In Texas, they’re still counting the dead

Let’s not reduce God to a convenient excuse.

Rain.

All day Saturday it fell.

Steady. Relentless. Heavy.

Through the evening. Into the night.

Sunday dawned. Our world was changed.

Seven died that August night nearly 18 years ago. I was awakened by a phone call from my editor: “Get your ass down to the office! The whole damn county’s washing away.”

The news from Kerr County, Texas, brought those moments back to me.

Flash flood. Black waters churning wild in the dark of night, swirling away all in their path.

In Texas, they’re still counting the dead.

“Act of God,” some say.

No God I’d care to worship. A good and loving God doesn’t drown 27 little girls asleep in their beds.

Let’s not reduce God to a convenient excuse.

Seven died when streams and rivers burst their banks. It could have been many more. Emergency services were alerted in Winona, Filmore, Olmsted, Houston, Wabasha and Mower counties in Minnesota, and the Wisconsin counties in the path of the deluge. Police, firefighters, first responders went door-to-door, rousing sleepers from their beds while sirens wailed and emergency bulletins flashed on TV screens and over the radio.

Property was lost, but lives were saved.

The system worked

In Kerr County, it appears there were no such warnings. Weather service forecasters measured the rains, warned of the growing danger, but the position responsible for communicating the warning to local emergency responders was victim of MAGA personnel cuts. The first of many victims.

At the local level, taxpayer savings can now be measured in lives lost. Although the region has a long history of flash flooding and, despite the pooh-poohing of climate change deniers. prolonged, intense rains are increasing in frequency, local elected officials passed on investing in early flood warning infrastructure and staffing because constituents would be unhappy with a tax increase to pay for it.

Instead, the money will now be spent on funerals…

In the end, we’ll get what we pay for.

Or pay for what we get.