Posted on 07/06/2025 3:59:31 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
It was about 1 a.m. on the Fourth of July when the facilities manager at a central Texas summer camp saw water from the Guadalupe River steadily rising amid a deluge of rain.
Aroldo Barrera notified his boss, who had been monitoring reports of the storms approaching Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly, a recreation destination where an intercultural youth conference had been called off early just hours earlier.
Despite an absence of warning by local authorities, camp officials acted quickly on their own, relocating about 70 children and adults staying overnight in a building near the river. With the kids safe, camp leaders including President and CEO Tim Huchton were able to avoid the catastrophe that hit at least one other camp near Hunt, where the 500-acre Mo-Ranch is located.
“They helped them pack up,” Lisa Winters, communications director for Mo-Ranch, told The Associated Press on Sunday. “They got them up, they got them out, put them up on higher ground.”
Other places fared much worse.
Flash floods that roared through Texas Hill Country before dawn on Friday decimated the landscape near the river, leaving at least 79 dead and many others unaccounted for. As of Sunday, 10 girls from nearby Camp Mystic remained missing, officials said. Rescue and recovery teams combed the area for them and others still unaccounted for days after the flood.
The decision to leave added to the mounting accounts of how camps and residents in the area say they were left to make their own decisions in the absence of warnings or notifications from the county.
Local authorities have faced heavy scrutiny and at times have deflected questions about how much warning they had or were able to provide the public, saying the reviews will come later. For now, they say they’re focusing on rescues. Officials have said they did...
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
A $20 NOAA weather radio gives flash flood warnings, and your cell phone gives alerts if you don't turn them off, which most people do.
This camp did things right, they monitored everything and knew when it was time to leave..that is why they are all still alive..unfortunately Camp Mystic was on the bottom, they didnt stand a chance..the cabins higher up all made it out
So they were warned. But, but, but, that is not what the New York Times said!!
Aroldo Barrera is a Texas hero! The camp did it right: Keep a watch. Alert everyone. Get to high ground. Everyone wins.
"Monitoring reports," huh?
Where were those reports coming from? Oumuamua?
Part of the problem is that this was a 500 or 1000 year flood, so places that normally never flood were flooded this time.
I do wonder if the geography of the area would allow for dry dams to control flooding like those erected in the Miami Valley in Southwest Ohio after the 1913 Dayton flood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Dayton_Flood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Conservancy_District
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_dam
When a river rises 30 feet in 45 minutes in the middle of the night I think you can’t do much.
No one saw the flood potential at the bottom of a hill between a creek and a river prone to flash floods ? The camp had been there 100 years right ?
I remember, as a first-grader attending elementary school in Santa Monica, being shown a black-and-white film about the dangers of flash floods, and how to avoid places that could be subject to them.
That would have been in 1961. And I was six years old. I had never heard of a "flash flood," but I sure never forgot that film.
They were coming out of your exit orifice.
In Texas Flooding, the Most Urgent Alerts Came in the Middle of the Night
“When a river rises 30 feet in 45 minutes in the middle of the night I think you can’t do much.”
You can not be there.
Aroldo Berrera was at the scene, aware of the situation with the weather, and acted when he saw the river rising. That’s how he knew.
Apparently the people decided the threat wasn’t that bad so they stayed.
IIRC, the camp was above the normal flood plain. But this flood was massive, a 500 or thousand year flood…
This is AP Crap News. No credibility.
ONE responsible facility manager.
Insanity.
Yo Adrian! Moron! The NWS says that they issued all the warnings that they need to issue and that they were NOT UNDERSTAFFED. How did you get a job in the “media” while being illiterate?
Dry dams are designed to create temporary reservoirs to slow the rise of water when an area gets an unusually massive amount of rain.
There purpose is to slow the rise and buy time for evacuation
(ssssssssssssh: Trump’s fault)
/s
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