FORT WORTH, Texas — Over the July 4th weekend a devastating flood hit towns along the Guadalupe River in the Central Texas Hill Country. So far, 134 people have died and 101 are still missing. Hardest hit was Kerr County, where 103 died, including 36 children.
Torrential rains that began July 3 swelled creeks and the Guadalupe, which runs from Kerr County to the Gulf of Mexico. Some 18 inches of rain fell over a three-hour period. The Guadalupe rose to over 26 feet in 45 minutes and to 34 feet at the high point.
This part of the Hill Country, a beautiful region of rolling hills, steep canyons, spring-fed rivers and lakes, is a popular vacation area. There are dozens of children’s summer camps near the Guadalupe. The area is in what is called a “flash flood alley,” about 300 miles long and 50 miles wide that includes San Antonio, Austin and north to Dallas.
This region is one of the most rapidly growing areas in Texas. But lying between cold, dry air from the north and wet, warm air from the Gulf, it has had intense rain storms and flooding.
Over 1 million housing units in Texas are built on land with high flood risk, affecting some 5 million people.
Profit system imperils workers
As is always the case under capitalism, where the bosses and their government make all decisions in their search for profits, low lying areas, whether on flood plains or near the ocean, are prime real estate for cheaper housing for working people and the retired. Wherever the danger is greatest, workers’ homes are to be found.
Whether it’s in neighborhoods in Far Rockaway and elsewhere in New York City that were destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, or in Kerr County, the laws of capital work to the detriment of workers.
There was no alarm system in Kerr County, where the majority of deaths occurred. Repeated requests by county officials to the state and federal government to fund one had been rejected. Nearby Comfort in Kendall County was the only area town that had a newly installed warning siren. It went off well before the ravaging flood reached the town and everyone was able to evacuate safely.
Capitalist politicians, from Gov. Greg Abbott to local Kerr County officials, refuse to take any responsibility for the disaster. When a reporter asked Abbott if he would ask for an investigation into “who is to blame here,” he shot back dismissively, “Know this, that’s the word choice of losers.
“Every square inch of our state cares about football” and “every football team makes mistakes,” he said, but “the losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame.”
Speaking to reporters hours after the disaster, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said, “We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what’s happened here, none whatsoever.”
Officials did send out texts warning of flooding, but they were sent first at 1 a.m. and then, more insistently, at 4 a.m. Most people were asleep.
There were floods in Kerr County in 2002, 1998, 1987, 1978 and before. In 2015 “a wall of water” rushed into Wimberley, 60 miles north of San Antonio, killing 13 people.
In 1932 the Guadalupe River rose to 35 feet in two hours and the flooding swept away vacation places, including the summer Camp Mystic.
O.D. Westcott, the army colonel in charge of that cleanup, told the Austin-American there was one silver lining. “No more will cottages be built right down to the river’s edge,” he said. “The builders will stay above this year’s high water mark, and that will make them completely safe. The disaster is a mighty bad blow but it really is a disguised blow.”
But over time the laws of capital took control. Following the 2015 Wimberley flood, developers pressured regulators to allow more building on the flood plain. Camp Mystic, where at least 27 children and camp counselors died in the flood, was rebuilt, and federal regulators repeatedly granted appeals by the camp’s owners to expand to the river bank.
Working-class solidarity
Since the disaster, there has been an outpouring of working-class solidarity. Despite state and local authorities repeatedly discouraging civilian volunteers, more than 12,000 have arrived to help with cleanup and rescue.
Austin KXAN-TV News aired a press conference where volunteer Courtney Calhoun confronted Gov. Abbott, demanding to know why she and 200 other volunteers were asked to leave a search site. “We are very capable. We are not wasted assets. We’ll do it for free. That’s in our blood,” she said.
Patricia Campos from Michoacán was one of a number who came from Mexico. She traveled to Kerr as part of Los Topos, a Mexican volunteer rescue organization formed after a 1985 earthquake in Mexico. “What moved me here is wanting to support people without expecting anything in return,” she said.
Members of the Cajun Navy came. They’re a group of workers with boats from New Orleans, set up after Hurricane Katrina hit that area in 2005. Because of the emotional effects of the loss, the group limited its volunteers to combat veterans.
“Adequate preparations for hurricanes, floods and other acts of nature will never be organized under the capitalist system, which prioritizes profits over humanity,” Dennis Richter, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party in Texas, told the Militant.
“Science and technology created by the labor of working people make it possible to minimize the effects of floods. The hundreds of deaths and devastation from the Guadalupe flood was not inevitable,” he said. “It’s the product of capitalist development on flood plains, refusal to fund an alarm warning system, and no serious evacuation plans in the face of dangerous storms.
“This shows why working people need to take political power and organize a government and society that puts human life over profits.”