On what was meant to be a three-day weekend celebrating the United States’ independence from England in 1776, children attending summer camps or spending time outdoors with family and friends experienced a rare, once-in-a-century event of large-scale death and natural destruction in the Texas Hill Country.
During the weekend of July 4, 2025, multiple rivers and low-lying plains experienced severe flash floods, with some river levels rising by twenty feet. The following week, emergency efforts continued nonstop. Reports indicate that about 12 inches of rain fell within forty-five minutes during the early morning hours of the holiday while people slept, including those in positions of authority who should have been monitoring the situation, after the area had already received prolonged rain that saturated the land.
I have been working on this post for over a month now. The news has continued to release new details about the events, so it hasn’t been far from my thoughts. Due to various factors, around 130 people have been confirmed dead. As search efforts continued after the flood, the number of missing people decreased, but the death toll kept rising. Every time I started working again, the numbers had to be updated.
What has been especially hard for many to understand is that more than twenty of those tragic deaths were children attending summer camps along a river. This event highlights social issues like proper land development, government responsibility and accountability, mankind’s attempts to control and alter nature, and why bad things still happen—and why sometimes it happens to good people. Of these questions, the last two will likely be the primary focus of some posts as I work through my thoughts.