In late September 2000, longtime Kerr County, Texas, resident W. Thornton Secor Jr. sat down with an oral historian to inform his story. Like lots of the residents recorded as a part of a decadeslong effort by the Kerr County Historic Fee to doc the group’s historical past, Secor had loads to say concerning the space’s floods.
“It all the time appears to occur at evening too,” Secor stated of native floods he and his household had skilled. “Can’t see most of it.”
Secor, who died in 2022, was a third-generation supervisor of a lodge that also operates alongside the Guadalupe River. His oral historical past shares household recollections of floods going again to 1932 — just like the time a flood that 12 months washed away a lot of the cabins his grandfather constructed.
Now, Secor’s daughter, Mandi Secor Lipscomb, is left contemplating the way forward for the lodge within the aftermath of one other devastating flood, on July 4. Secor Lipscomb is the fourth-generation proprietor and operator of the identical lodge, Waltonia on the River.
Usually when I attempt to perceive a spot or course of a giant information occasion, I search for data stored by native historic societies and libraries. In archived paperwork, preserved pictures and oral historical past collections, one can begin to see how a group understands itself. So, as information reviews concerning the floods within the Central Texas Hill Nation poured in all through the week, I went on the lookout for historic context. What native data is held by individuals who stay, or have lived, in what’s repeatedly described as “Flash Flood Alley”? How have individuals in Kerr County’s previous contended with floods of their very own time?
A trove of greater than 70 oral histories recorded by the Kerr County Historic Fee begins to reply these questions. The recordings doc recollections of floods going again to 1900, however oral histories alone not often inform a full or correct story. Nonetheless, there’s at the least one conclusion to attract: All the things has a historical past. The flood that killed greater than 130 individuals within the Kerr County space this month is just not the primary time a flash flood on the Guadalupe River took lives of individuals, together with kids.
Credit score:
Kerrville Every day Occasions by way of Newspapers.com
I maintain this historical past in thoughts once I hear native and state officers say nobody might have seen this coming. Take this change between a reporter and Kerr County Decide Rob Kelly:
Reporter: Why weren’t these camps evacuated?
Kelly: I can’t reply that. I don’t know.
Reporter: Nicely you’re the decide. I imply you’re the highest official right here on this county. Why can’t you reply that? There are children lacking. These camps have been in hurt’s approach. We knew this flood was coming.
Kelly: We didn’t know this flood was coming. Relaxation assured, nobody knew this type of flood was coming. We now have floods on a regular basis. That is probably the most harmful river valley in the USA. And we cope with floods frequently. When it rains, we get water. We had no motive to imagine that this was gonna be something like what’s occurred right here. None in anyway.
My colleague Jennifer Berry Hawes wrote final week concerning the uncanny similarities between the Texas floods and Hurricane Helene, which struck North Carolina final 12 months. In each disasters, climate forecasts predicted the potential devastation, but individuals have been left in hurt’s approach.
And as one other colleague, ProPublica editor Abrahm Lustgarten, identified in a bit about how local weather change is making disasters just like the flood in Texas extra frequent, “there will probably be tireless — and warranted — evaluation of who’s guilty for this heart-wrenching loss” within the weeks to come back.
“Ought to Kerr County, the place a lot of the deaths occurred, have put in warning sirens alongside that stretch of the waterway, and why have been kids allowed to sleep in an space liable to high-velocity flash flooding?” Lustgarten wrote. “Why have been pressing updates apparently solely conveyed by cellphone and on-line in a rural space with restricted connectivity?”
As we look ahead to solutions — or as journalists dig for them — the oral histories present Kerr County residents have warned each other, in addition to newcomers and out-of-towners, about flooding for a very long time. In his 2000 oral historical past, Secor stated he remembered a time within the spring of 1959 when his father tried to warn one new-to-town lady about constructing a home so near the river.
“He took her out and confirmed her the watermarks on the timber in entrance of our home and all,” Secor stated, seemingly referring to the watermarks from the flood of 1932, which a neighborhood newspaper described on the time as “probably the most disastrous flood that ever swept the higher Guadalupe Valley.” The flood killed at the least seven individuals.
“‘Oh,’ she says, ‘that can by no means occur once more,’” Secor recalled.
He stated her physique was present in a tree a number of months later after a flood swept her and the roof she stood on away.
“It’s going to shock newcomers once we get one other flood just like the ’32 flood,” Secor stated in 2000.
“It’ll get us once more sometime.”
Because the Guadalupe River rose over the July 4 weekend, the 16-cabin lodge his daughter owns was offered out and filled with visitors. All of them escaped the floods, stated Secor Lipscomb. They ran, some barefoot within the mud, up a steep hill past the property’s retaining wall. They took shelter in a barn.
Later, Secor Lipscomb assessed the injury to her household property. What she noticed left her in tears: 4 cabins had water as much as the ceiling. One other two had flooded about 5 ft. However among the many wreckage was a crew of almost 40 volunteers, prepared to assist with the cleanup.
By the point I reached out to her to ask her about her father’s oral historical past, six cabins and the primary camp workplace have been already demolished.
The cabin her great-grandfather and grandfather constructed collectively greater than 100 years in the past nonetheless stood. Nevertheless it received’t for for much longer. It’s so broken with water that it, too, must go.
“That is our household historical past, our household legacy,” Secor Lipscomb advised me. “In fact we’re going to rebuild.”
After they do, their prospects will probably be prepared. Most of the households who survived the flood already advised her they’ll be first in line to guide for the subsequent out there July 4.
