Hope Y’all are safe from the floods
Texas Floods
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We are quite a ways from the area, but it his home. A good friend’s niece is missing, likely dead. I knew others that were rescued. My heart is just broken. I’m heading down into that area this coming weekend, a trip that was already planned.
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We spent the weekend near Wimberley, Texas. That’s about 70 miles from Kerrville. Friday morning, people were telling us to leave. Wimberley has been the site of this type of river flooding multiple times… about 10 years ago, 13 died during a flood. They were taking it very seriously. We looked at the radar and it looked like a hurricane was heading toward us. It was centered on Kerrville, rotating and drifting toward us. But it never came. That rotating storm just stayed where it was and continued to dump all that rain in the same location for hours. But this would have been 3 hours after those children were swept away. Why did this have to happen?
I’ve heard many friends ask similar questions lately. I remember asking it myself after Hurricane Ike and more recently, Hurricane Harvey which also impacted so many, myself included. I’m reminded of Romans 8:28. Though I am not sure how, I know and trust that God knows how He will use this for His Glory and our good.
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Was able to see some of the damage this weekend, just mind-blowing. I feel guilty for not dropping all and heading down there like so many friends did. Heard many tragic stories, and many inspiring ones.
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What did they need help doing? What needs to be done now?
I’m thinking about joining Texas Search and Rescue https://www.texsar.org/ since I am retiring sometime soon.
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They’re at a difficult place now where the large work groups (volunteers and corporate efforts) have to go back to work, so there’s massive cleanup. The problem is that one person or even 5 people going is not incredibly helpful, because they need 100+ people to do some of the jobs–sheer numbers are needed. I really don’t know what to tell you, and would imagine that the best thing to do is reach out to an organization like https://sbtexas.com/disaster-relief/ or Samaritan’s Purse and ask where one can be utilized.
Hi @BanjoBen here in the UK the Government has the power to order the military to provide aid to the civil power. When I was in the army my recruits were ordered to assist the local fire service to help control wild fires on the Yorkshire moors. We had no experience, no equipment and no protective clothing. I was wearing my best dress uniform. Luckily for us when we arrived on site the local fire brigade had the fire under control and the local farmer gifted us a bottle of ice cold beer to quench our thirst. Texas has a massive military presence I would have thought they would have deployed on a rescue mission but I have not heard if the is the case.
There are lots of other volunteer groups here in the UK such as mountain rescue, potholers, divers, lifeboat crews, dedicated women’s volunteer groups who will go out and set up food and drinks support for police fire and ambulance crews in major emergency situations. We even have expert emergency volunteer groups who will head up international rescue teams for earthquakes, tsunami, volcanic disasters.
I assume you have similar organisations in the US where you folks are more prone to having natural disasters than we do.
Yes, of course, the Texas Guard and Coast Guard, etc deployed immediately. They’re still there, it’s just that the damage is so widespread and the governmental forces do not work on private properties once loss of life threats have been addressed.
Sure I guess that’s where our two countries differ. Over here the emergency services don’t differentiate if a disaster occurs on private land then our emergency services still respond.
They do respond like I said above, but they don’t stay to pick up ruined belongings and rebuild homes. There is plenty of citizen help here to do those things with amazing private and public organizations. But it’s the organizing of it all that’s a challenge in any disaster.
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Texansonmission.org — several men in our church are on their chainsaw team. They clear debris, hand out food, rebuild homes ….used to be called Texas Baptist Men Disaster Relief. Our in-laws’ best friends were the grandparents who were washed away, along with their two granddaughters - the granddaughters were in the news alot because when they were found, they were holding hands (and also a rosary, which was seldom mentioned.). So tragic.
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