Floods in Texas: can we rely on the state anymore?

With governments and administrations increasingly failing to protect us, perhaps we need to be more self-reliant. Indeed, we may have no choice.

At the time of writing, at least 119 people are thought to have died in the flash floods in Texas on Independence Day weekend. Most tragically, many of the deaths were at Camp Mystic, a Christian all-girl summer camp built on the banks of the River Guadalupe. The younger children were in accommodation just 225 feet from the edge of the river. There were flood warnings and two flash flood alerts. Unfortunately, these came at 1.14am and 4.03am local time. Moreover, Camp Mystic had a 'no tech' policy, with mobile phones handed in, so the alerts were likely not heard or seen.

Without a usable warning, those in the path of the flood waters were in great danger. As a video on BBC News shows, the area went from seemingly fairly normal to completely inundated in a matter of minutes. The article also shows a comparison between the normal state of one camp dormitory and the aftermath, with waters rising well above head height inside.

After such a tragic event, the question arises: could anything have been done to prevent such a shocking loss of life? Unfortunately, there is a degree of politicking going on. For those on the left, the problems are climate change causing extreme weather and budget cuts to weather services. Yet, floods are not uncommon in this area (there were major floods in 1936, 1952, 1972, 1973, 1978, 1987, 1991 and 1997) and there is no overall trend in extreme rainfall for this area nor for the US as a whole. Preliminary evidence suggests recent budget cuts had made no difference to the particular circumstances around this flood. For those on the right, institutional incompetence and/or the Biden administration gets the blame - but is that simply (and perhaps unhelpfully) political point-scoring?

First things first: the floods are just another reminder that human beings are all too often at the mercy of the power of natural forces. Flash floods, like in Texas or in Valencia last year, can cause mayhem in minutes. Human progress is measured in the ability to overcome the vagaries of nature. It would appear in this case that the rising waters - in an area that is apparently called Flash Flood Alley for its history of such events, including a similar event in 1987 - would have caused enormous damage regardless of whatever systems were in place.

But we do have to ask how it is that in areas prone to flooding, more had not been done to at least warn people about the dangers. After other floods in recent years, there were attempts to improve warning systems, but they were rejected on budgetary grounds. As recently as last autumn, the Telegraph reports, the local county government estimated that early-warning sirens could have been installed for as little as $1000 each. Sometimes, sadly, it takes a disaster to make us realise where our priorities should lie.

As climate researcher and commentator Roger Pielke Jr notes:

This tragedy occurred in a location that has among the greatest risks in the nation of flash flooding, where kids in summer camps have previously been swept away to their deaths, and where warning systems are (apparently and incredibly) not in place. This tragedy never should have happened and it should never happen again. If there was ever an issue where politicians should come together to take action to ensure that this type of tragedy never happens again - this is it.

Perhaps it is right to point the finger at the failure of the state to prepare properly for such events. For example, the local authorities were refused federal funding for an early-warning system. But there must also be a degree of responsibility by those directly affected. Why on earth were children in a camp on a flood plain in an area with a history of flooding? At the very least, it is reasonable to ask if the camp had been built with potential flooding in mind, including the provision of refuges. Was there a system at the camp to watch out for warnings and were there flood drills in the same way that fire drills are now the norm?

That need to 'do it yourself' is even more pronounced in an era where increasing demands are placed on the state, yet it seems incapable of delivering what we need. We've seen that even with much less dramatic flooding in the UK. Take the example of flood gates in Perth not being closed despite flood warnings. When a decision was made, it was too late.

But in more and more areas of our lives, state failure is becoming obvious. Roads covered in potholes go unrepaired - sometimes with deadly consequences. Ambulances can take hours to arrive, even for serious cases. Criminals seem to act with impunity. The list goes on and on. The state seems to spend ever-greater sums with less and less effect.

Adrian Wooldridge at Bloomberg bemoans the inability to run the country:

The British civil service, once widely regarded as a Rolls-Royce, is now a sputtering Trabant. The decline of the Foreign Office is so pronounced that a recent ambassador to France struggled to speak the local language. The Office for National Statistics calculates that, in the second quarter of 2024, public-sector productivity was 2.6% lower than it was in 2023 and 8.6% lower than it was in the fourth quarter of 2019… If the art of governing means a combination of thinking about where you want to go in the long term and keeping the ship of state in good working order, then Britain is failing at both.

Perhaps it is time to stop looking to governments to solve our problems, because it looks more and more like they are incapable of doing so.

Image: World Central Kitchen via Wikimedia Commons.