This story was originally Appearing on Grist is part of the climate desk collaboration.
The country watched in horror as the grand rains soaked into Texas earlier this month, with at least 135 people dead. Kerr County alone lost 107 times, including more than twenty children from Mystic Camp.
It’s easy, even tempting to think that a flood like this will never happen to you. Disasters are far away.
It’s not.
As the details of the tragedy begin to focus, the list of contributing factors has grown. Sudden downpour, driven by climate change. There is a lack of a comprehensive warning system to inform people that the Guadalupe River is rising rapidly. Buildings rampant in areas where floods are known to be flooded, plus incomplete information about where there is danger.
These are the same factors that trigger a Kerr County-type disaster in every state of the country. It has been a reality in recent years, and has been happening countless times, with flooding in Vermont, Kentucky, North Carolina and elsewhere causing sadness and billions of dollars of damage.
“Ker County is an extreme example of what’s going on around the world,” said Robert Freudenberg, vice president of Energy and Environmental Programs at the Regional Planning Association. “People are at risk for this, and we need to do more.”
The most obvious problem is that we continue to build in areas that are prone to flooding. The Federal Emergency Administration (FEMA) can accommodate available maps showing high-risk areas. However, according to latest data from the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit climate research firm, there are 7.9 million homes and other buildings located in the FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area, which specifies a location with a chance of being flooded 1% or higher in any given year.
FEMA Flood Area Top 10
Source: First Street Foundation
In Louisiana, a country’s leading 23% of properties are located in the FEMA flood zone. In Florida, it’s about 17%. Arkansas, New Mexico and Nebraska are perhaps the expected members of the top ten, as does New Jersey, which caused flooding and flooding earlier this month with rain and flooding in New York City.
Texas ranks seventh in the country, with about 800,000, or about 6.5% of the state’s total, covering land flooding. Kerr County officials have limited power to prevent people from building in these areas, but even if the government has the ability to prevent risky construction projects, they have not historically been there. Although one study found that some areas are finally beginning to curb the development of floodplain, people are still building in dangerous places.
“We have a natural attraction to water, but we need to know where the limit is,” Floydenberg said. “In places where it is really dangerous, we need to work hard to get people out of harm.”
Kerr County is located in an area called Flow Flood Lane, and at least four cottages sit in an extremely dangerous “flood” at Mystic Camp. Many others stand on the road of 100 years of flooding. In 2019, when Christian summer camps were expanding, owners built more cabins on the waterway.
