Reading this account made me think of a paper I read in grad school about the Mann Gulch fire and how quickly one’s ability to make sense of the situation unravels.
The "Once in a hundred year" saying is misunderstood. It's actually 1% chance each year. So you roll your D100 every spring.
Whether that's an acceptable risk is up to you. Having lived in central Texas, it's a region known for it's flash floods, and you should take the warnings seriously. If there's heavy rainfall - you should be asking where all that water will go.
In this case, I hope that Texas looks into upgrading their alerting system so that people get word in time to leave the area. The news was saying the weather center added additional staff for the storm (five meteorologists) but if their forecasts can't get to where they're needed, that's not good enough.
Reading this makes me so sad and reminded me of a book I read years ago: Hiroshima by John Hersey - about the first-person narrative account of survivors who witnessed the impact of atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima that morning.
If you have the opportunity to visit, I recommend Nagasaki over Hiroshima and especially these two places in Nagasaki:
Shiroyama Elementary School
Nagai Takashi Memorial Museum Nagasaki
These felt much more personal than anything I saw in Hiroshima and there were zero (other) tourists to interrupt the experience (very much unlike the museum in Hiroshima).
And just 10 days after the event to be released, so written earlier. Not sure of the exact date it was written as the article has an August 2025 date in the byline. Hopefully it was helpful in their grief, which with how the last half was written seems to be at least part of the intent.
Having children makes me feel vulnerable. They’re like extensions of myself — if they feel pain, I feel it too. To imagine one of them dying… this story broke my heart.
I can't remember where, but somewhere I heard that before kids you live with your heart inside you, and after you have kids you live without heart out in the world.
Theres videos from different people as the flooding started live. It's WILD to watch what happens in a short span of time. We're talking under 30 minutes I think before it starts overtaking a bridge. The water will sweep you up and drag you around too, the random debris is what's fatal.
I watched the first couple minutes of this video (certainly wasn't going to watch 40 minutes) then skipped ahead in chunks, thinking it was clips from different locations.
Then I scrubbed around and realized, no, it was the same place, which left me stunned.
Make sure to watch the last 3-5 minutes or so for the cherry on top. Then I recommend skipping back to the beginning to really drive home how insane this was.
I will never again be cavalier about flash flood warnings.
What astounds me is how quickly America moves on from environmental catastrophes. As an example, a huge part of Florida was pretty much devastated earlier this year but now you would never know. The electricity and other services were back up in days and all evidence of destroyed buildings gone as if the trash was just collected.
If a similar extreme weather event hit the UK, that would be all you would hear about for months and there would be no instant clear up. The populace would be deeply traumatised and would not move on from the tragedy. America is different, resilient and it is rare for articles like this one to make the light of day.
Quite a few people live near riverbeds, if not all of them. I mean like, it was one of the basic requirements of a settlement to have some flowing water source nearby.
And while not directly on the river bed, I've seen my share of swollen rivers in all places I lived. My grandparents had a house at the edge of the village, the river was some 200 meters from it and much lower but a few times with heavy raining, the garden was flooded and water nearly got to the house. I recall watching in awe from uphill the raging torrent and wondering how the funk could it have gotten so big from the original peaceful river.
Right now, I live downstream of a 100 meters tall water dam holding 200 hectares (500 acres) of lake. If that dam breaks, it's lights out for many. You forget about it but shit happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam
Watch any movie with the settlers moving out west, and you’ll see them all right next to a river. It all makes sense as nobody likes carrying water far
The mix of terrifying immediacy and raw loss is haunting, especially when you hear about people literally being swept away from shelters they trusted.
It’s a stark reminder that robust early warning isn’t just technology, it’s life or death and the costs of underfunding those systems aren’t hypothetical.
One of the consequenes of our population growth, combined with our willingness to allow NIMBYs to dictate our housing policy, is that more and more new houses are built in areas that regularly experience major natural disasters. And if that isn't enough of a tragedy, these plots of land are treated as valuable when they really aren't, leading to people sinking big chunks of their net worth into what is objectively a liability.
Being the parent of a child in the boys age, this was incredibly hard to read. I started yesterday, stopped half way through, could not sleep at first, woke up in the morning to finish the story. To me, as a non-native english speaker, the story is very well written to paint an extensive picture of the events unfolding as well of the environment, which made it much more frightening.
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[ 12.2 ms ] story [ 1118 ms ] threadhttps://www.cs.unibo.it/~ruffino/Letture%20TDPC/K.%20Weick%2...
There’s a bit of horrifying tension, and you hope everyone’s ok. No matter how unlikely.
Whether that's an acceptable risk is up to you. Having lived in central Texas, it's a region known for it's flash floods, and you should take the warnings seriously. If there's heavy rainfall - you should be asking where all that water will go.
In this case, I hope that Texas looks into upgrading their alerting system so that people get word in time to leave the area. The news was saying the weather center added additional staff for the storm (five meteorologists) but if their forecasts can't get to where they're needed, that's not good enough.
Shiroyama Elementary School
Nagai Takashi Memorial Museum Nagasaki
These felt much more personal than anything I saw in Hiroshima and there were zero (other) tourists to interrupt the experience (very much unlike the museum in Hiroshima).
Once heard the observation that you're only as happy as your saddest child.
Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
Our ancestors had families during wars and famines. In the case of my family, that wasn't that many generations ago.
Then I scrubbed around and realized, no, it was the same place, which left me stunned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kYjiTEDqtw
Make sure to watch the last 3-5 minutes or so for the cherry on top. Then I recommend skipping back to the beginning to really drive home how insane this was.
I will never again be cavalier about flash flood warnings.
I can't imagine a more grim version of this game as the floodwaters of the Guadalupe recede below you.
If a similar extreme weather event hit the UK, that would be all you would hear about for months and there would be no instant clear up. The populace would be deeply traumatised and would not move on from the tragedy. America is different, resilient and it is rare for articles like this one to make the light of day.
And while not directly on the river bed, I've seen my share of swollen rivers in all places I lived. My grandparents had a house at the edge of the village, the river was some 200 meters from it and much lower but a few times with heavy raining, the garden was flooded and water nearly got to the house. I recall watching in awe from uphill the raging torrent and wondering how the funk could it have gotten so big from the original peaceful river.
Right now, I live downstream of a 100 meters tall water dam holding 200 hectares (500 acres) of lake. If that dam breaks, it's lights out for many. You forget about it but shit happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam
It’s a stark reminder that robust early warning isn’t just technology, it’s life or death and the costs of underfunding those systems aren’t hypothetical.