 miles down the Guadalupe River.
Woman rescued after flash floods swept her 20 miles down the Guadalupe River. Holy shit, with a trauma like that I wonder if she will ever be the same. It makes me think about Raven’s friends who were caught in one of the terrible fires and finally ditched one of their vehicles as they were trying to get out, all but certain that they would die and they at least wanted to be together when it happened. I am still haunted by that.
And I’m guessing that this disaster will bring another wave of grieving for people who have been through recent disasters and lost everything. I am thinking of our BJ peeps who have lived through trauma in the past year.
Hugs to everyone.
Open thread.
Baud
Hugs to you, WG.
eclare
Thank you, WaterGirl. Something needed to be posted.
Baud
Very few people who aren’t us care about all people as people.
Balconesfault
I posted yesterday message from my sister, who runs a groundwater nonprofit in San Antonio. She also is on a group that works with flood management issues across the Texas Hill country, and they have been fighting floodplain development for years with little or no success.
It’s Texas. And government telling you where you can or can’t build is communism, right?
I would add because I have decades of experience working in industrial facilities, that it’s appalling that none of these RV parks and camps and campgrounds seem to have actionable emergency response plans in place. It’s not a question of if flooding will occur but when on these rivers. And while a serious flood like this might only happen every decade or so, and meanwhile NOAA might issue dozens of flood warnings between each significant occurrence … Each facility that temporarily accommodates campers and RVs should absolutely be required to have emergency response plans coordinated with the local sheriff’s office.
This was not a matter of NOAA not issuing warnings, this was a matter of people not really knowing what to do with those warnings. And let’s face it, when you had 10 other warnings in the last few years talking about potential flooding, your instinct at 2:00 in the morning is not to go roust everybody and make them get to high ground, especially when you know that when the flood doesn’t happen you’re going to have a lot of people pissed off at you.
That’s why this sort of thing has to be built into law. But again, Texas.
Betty
John Cornyn called the storm a one hundred year event and was quickly corrected on Bluesky. He is among those refusing to acknowledge that climate change is making these horrific storms all too common.
They Call Me Noni
It is devastating. Hopefully, since this particular tragedy has struck before, there will be strict safety measures enacted.
cmorenc
Speaking of the NWS and ability to make accurate forecasts – it’s Hurricane Season, and the Trump Administration has cut off the NHC’s (National Hurricane Center) access to imaging date (particularly the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS) that is crucial to tracking storm intensity as systems approach potential landfalls. Just a bafflingly stupid decision – for which I am unaware of any reason at all, let alone a sensible one.
They Call Me Noni
@Betty: So the same response one would expect after a school shooting. Makes it all the more sad. My heart goes out to all the grieving parents and families.
scav
@cmorenc: Revenge of the sharpie. How dare models and data contradict word salad!
Larch
@Balconesfault: Especially since, often, it’s not even raining or raining very lightly where the campers are! Get through to people that rain upriver is going to come rushing toward them can be…difficult..shall we say….
Balconesfault
FWIW … as a kid I worked summers at a couple Boy Scout Camps in the area. Activity areas were in the valley along the Guadalupe. Campgrounds were on the hills well above the floodplain. We didn’t appreciate all the hiking up and down the hills multiple times a day … but I see the wisdom now.
NotMax
Meanwhile (not to minimize the Texas disaster), tropical storm Chantal moving into eastern North Carolina, with flash flooding predicted.
Wapiti
It’s tragic.
After yesterday’s thread something reminded me of a year I worked on camp staff for the summer, a scout camp on the Stanislaus River in the Sierras. I think I was 16, and a lot of the staff were my age or so. The leadership people might have been 30. Mine was a minimum wage job.
Our big risk was fire, and the Forest Service came in at the beginning of the season and gave the staff a couple hours of training on fighting a (small) fire. We had tool lockers scattered around the camp with shovels and Pulaski tools. Every week we had a fire drill to make sure that week’s new campers knew where to go and to bring their sleeping bags to the rally point.
But heck if I know if that was enough – we never had a fire. We were aware, we had a semblance of a plan, and the plan was supposed to be executed by a bunch of sixteen year-old Boy Scouts herding younger Scouts. We were probably lucky it never got tested.
Baud
@They Call Me Noni:
WTFGhost
@They Call Me Noni: I dunno. “If’n it’s not raining, the roof don’t leak. If’n it’s raining, cain’t fix the roof nohow.”
I mean, I know this was a famous camp for young women, but, they’ll find it’s not just work to do and money to spend on protecting a particularly flood prone campground, but includes protecting other people who live in “out in the cheap seats” and that might be too much for them.
@cmorenc: Is there any reason Putin would tell Trump to do so? If not, I know that Elon and the Muskovites could believe it’s the right thing to do, because those type of people hate that OUR GOVERNMENT provides useful weather reports to EVERYONE, something that people should PAY SUBSCRIPTION FEES for.
Shalimar
Don’t worry. They will use that money to hire more ICE personnel to keep us safe. Probably by arresting the Honduran worker at the funeral home where they are trying to process your dead aunt.
opiejeanne
“At the same time, I wonder if this would be getting the same traction if it were a summer camp for the kids of migrant workers. Actually, I don’t wonder at all.”
I think it might depend on where the tragedy happens, or maybe how shocking it is. I’m remembering the substantial coverage of a flash flood in the San Bernardino mountains on Christmas 2003, where the missing and dead were all from Mexico or Guatemala. It was at Camp Sophia, owned by the Greek Orthodox church. 14 dead including 9 children, and on the 10 year anniversary there were articles commemorating the event.
latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jan-03-me-floods3-story.html
opiejeanne
@Balconesfault: They have talked about installing sirens for years, but supposedly the public balked at the cost.
Elizabelle
@Baud: How convenient that so many Texans are already in church today. WTG, Abbott.
opiejeanne
@WTFGhost: IIUC, it was a camp for little girls, ages 8-12. I call those children, not young women.
Agree with everything else you said.
opiejeanne
@Elizabelle: He and his despicable Lt Governor are what Jesus called “Whited sepulchers”.
They Call Me Noni
@Baud: Yup. No action, just all quiet talk. Same ol’ same ol’.
Kirk
@Wapiti: It would have helped stop small fires. It would have helped set up several people for easier rescue in the event of larger fires. It would have helped save lives either way.
The fact it existed and was repeated annually makes it likely the plan would have mostly been followed, 16 year old scouts included.
All that made it a good plan.
They Call Me Noni
@WTFGhost: Well you would think, at the very least, if they can’t figure out how to make it safe then just ban it altogether. Is it seasonal? I don’t know the area but I did spend several of my childhood years in Arizona and we had a monsoon season. And yes, the dry riverbed could flood in a big damn hurry.
opiejeanne
@Elizabelle: The sermon in church this morning was “The Nameless Woman”, a verse about Jesus healing the woman who was bent over with pain and the burdens that women have borne throughout history, nameless or not. Our pastor is on vacation right now, and the service was run by women in the choir. It made me think of these girls who we do not know, who no longer have a voice. The families of the dead and missing were mentioned in the closing prayer, and I can not imagine their grief.
opiejeanne
@They Call Me Noni: Southern California has areas like that. People who understand that tend to stay out of arroyos as much as possible, no matter the weather where they are or what time of year.
raven
I am too and I’m sure they are but they have rebuilt their house and seem pretty content. If that person got swept 20 miles and lived she’s damn lucky!
raven
@opiejeanne: We used to walk through miles of the huge drainage tunnels in Whittier when I was a kid.
RileysEnabler
Absolutely heartbroken.
I was a camp counselor at Kickapoo Kamp across town from Mystic during all of my college summers. There are several girls and boys camps in the area; they run all summer for different sessions and the counselors all become very close through the long summers and not many options for nights off. The counselors also become very close to their kiddos. Some camps are large (Mystic), some small- but most of them have generations of campers that attend and then go back to be counselors. It’s a small community, and when you run into old friends – or meet new ones who did the same camps you did- it’s a wonderful time to tell amazing stories. Like the early morning 1 mile swims in the river (Kickapoo doesn’t have a pool, we taught swimming in a dammed-off area). The time a horse bolted and I went for the most terrifying 10 minute ride you can imagine- but my girls thought I was brave. (I was just more scared of falling off than staying on). Nights under the stars and days learning all kinds of new skills and making new friends. The magic of summer camp is such an incredible experience.
I can’t stop crying today for the families and staffers of all the Hill Country camps.
Soprano2
@Betty: All the definitions of events need to be reworked, because they aren’t valid anymore.
Ksmiami
@Kirk: sounds like the camp in tx had nothing – no real system despite years of flood warnings etc . But we need to cut more taxes and regulations ya know
Soprano2
@Larch: Yes, it is. People way underestimate how powerful and destructive water can be.
Martin
@Kirk: Yep. The primary strategy for addressing large wildfires here in the west aren’t to harden things to such a degree that they can withstand a Paradise or LA magnitude firestorm (that’s too difficult and expensive), it’s to harden things against the small scale stuff which is easy and cheap. These fires get huge because they grow and the strategy is to cut off the growth opportunities. If you have a fire on the edge of a community and the exposed housing is easy to burn off of embers and sparks, and that housing itself produces an increased number of embers and sparks, then by the time you get 3, 4, 5 blocks in, you’re up against a huge firestorm. But if those exposed houses can resist that small scale stuff or if it can burn in a way without producing more of it, then you can keep it from getting to that scale. And even if you do have a firestorm hit those exposed homes, and they burn, they’ll do so in a way that reduces the intensity of the fire so that firefighters can stop it before it gets 3, 4, 5 blocks in.
The problem is that Americans are really bad at thinking in this way, as compared to a lot of European countries who have a better intuition for incremental and shared benefit. So even though CA has a number of initiatives to do this, it’s not really taking hold. If you are a CA homeowner, I guarantee your homeowners insurance policy will offer you discounts if you do some of this kind of stuff – ember screens on your vents, removing wooden structures within 10′ of the house, etc. It’s pretty cheap and easy stuff to do, and most people ignore it while complaining about their homeowner insurance rates (when there’s a discount right there being offered). And if enough people do it, the fire risk for the entire community falls.
So yeah, knowing how to deal with the small stuff can keep it turning into the big stuff. It’s kind of the only strategy we have.
Pauline
@raven: In Tucson, some of the major streets crossed arroyos, and there was signage everywhere warning people not to cross them when water was running through them. Of course, people still did and then had to be rescued because the water was too deep.
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: Good point. Though I will add that 2003 was a very long time ago, and there wasn’t all the hate at this level back then.
frosty
@Betty: Hydrologist here. 100-yr event doesn’t happen once every hundred years. It means there’s a 1% chance it could happen this year, next year, or both.
And yes, climate change has an effect. It could turn that 100-yr event into. 50-yr event. 1% to 2%. Doubles the chance of it happening in any year.
ETA I’m sure Cornyn was just popping off. Or do we think he looked at the precipitation amounts over various durations, checked the intensity-duration-frequency curves and identified it as 100-yr? No? I didn’t think so.
They Call Me Noni
@opiejeanne: Yes, the water just runs right through like it’s being shot out of a huge firehose.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Baud: I’m trying to be devastated about the news from Texas and it’s a losing cause. Yes, it’s a tragedy, and yes, it is innocent kids, but I think after the non-reaction to the gun violence at Sandy Hook and Uvalde I’m desensitized to preventable tragedies, especially involving rich white people in Texas. If Texas won’t recognize global warming and its effects, then consider it an Act of God. Sorry to sound so bitter, but with Gaza and Ukraine grinding along, this in Texas is small stuff.
NotMax
Totally OT.
A static ad just came up on the TV about live coverage of the Savannah Bananas team playing an away game at Fenway Park.
Amusing name, no? ;)
Kirk
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Every death diminishes me.
planetjanet
@NotMax: They were in Richmond, VA a few weeks ago. They do baseball the way the Harlem Globetrotters do baseball. Fun group.
Rusty
The WP had an article about a father searching for his daughter. Given the extreme level of flooding, some of the victims may never be found. Losing a child is brutal, not finding them is beyond horrific. Losing a child just blows people up, the percentage of people in AA meetings that have lost a child is much, much higher than the general population. Most of us are just not built to handle that.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Kirk: I think you are a better person than I am.
kindness
Last night someone over at LG&M said they heard right wing podcasts were suggesting it was Joe Biden deep implants in the weather service that was delaying notifications. It’s getting no traction thankfully. The NWS has the notifications they sent out covered. People didn’t listen or seem to care. It’s surprising really. Trump’s go to blame game in order are 1) Barack Obama, 2) Hillary Clinton, 3) Joe Biden & 4) Kamala.
Scout211
This tragedy makes me so sad for the victims and for their loved ones.
My sisters and I attended an all girls summer camp for a week every summer. It was sponsored by a Christian women’s service group but all girls were welcome, even the three of us Unitarian kids with atheist parents. We loved that camp and even though there was a class in bible studies*, there was also crafts and sports and swimming and campfires and meeting new friends. It was a joy for us every year
I went on to be a teen counselor for a couple of years at that camp and then I was hired as a counselor at two different co-ed summer camps when I was in college. Those two camps were for inner city kids sponsored by community groups in the city. All the activities (except the Bible study) were the same and equally loved by all the campers and the counselors. But as young adult camp counselors, none of us had any awareness that we were there to keep the campers safe from natural disasters and none of us were ever given emergency or disaster training. The setting is idyllic and we always felt (naively) protected from the world.
It’s scary to think of the terror that all the campers and counselors felt, in the wee hours of the morning with little knowledge of what was to come
I just feel sad for them and all the other families and victims.
*It was the very first time I had ever read anything in the Bible, let alone memorize verses and psalms.
XeckyGilchrist
Are there any reputable organizations that it would help to donate to?
kindness
@NotMax: MockPaperScissors always links to Burr Demmings week in review at red-state-blues.com/. He usually ends his pieces with a video of the Savanna Bananas. Real funny.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Rusty: that’s horrible and all too believable.
Zelma
@XeckyGilchrist:
Lutheran Disaster Relief. 100 per cent of all donations go to relief. Excellent organization.
Martin
@opiejeanne: No. The problem as I see it, and why I don’t care about this disaster at all is that the deaths were baked into the cake by all parties. We know there is a trade-off being made – you can have your big pickup truck to tow your boat or whatever but it’s going to directly contributed to the death of a child somewhere due to climate change – maybe a fire in LA, maybe a flood in Pakistan (remember in 2022 when floods killed 1700 people in Pakistan?), whatever. Somewhere, for some reason, that pickup truck has the cost of contributing to one persons death.
So the issue here isn’t that someone died. Of course someone died, that’s what was supposed to happen. I got my pickup truck after all. I made that trade. The outrage is that the kid who died was supposed to be in Bangladesh or Indonesia or a migrant in California or whatever. It certainly wasn’t supposed to be in my state, or the kid of someone I knew, or my kid. The only real outrage here is that it wasn’t someone else’s kid that we don’t care about. And I’m not going to be sympathetic to people who are only upset because some other kid didn’t get killed instead.
Everything from the media is performative around this. It’s not like they’re going to investigate whether this was preventable, hold people to account who failed to prevent it (my understanding is that local officials took hours to notify the camps of the warning, not that NWS failed to warn), point to how to prevent it in the future and put pressure for those changes to happen. No, they’ll have a new headline tomorrow and forget all about these people. So fuck them. And the same goes for lawmakers who will do the same thing. The biggest problem I see here in the headlines is there is no Democrat to blame for this, so the politics don’t fit the expected narrative (will Abbot point the finger at Trump? will Trump point the finger at Abbot?). And fuck all that too.
We know our decisions cause climate change, we know that will lead to people dying, we make those decisions anyway. And then we’re devastated when the consequences happen here instead of over there. Fuck all that. We’re never going to fix this until we learn to own it.
Jeffro
it’s NEVER too early to politicize avoidable tragedy
and so on.
Bad policies get people killed. We should never stop saying so.
TONYG
Just my opinion …
1) It’s never to early to politicize a tragedy that was probably made more likely by political decisions.
2) It’s possible to simultaneously empathize with those mourning the missing and the dead AND to point out and condemn political decisions that made this tragedy more likely.
Can anyone prove that staff cuts by Elon to the National Weather Service caused this catastrophe? No.
In general, do staff cuts to an agency deteriorate the effectiveness ounf that agency? Of course
Elon Musk, a mentally ill moron, was unleashed by Trump to sabotage government agencies with no knowledge or analysis. That should not be forgotten.
Martin
@kindness: I hate to break it to you but we have 9 states trying to ban ‘chemtrails’ because they think it’s weather modification. They think the government is creating these disasters on purpose. It is gaining traction.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@Martin: That’s two circles on a Venn diagram that overlap but are still not the same beast.
Scout211
Here’s a list in USA Today.
I’m sure there will be more in the next few days.
Elizabelle
Republicans sent their daughters and grands to Camp Mystic.
Congressman Austin Pfluger, of Texas’s 11th district, was reunited with his two daughters, who were camping there, and rescued.
Congressman Buddy Carter (Georgia’s 1st district) tweeted that his granddaughters are safe, although their cousin, Janie, died in the floods.
One of the small dead campers, Sarah, was from Alabama. Sounds like these girls came from all over the South (and maybe elsewhere too).
Dead affluent young white girls. There will be a search for why, and for how to prevent a repeat.
And maybe a grudging acceptance of climate change. These cataclysmic storms are happening with much greater frequency now. The danger has increased, even as people cherish their generations old traditions.
azlib
@frosty:
I worked for a firm many years ago which did flood plain analysis and, yes, the 100 year flood has a 1% chance of happening each year. I am not sure why it gets named the 100 year flood. The percentage probability seems like a more descriptive name.
Scout211
Thank you WaterGirl, for rescuing my comment from moderation. I guess I counted wrong and I thought I was under the link limit.
You’re the best! ❤️
Kirk
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): So here, in part, is the thing.
Every death, even if their departure would improve the lot of almost everyone else, is a point of pain. When Trump dies I will likely celebrate, but I will also feel sympathy for his son. And I will know that his loss means he can never atone, never attempt to correct. Yes, it’s unlikely as hell he will do so while living. But the chance remains he might have, and so introduced a small bit of good we shall never have.
In addition.
You have stated that Texans should own this. To avoid accusations of hypocrisy, then, you should own the attacks on Iran and the starvation deaths the loss of USAID will have.
Because a very large minority of Texans voted against all that, just as the minority of Americans voted against having Trump as president.
We own that.
And as I hope Trump might have an (unexpected) change of heart, I so hope our nation can reduce the misgivinig the rest of the world now shares about us. We’ll never cleanse the stain. We can hope to do better in amelioration.
Yeah, looking at that it’s jumbled. Still posting in the hopes the basic intent comes through – every death diminishes us all in some way.
WaterGirl
@XeckyGilchrist: @Scout211:
I have added our thermometer for World Central Kitchen to the sidebar.
They show up everywhere.
Baud
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
There’s no shortage of tragedies to care about. Don’t feel bad about allocating your attention.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: The @commenter-name counts as a link, too. :-)
Scout211
@WaterGirl: Good to know. Thanks!
jonas
From what I’ve seen so far the weather agencies — despite all the shit they’re taking from DOGE and Trump — basically did their jobs with what little resources they had left. They sent out the normal alerts and everything like they were supposed to. These were exceptionally severe weather events, however, and this is not an exact science — it’s probabilities. A couple of weeks ago, we were warned about the strong “likelihood” of showers and thunderstorms one evening in CNY and in the middle of the night it suddenly turned into a tornado warning and it felt like the world was coming to an end. It rained something like 6 inches in an hour and a couple of twisters did actually touch down and some kids in a neighborhood near Utica were killed when a tree fell on their house. Tens of thousands were without power for 24-72 hours. That…was not in the cards 12 hours earlier, but weather is insane these days and conditions can change/develop rapidly.
So the recent cuts to NOAA and the NSW may not have been *directly* responsible for this tragedy but it should also be crystal clear now why it’s so damn stupid to be cutting back on funding these agencies at a time when stuff like this is only going to get worse. And a lot of folks down in Texas are in complete fucking denial about it, to say nothing of the current (mal)administration.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Martin: thank you for explaining my feelings so well.
hotshoe
@cmorenc: Others have already answered that “why” is because the ReThugs want our citizens to be forced to pay for weather forecasts.
And there is a reason I heard mentioned elsewhere: because this is unarguable data which demonstrates global warming over oceans.
Global warming can’t be real if no one is allowed to see the thermometer go up, right?
Just like Dirty Don’s response to Covid: don’t count cases. Covid can’t be a real problem if no one can see the case numbers going up.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@Kirk:
Ah, the familiar, fetid stench of whataboutism.
A bad comparison, if made in good faith. The differences between tragedies are numerous, the least of which is that this was at least partially a result of long running local issues (local to Texas) and cutting off USAID will kill way more people.
stinger
@WaterGirl:
Yes. 2003 was pre-Trump and even pre-Tea Party. It was the presidency of a Black man that kicked off the willingness of people to fly their racist flags freely. Whatever you might think of W — and I’ve thought plenty — he wasn’t personally racist.
hotshoe
[deleted, see below]
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Kirk: You definitely are a better person than I am. Thanks for your compassion and hope about people improving, but I got to say I just can’t see it. Won’t say any more about the flooding because I have nothing good to say.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Baud: ty 💔
TONYG
@Kirk: Maybe some Trump supporters will have a change of heart after this tragedy — but I doubt it. Most of them will find a way to blame liberals, or immigrants or chemtrails or some other goddamn thing for this catastrophe. Stupid people seldom become more intelligent, and bad people seldom become better people. The rest of us are stuck with these assholes.
hotshoe
@Kirk:
Bullshit.
Sanctimonious bullshit.
Holier-than-thou bullshit I would not expect even from a christian preacher at this time.
I don’t buy that you feel that way yourself, not for one minute, so why are you vomiting it out here.
trollhattan
Abbott says things with his mouthhole.
If I’m a Texan I’m feeling pretty, pretty good.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
Press X to doubt.
Just because some militia losers think something stupid doesn’t mean it’s “gaining traction”
Kirk
@hotshoe: See my followup.
I do feel that way. It’s not the only thing I feel – I’m human, I contain multitudes. As I said I will celebrate when Trump dies. I laughed when bin Laden died, thanked all gods and goddesses when Scalia’s death was announced, mutter in frustration at the continued presence of the Kochs.
But their deaths will diminish me in some small way, and I do feel ashamed at times at the glee and celebration.
Raoul Paste
Deleted
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
One fun fact for me about John Donne is that his effigy (carved stone statue) in Old St. Paul’s survived the great London fire (you can still see scorch marks at the base of the statue) and was subsequently reinstalled in Wren’s St. Paul’s near where it originally stood.
Archon
@Kirk: Giving malicious people the benefit of the doubt on the “hope” they will one day see the light and do the right thing is part of the reason we are in this predicament as a nation.
The age of hope and change in our politics is over (if it ever was there). We are in the age of action and the age of making tough, maybe even merciless decisions to save our republic.
geg6
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
I feel for all those missing and dead. But do I much care about their families? Not really. It was a “Christian” camp, so likely climate change deniers and it’s Texas, so likely MAGAs. If not, I hope they identify themselves as not being so in order for me to expand my sympathies to those parents and families. But my supply of sympathy and empathy has been pretty much used up by all the immigrants living in fear or being kidnapped, the mass shooter victims (especially the school children), the innocent Palestinians being slaughtered and starved in Gaza, the women who are losing their fertility and lives to their draconian anti-abortion fixation, the elderly/disabled/ children who will lose food and health care and the adults and children of the LGBTQ+ community who are being persecuted. There are a few more on my list but those are the big ones. I just can’t be bothered to worry about these parents who are so willfully self-destructive. This is what Trumpism has done to me. I don’t like feeling this way but I don’t know how to feel any other way at this point.
One of my sister’s old friends from high school bought a big chunk of land in the Hill Country about ten years ago when he retired. Part of his land runs right along that river. Being from the Ohio River valley, he knew enough to not build anything along the riverbank, not even a shed for his fishing gear and boat, let alone his house. Everything he built on the land is on the 40 foot hill that overlooks the river. He watched the water rise incredibly fast and incredibly high. He said he just had a patch of his front yard that wasn’t flooded by the fast moving water. He planned for these eventualities, thank the FSM. He says his MAGA neighbors laughed off flood warnings on the regular. They aren’t laughing now.
jonas
@hotshoe: I agree it’s primarily about climate change denial. If you don’t measure temperature or rainfall, then it can’t be changing, can it? Kind of like if you don’t test for Covid, there aren’t any new cases. Geenyus.
And yes, there’s also this thing about just privatising the weather forecasting business. What most of these numbnuts don’t realize is that private companies like Accuweather rely primarily on the NOAA for their data. You can’t just blow up NOAA or the NWS and expect a private firm to pick up the ball. That’s not how anything works.
hotshoe
@Kirk: Yes I saw your follow-up. You’re an idiot and you deserve to feel bad about yourself.
All people should rejoice with full hearts when evil is removed and when evil people die.
Okay I admit I was wrong to figure you could not truly believe the stuff you vomited out — but if you truly do believe it yourself, you’re even more of an idiot than you sounded like at first.
Jeffro
I was with you, right up until this part. I’d love to be wrong, though.
Kirk
@Archon: You’re missing a point but it’s understandable.
I said nothing about giving them the benefit of the doubt. Some might turn around. It is unlikely and I must act in opposition or they will as you say continue to be the evils they are today.
Hope should bring drive, not cause hesitation, in making the world better.
jonas
@TONYG: Not budging an inch, even at the cost of their own lives, livelihoods, or those of their loved ones is what makes them MAGA. Hell, did you read about the guy who’s wife was picked up by ICE the other day and shipped off to some internment camp? Still MAGA!
Trump > wife. Let that sink in.
WTFGhost
@opiejeanne: Children, for sure, then – I hadn’t bothered to check. Man. Places like that camp start making you feel like an inadequate parent *early*, don’t they?
Um. Also, given the lack of emergency preparedness at the camp, and its Christian nature, and its location, I’m really having a hard time not making some very biting comments about “pro-lifers.”
It’s also just such a tragic thing.
Toxic Masculinity: “Hur hur, da librul think gubmint needs to set building codes. If we need flood protection, we do it ourself!”
Masculinity: “That’s our point, you nincompoop, you won’t do it yourselves, unless forced. That’s why the government needs to do the forcing.”
Anyway
yes, that is why I will never forgive Alex Jones who was allowed to profit off of denying the Sandy Hook shootings and the grief of the parents. I still don’t understand how he was allowed to broadcast that the killings were a conspiracy.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@geg6: thank you for this
WTFGhost
@Jeffro: One of Molly Ivins’ later columns was published after Katrina, and it was a good column. When someone says, “I don’t follow politics,” she said, tell them, “THIS… this is politics.”
The building of the levees was overseen by elected and appointed officials.
The people who made warnings were all elected officials, or appointed officials.
The evacuation plans were made by, and were in the hands of, elected officials.
The response was entirely controlled by elected officials, who planned out what to have available, with which to respond, or used similar plans made by other elected officials.
“So, if you don’t care about politics, that means you don’t care about (gestures) ALL of *THIS*”
Kirk
@hotshoe: Ah, I see. You’re young enough that there is still a certainty that people can be pure true evil.
There’s this old joke around the fact that at least Hitler liked dogs. And there’s no doubt that the world was a much better place once he had died; would likely have been better had he died sooner.
But for his dog who loved him (as dogs unreservedly do), there was a hole caused by his absence.
I am glad Hitler died. I mourn for his dog’s pain. And if that makes me an idiot, then I gladly bear my fool’s cap.
Snarki, child of Loki
I, for one, personally hope that Trump and all of his MAGA followers have a change of heart.
From “beating” to “still”, by preference.
Why yes, I *am* a bad person.
hotshoe
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
John Donne —
he of the “No man is an Iland”
he who propagates the disgusting idea that physical illness is a visit from god reflecting one’s internal sinfulness.
he who writes that the specific reason we should care about another’s death is for the spiritual profit it can bring us:
“… if by this consideration of anothers danger, I take mine owne into contemplation, and so secure my selfe, by making my recourse to my God, who is our onely securitie.”
No wonder Kirk’s bullshit reminds me of christian clerical puke.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Snarki, child of Loki: come sit by me and we can be bad together ❤️
NotMax
@Kirk
So does removing a wart.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@hotshoe: well, of course, Kirk’s use of the phrase “every death diminishes me” is pulled almost literally from the “no man is an island … for whom the bell tolls” poem of Donne, which prompted me to mention what I had seen in St. Paul’s.
Archon
@Kirk: I don’t think you are an idiot but you must be able to see the entire planet from whatever intellectual/emotional ivory tower you are living in.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Snarki, child of Loki: OT, but I have to say I really like your nym.
WaterGirl
@hotshoe: Personal attacks are over the line.
Martin
@TurnItOffAndOnAgain: Well, they didn’t used to overlap and now they do. That’s not the direction we want things to be going in.
WTFGhost
@hotshoe: Dude, who shoved two fists instead of one into… oh, wait, this isn’t just a cut-up contest. Damn. I didn’t even get to the sandpaper gloves.
You misunderstand concepts like faith, and love, the things that make you hold true to things, even when it seems easy to let them go. It’s not sanctimonious bullshit, it’s a different, more difficult to walk.
I’d be willing to believe Kirk doesn’t feel warm, happy, fuzzy feelings for bad people right now, but one doesn’t to have warm fuzzies all the time to believe, deep in one’s heart, that every death diminishes us all.
WTFGhost
@Archon: There’s a huge difference between thinking we just show the benefit of the doubt to evil people, and, to recognizing that people can realize they were wrong, and change.
Miki
@raven: Maybe not miles, but I did the same thing in a Minneapolis suburb in the early 60s.
I’m thinking maybe as youngins we’re all little spelunkers.
Miki
@RileysEnabler: {{{{{{{You & All Campers, everywhere.}}}}}}
WTFGhost
@hotshoe: So, that’s a *yes* to the sandpaper gloves, I see.
(Pauses while contemplating a very nearly impossible insertion, and the sandpaper is going to play hell with the barriers, so we’ll need some silicon, and…)
Archon
@WTFGhost: I’m asking this genuinely. Do you know a single person in your life, or even anecdotally who was MAGA and is now completely out on him and his politics and is prepared to now vote for Democrats?
hotshoe
@Kirk:
older than you, darlin’, I’d bet.
Although I suppose I should be flattered that I sound young: young enough not to be jaded and hopelessly cynical — which I actually am — here I strive for optimism, encouraging the best part of human nature which is helping our fellow humans, and which occasionally requires dancing in the streets for joy at a bad man’s death. That’s the best!
It’s sickening to hear all your weird double-think. “I am glad Hitler died. I mourn for his dog’s pain” WTF! What craziness! You are not a better person because you mourn for Hitler’s dog.
You are twisting yourself into a moral pretzel so tightly that it turns into immorality. You should go away and meditate on where you’ve gone wrong.
Archon
@hotshoe: The irony to that story of course is that Hitler literally murdered his dog before he killed himself.
Kirk
@Archon: y’all keep missing the other half of what I say, you’re so wrapped up in the high point.
See, I laughed at and in a lot of ways agree with @Snarki, child of Loki’s post. Just not entirely.
I have done things that I hated doing. The result was worth the price and I would pay the price again for the same reasons now. I do not begrudge others from doing what has to be done.
I believe we are in a near-existential battle for the future of our nation and possibly our souls. And I have and will engage in multiple ways.
Let me digress. Every Memorial day, give or take a few days so it’s a day off, I take a bottle of alcohol to a place with buried veterans. And I sit on bench out of the way pour libations for each of the ones in memory I can name, just short pours for each. Then I pour a few for the faces I can still see but have no names for. And if – which so far is still true – I have some left I pour for the ones I do not know, be it names or faces.
It is possible before my life is over in this world that I will add more to that list. I swore an oath, you see. But I will never forget that they are people, not things.
hotshoe
@Miki:Took a quarter-mile trip through a storm drain conduit last month (with a score of other folks) for a specific game we play. There was enough water running in the conduit to get everyone’s feet wet, not enough to soak to the knees. Tall enough to stand up, with only minimum worry about head-bonks, so almost too easy to call it an “adventure”.
Wouldn’t have done it in the winter rainy season, though.
Kirk
@Archon: True – both the event and the irony.
WTFGhost
@Archon: I didn’t say *common* – merely possible. That’s why I’m saying no benefit of the doubt, but, I won’t insist they didn’t really change their party registration.
@hotshoe: Serious question: at what point did *Kirk* say something about being better, or occupying a moral high ground? It seems to me, you’re the one who has the problem with the personal beliefs of another, when it neither picks your pocket nor breaks your leg.
Zelma
@Archon:
Yes. My cousin and her husband. He was retired Navy and it didn’t take long for him to change his mind. I’ve never been completely sure why they did but a lot of their support in 2016 was anti-Hillary.
Miki
@hotshoe: I did it with my BFF when we were about 9 yrs old. Near the end we were frightened by the sound of a heavy vehicle driving over the road above us, and my BFF stood up and cracked her head on the top of the culvert. Lots of blood. Lots of scurrying to make up a story about how it happened. To this day (60 years later) she still sees me as a dangerous person from her youth.
Gloria DryGarden
@Snarki, child of Loki: thank you for this artistic and nuanced way of saying such a thing.
hotshoe
@WTFGhost:
Go back upthread and look where this started: with some dude (that is, I presume dude from the name and the personal stories) nym of Kirk who chose to step on A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan) — because dude Kirk apparently felt that woman’s post:
was not sufficiently sensitive, or whatever the fuck dude Kirk thought, he decided he should mansplain to her why he cared, and leave it to the reader to draw the conclusion that she should care, too.
Yeah, sure it was only one little sentence at that moment from dude Kirk. But who the fuck is he to judge that woman needed to be commented against.
He could have agreed wholeheartedly with her, or he could merely have remained silent.
But no, he had to show off his no-doubt superior “no man is an island” morality against a woman.
And then, before I got involved in any of this back-and-forth, dude KIrk chose to satisfy himself with an essay about feeling sorry for Dirty Don’s filthy children when Don finally dies. Plus that goddamn whataboutism that dude Kirk decided to add that we “own the attacks on Iran”. Chrissake, what a clusterfuck that dude’s posts are.
Okay, say I’m wrong: that dude Kirk does not feel he himself occupies moral high ground compared to women in this thread.In which case, what would be dude Kirk’s excuse for behaving the way he did? If it’s not him thinking he has moral high ground, then why? Is he just as much of an asshole as any male-superiority MAGAt? Stepping on women just for the fun of it? What do you assume his excuse is?
Yes, dude Kirk does not “break my leg” as you say, but it does break my spirit with how casually he steps on women while appearing as (and being credited with) being one of the “good guys”.
That’s my serious response to your unjustified assumption that I should have no problems with the “personal beliefs of another” if they don’t harm me directly. Of course I should have problems with it. That’s moral on my part. Seriously, dude.
hotshoe
@Miki: OUCH!
If you ever come to central CA, send me a message and we can go conduit-adventuring, with more success and less blood ;)
Archon
@Kirk: I appreciate, even admire your sentimentality. We are on a political blog however, and in the realm of politics in this national emergency we are in I don’t have the mental energy for that right now.
Kirk
@hotshoe: huh.
rest of comment deleted.
PsiFighter37
They can enjoy the thoughts and prayers from this atheist. Absolutely zero sympathies given, especially to that part of the country that voted for the gutting of things like weather services. You couldn’t pay me to donate for storm relief, because these fuckheads voted for not having any.
Fuck around and find out.
middlelee
@hotshoe: And you are twisting yourself into a perfect replica of a complete and total asshole.
Kirk
@Archon: I get it.
I figure it’s going to be a long haul, and there are only a few ways I know to get through long hauls without becoming what I’m trying to end.
Baud and Omnes and a few others here have a better tool – I wish I could do humor half as well. I’m not smart enough for that, so I have to use that conscious philosophical awareness instead. It comes off as patronizing and pompous to some. It’s not intended as such, but since I can’t do humor and don’t want to bury myself in the muck at the bottom, it is what I do.
Gloria DryGarden
While a majority of my grief and angst has been allocated elsewhere, there are some pieces of this event and our comments that have grabbed my attention.
of note, that relative/ friend from Ohio river valley who bought land in the Texas hill country, but who understood that floods can really actually happen, even the 100 year ones. So he planned accordingly. It helps me, to know that he has observed that a great many locals ignore and laugh off the weather warnings.
there’s an old phrase, “ god willing , and the creek don’t rise”
maybe those folks never heard it.
But haven’t you blown off or taken lightly such warnings?
weather warnings, whether it’s by percentage, or by mention of something being a 100 year event, can be easy to be insouciant about. A few things about this ignoring and insouciance. Remember the boy who cried wolf, and it never was a wolf, until finally when it was a wolf for real, nobody was listening to him anymore?
It can be like that. In Denver, we get odd quickly-changing weather, and predictions can be very wrong as much as half the time. A 2% chance of rain or even a 45% chance means, it won’t rain at all, or maybe a few freckles on your sidewalk. But the next neighborhood over might get a downpour and fill buckets from their downspouts. And there could suddenly be whipping wind, and thunder, and hail slamming down, on a 5% chance of predicted rain. Or a predicted high of 60, in late may, that becomes a blizzard (walked home in that blizzard in a Jean jacket, got close to frostbite)
We don’t know. I get used to thinking it’s really not going to rain. Because often it misses me, so I’m insouciant and tend to ignore but then sometimes it does rain, and it even rains hard, unexpectedly. I’ve learned to be ready just in case.
So did mr Ohio river valley. Because it can happen. (I’ve been caught in unpredicted weather a few times.)
I’ve also ignored tornado sirens, though not when I was in charge of children.
the thing about a “100 year” flood, is it might happen more than once, especially these days. it’s happened in Colorado twice in 50 years.
So it’s an extremely sad situation for the families of these children. And losing a child devastates parents deeply, regardless of intelligence level, poor judgement, and political engagement. It hurts beyond words.
It’s nice of course when people learn from their mistakes, and recognize what could be done differently, or even what could be expected of government officials who influence how these things are prepared for and handled. (Oh gosh, politics, after all..)
thanks to Martin and geg for your comments above, they were helpful to me.
WTFGhost
@hotshoe: So you do have a reason for what you’re doing – you felt someone was shoving glurge into the throat of someone who wasn’t ready for it, and as a show of personal piety, not out of general discussion.
Now that, at least, is something I can understand.
But your criticism wasn’t directed at the idea of hurting a mourner. There are a few spiritual folks here, who sometimes share their spirit. Sometimes, they are seeing something that hurts them – people giving in to hate. And they want to prevent that, with appropriate compassion.
And, of course, some spiritual folks are clods and jerks and rude, too. It happens to us, just like others.
But the cloddishness and rudeness tends to get ironed out as people complain, and assailants change, or leave.
Now, my feeling is, it’s really not moral to have a problem with Kent’s beliefs as a guide for Kent, not unless he’s speaking about how it’s okay to steal, rape, murder, etc.. It is reasonable to think he’s being too preachy, or doing so to the wrong people, but, you can do that in a far more measured manner, directed more at the actions, not the person.
Do I think a person might think he’s a total weirdo for feeling sorry for Hitler, and Hitler’s dog(s)? Sure. Lots of people think I’m a total weirdo, too, so, for me, I’m a lot more sensitive to people calling out “weirdness,” especially when it seems to be a private thing, a personal path a person is walking.
But I do understand being annoyed by preaching.
hotshoe
@WTFGhost:
Okay, point taken, thanks.
middlelee
@Scout211: Thanks!
Jeffro
@WTFGhost:
AMEN
Eyeroller
@Kirk: Hitler killed his dog Blondi to test the efficacy of the cyanide capsules. So Blondi’s only pain was in dying of cyanide poisoning, though Eva followed her shortly. Hitler chose the more direct method of a bullet to the brain.
Kirk
Watergirl, please delete 118 for me. It’s unnecessarily antagonistic.
Hotshoe, I apologize for the indirect poke in that post.
XeckyGilchrist
@WaterGirl:
Thank you and thanks to those who recommended organizations!
lowtechcyclist
@hotshoe:
I guess you’re not much of a fan of John Donne then.
Ramona
@Snarki, child of Loki: l like this!
scav
@WTFGhost: Coming to this late, count me among those who, while finding his presumption of moral superiority about par for the course, really really am pleased I don’t actually have him as a neighbor based on his self-congratulatory blowhard persona. Not a question of what he thinks, more how he goes on and on about how he’s thinking it.
In the minute it took for me to blather on here, some have been personally diminished by approximately 107 deaths!
Mai Naem mobile
I went to San Antonio/Austin NWS alerts. They were giving alerts at least since 7/3. I couldn’t be bothered to go back further because there were so many alerts to wade through. Abbott was on vacation and the Lt Gov is worthless. I would like to know who the no nonsense looking guy at the presser blaming the NWS is. I know it’s not the Lt Gov. Abbott needs to suck it up and take responsibility. I don’t know why Orange Dbag is showing up. They still have flood warnings. He’ll do less damage if he continues to golf.
lowtechcyclist
@geg6:
From what’s been published about this camp, it doesn’t sound like it was a fundagelical place that was training little girls to be good little helpmeets when they grow up, but rather giving them the self-confidence to later on go out into the world and be unafraid to do different things, just as they did at this camp.
At any rate, I will not harden my heart to others’ losses of loved ones, no matter who they may be. As Terry Pratchett’s Granny Weatherwax said, sin is treating people as things. To say this person is deserving of my sympathy, and that one is not, because they agree or disagree with me about Hair Furor, is to treat them as a thing: no more than the sum of their politics. I will not do that.
As Donne said (likewise Kirk upthread), every [person’s] death diminishes me. I can feel sympathy for those whose lives have been diminished far more than mine has, regardless of who they are.
lowtechcyclist
@Kirk:
I just want to say I deeply appreciate what you’ve been saying in this thread.
Mart
My advice following after event interviews for my job; don’t ever think a flash flood can’t get worse. Or the damn Government always blows it out of proportion. Yes if often won’t get worse, and yes the Government screws it up. Don’t think about that, immediately turn around and/or leave. Double time out if in Hill Country. I have no idea of the specifics of the warnings or how folks responded in this instance. I just can tell you in general people make a lot of poor decisions about flash flooding. Even in regions like this where homes floating down the rivers are fairly common. Just need to rebuild with taller stilts is all.
geg6
@lowtechcyclist:
I’ve lost that ability in the twilight of my life and in these dark, dark times. Like I said, I feel sorry about the dead and missing. But I don’t have the bandwidth to give a shit about these dipshits who brought this on themselves, whether by ignoring warnings or electing people who couldn’t care less about them, over and over and over. And my personal experiences with any organization, especially one aimed at girls, that is calling itself in its marketing a “Christian” entity, I do not trust. At all. Not even a little bit. At the very least, they are pushing patriarchy even if subtly. At worst, the girls are being mentally, emotionally and/or physically abused. YMMV.
hotshoe
@lowtechcyclist: yeah, no. Disgust for John Donne, and disgust with his vile work being quoted/paraphrased with approval, is part of what got me irritated at Kirk to begin with, which I guess is a little irrational on my part, but …
John Donne was scum — he was a hateful person, even by the standards of his own time. He tried to make a living by writing anti-Catholic pamphlets. He was explicitly and vividly anti-Semitic.
Well, one could excuse him for being a man of his era, and yes, his era was rife with religious butchery of all sorts. God might forgive him, but I don’t.
He did end up making money with a book of sermons (“Devotions”) about how other people’s deaths are valuable (he actually phrased it “as gold in a mine”) because it gives us incentive to repent ourselves of our sins. Ugh. What shit.
Those men, those sick sick men in the founding era of Protestantism. Donne surely wasn’t the worst, just one of them who happened to stay famous for a cheap trick phrase, long after others were moldering in their graves.
lowtechcyclist
@geg6:
That’s OK. We have to know and accept what we can ask of ourselves, and what we can’t. We’re all in different places.
hotshoe
@Kirk:
Okay, thanks.
My apologies, too, for making it personal earlier.
Elizabelle
@Kirk: Hate to tell you this, but Hitler killed the dog first. Not out of malice. To test the cyanide capsules.
Sandia Blanca
@Mai Naem mobile: I believe you are referring to W. Nim Kidd, the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management (see link here).
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: prayers
but not thoughts…
hmmm
giving in half measures?
Msb
@RileysEnabler:
me, too. I was a camper and counselor at Mystic (about a million years ago). 2 sisters and a brother went to Hill Country camps, and so did my mom. My aunt had a summer home outside Kerrville. Such a beautiful place. To think of those children’s terror is very painful.
Msb
@hotshoe:
be as cynical as you like.
you have no right to tell others how to set their moral compasses, and to define differing from yours as hypocrisy.
TONYG
@geg6: I hate to see anyone die like this, especially young girls. But the voters in Texas and in that county chose to prioritize the dogma of low taxes over improvements to warning systems and safety measures that might have alleviated this tragedy. Some of these adults might learn from this, but most will not because they are idiots and assholes. There; I said it.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
At Texas is getting federal disaster funds. Missouri has been completely ignored after the tornado disaster that ripped apart my community.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: OK. I take that back. The federal disaster declaration finally did happen.
Miss Bianca
@Kirk: Don’t mourn for his dog’s pain. Hitler had her killed before he killed himself.