A Human Choice

 Warning systems were not the problem in Kerrville and along the Guadalupe River. (For one thing, the damages extend for almost 200 miles, far beyond the reach of Kerrville or any warning system Kerr County might have installed.) No, the real culprit was more basic: floodplains, and what was done to protect people from them. Read the article; it’s well worth your time. The tl;dr? Nuthin’. Nuthin’ was done. Disasters really are “a human choice.”

And the special session probably won’t address a landowner’s precious right to use his river bottom land as he pleases, even if that use is to make it open to the public at their great risk.

The Lege will provide money for warning systems that sound whenever it gets cloudy (the only way to be sure with flash floods); or that warn the water’s comin’ ten minutes before it gets there. (This water traveled 200 miles in a few hours. How much warning can you reasonably give, and to whom?) The latter is clearly useless, the former is the boy who cried “WOLF!” Except in that story, the wolf did eventually show up.

But declare flood plains off limits to development and economic use without adequate protection from floods?

Yeah, that’ll happen. Ten years after hell freezes over.