In flooded Texas, I saw the best of America – and the parts that make you shake your head

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San Antonio, Texas: I’m heading home to Washington after visiting the flood-ravaged Texas Hill Country. Like the wildfires that tore through Los Angeles in January, it’s a form of devastation Australians are familiar with – but on a horrific scale.

People search along the Guadalupe River after flooding in Kerrville, Texas, on Wednesday.Credit: AP

Every briefing from officials brings worse news, the death toll climbing past 110 and the number of missing people rocketing to 173. By the time you read this, I’m sure it will be higher.

Why did so many die? Plainly, there will need to be inquiries into how it was that people, knowing storms were coming, still felt safe enough to stay by the river that night. It seems clear that despite issuing alerts, authorities did not know the severity of the deluge that was about to strike.

Timing was crucial. This was the Fourth of July holiday weekend, meaning the river banks were packed with summer campers, holidaymakers and permanent residents. The flood arrived supremely fast in the middle of the night, with the water rising some eight metres in 45 minutes, according to Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring.

In Ingram, just outside Kerrville, I met Lorena Guillen, owner of the Blue Oak RV Park on the Guadalupe River. Guillen was living the American dream: she migrated from Mexico – “legally”, she hastens to add – and started her own business.

It’s not just a campsite: Guillen also runs the on-site restaurant, Howdy’s Bar and Chill. The menu is an all-American smorgasbord: the Cowboy’s Breakfast, a “Cowabunga Burger” and the Philly Cheese Sandwich, plus some Mexican favourites, including “Ms Lorena’s Quesadilla”.

Hanging from the archway entrance to the RV park is a banner depicting a lobster wearing a cowboy hat and shooting pistols from its claws. “Be best ya come back else I hunt ya down and haul ya back,” the sign says.

Guillen takes the time to show me around and speaks at length about what she saw on that terrifying night, including a family of five clinging to a tree and being swept away by the raging torrent. She also reveals she lost one of her own employees: 27-year-old Julian Ryan, who worked at Howdy’s.

“He closed the restaurant with me that night, and he went home,” she tells me. “Water got into his house and he had to break a window to get his family to safety – and he did. But he cut himself in the process, and he bled out.” His sister Connie Salas told KHOU-11 television: “He died a hero, and that will never go unnoticed.”

Campers’ belongings sit outside one of the cabins at Camp Mystic, on the Guadalupe River, where at least 27 campers and counsellors died.Credit: AP

There were heroes aplenty in the aftermath of the disaster, and a great deal of southern hospitality. While I waited for Guillen, one of her staff, Jennifer Dickson, arrived carrying trays of breakfast tacos and pancakes for the team, having woken at 6am to cook. Courtney Friedrichs, who was volunteering as gatekeeper, happily gave me lunch while I waited: cajun sausage pasta and a fruit cup.

Every community comes together in a crisis. As Friedrichs says, they put their differences aside. But one can’t help but wonder if those differences – the political ones, at least – might contribute to a lack of preparedness.

Lawmakers are now under fire for failing to pass a bill this year that would have set up a grant system for counties to buy new emergency communication equipment and build new infrastructure such as radio towers.

One local representative who voted “no”, first-term Republican Wes Virdell, told the Texas Tribune: “I can tell you in hindsight, watching what it takes to deal with a disaster like this, my vote would probably be different now.”

A candlelit vigil was held in San Antonio for those killed in the Texas floods.Credit: Michael Koziol

On talkback radio, hosts and callers slammed Austin fire chief Joel Baker, whom the firefighters’ union accused of failing to dispatch vital resources in time. Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said the union was politicising the tragedy amid budget negotiations. It seems nothing is immune from the political polarisation afflicting the US.

At a vigil for the victims in San Antonio, I watched speaker after speaker lead the crowd in heartfelt prayer. Some tried to wrestle with the inevitable question of how a merciful God could wreak such heartbreak on so many, and for no reason. If there was a persuasive answer, it was lost on me.

I wonder, too, whether the American deference to religious salvation creates a blind spot for real, terrestrial actions that could offer people a little more protection. When Guillen, who lost so much and witnessed such horror, says the flood was “truly an act of God”, I ask her whether the tragedy has altered her faith at all.

“Not really,” she says. “I am Catholic, and I believe God does things the way he does, and he’s the only one who knows why. But there is a reason.

“And I truly believe that we, the people here on this beautiful Earth are the ones that have to deal with it. And mother nature is powerful.”

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