Texas Floods (And How You Can Help!)

The rains came to the Hill Country with the 4th of July — raining out celebrations, and washing entire RV parks away… I woke up to rain on that “Independence Day”, feeling like the sky was crying. Rain is usually a major blessing here in Texas, where the droughts can be long and punishing — but then I read about catastrophic floods not far from here, in Kerrville. 

Whole families were taken by the river, along with their homes in the darkness that terrible night. It’s still being debated what warning they had, especially with so many of our structures around weather and emergency preparedness have been systematically dismantled by corrupt politicians who want to pretend that climate collapse won’t eventually come for us all. It’s unclear what state and governmental services and aid will be available to those left to pick up the pieces, or what will happen when the rural hospitals that serve those communities are shut down. Mutual aid and community care is in action, I know that much. But it’s cold comfort, when anyone going through this kind of nightmare should be able to trust that the powers that be will have their backs in their time of need.

The weather here is rarely a simple thing — and now it’s becoming even more fraught, more dangerous. I think: it didn’t have to be this way. None of this nightmare we’re experiencing needed to be this way. But here we are now. 

The floodwaters have now mostly receded, and the debris is slowly being cleared away, but the heaviness and grief continue to hang over Central Texas like the storm clouds that caused all this pain in the first place. Many of us had been praying for rain to assuage the long drought here — but no one wanted it to come like this… Or to take so much away.

I’m very grateful to have been safe in the storms, but was extremely rattled & heartsick by the level of devastation that has occurred down here. It will have been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina at the end of August, and my PTSD from those memories is definitely being activated by all this, in a big way. 

Just because it didn’t hit us as hard in the city doesn’t mean we weren’t messed up by it all — and trying to do everything we can to help out the people & animals who’ve just had their lives & homes destroyed. More than seven people died in my county alone, & by the time everyone is found, the death toll is expected to be way over 100 in these Hill Country flash floods. 

The magnitude of the loss here is reverberating throughout our communities. Many of our towns and counties have been impacted by the waters that rushed over the banks of rivers and roads, washing away homes, cars, animals, and far too many lives.

The tragedy at Camp Mystic is weighing on our hearts in a way that I think many of us have no idea how to reckon with. We are still in shock over it all.

Every life lost to these floods is devastating, but those little girls — swept away in the dark hours before dawn… It just hurts too much.

Our horror in holding the loss of these innocent kids is hard to reckon with — the grief of their mothers, fathers, siblings, and friends just feels completely unfathomable. Those little ones came to Mystic to sing and play and challenge themselves a little bit — bravely going away from home to a place where they should have been safe to experience the magic of summer camp, and then…return home again to their families. 

I cried a lot writing this — reading over the list of their names, and looking at the photos of their sweet faces. I learned that some of the girls were found by search and rescue teams, clinging to each other in the muddy water, or holding hands. I can’t stop thinking about what those last moments were like for them, and how scared they must have been. That they were comforting one another in the dark. 

My heart breaks over and over — for them, and for their parents. I didn’t know any of these children, but I know I was with so many people across the state and beyond, praying fervently that they would be found, safe. Alive. They should still be here, should be back at home now, should be getting to enjoy the rest of their summers. This shouldn’t have been their last summer on this earth. 

The fact that they aren’t is bringing up a lot of emotions for people that are hard to deal with — and I’m seeing once again that anger and blame are easier for many of us to feel than grief. We want to know exactly who is to blame, and we want them to be help accountable — and for there to be a reckoning. We want change to happen so that nothing like this ever happens again. Many of us are discovering that it happened back in 1987, when 10 summer campers died — and it feels like no one learned anything from that. 

I know firsthand from experiencing Hurricane Katrina and other climate collapse and systemic failure related weather disasters, that our instinct is to find the reasons, to figure out who was responsible for it all being so unimaginably fucked up, and to tell stories and try to make meaning from horrible things that just feel so senseless. 

And the reality is — there absolutely are people and governments and policies and the ways that we are all living that contribute to these disasters becoming more and more common, and constantly more dangerous. We do need reckoning, and we desperately need things to change for the better. We need people to be protected, properly warned, rescued, and supported after the weather does its worst.

But in this moment, many of those arguments, pointing fingers, and hot takes (especially from people who don’t live here), don’t do anything to help the people grieving their children, loved ones, pets, and homes. The victim blaming of Texans who are being told they somehow “deserved this” because how people think they voted is especially awful and shitty. No one needs to hear any of that right now — most of all the people who just lost their whole world… 

I saw this piece written by an unknown parent and friend of the Hill Country that I think speaks perfectly to what a lot of us have been feeling: 

“My heart has split its seams, one part cradles what is still mine, the other drifts downstream, aching, reaching for someone else’s child. There are no words wide enough to hold this kind of sorrow. No comfort, only this: We see you. We weep with you. Our hearts break beside yours.”

The pain ripples outwards from the nexus of these overflowing, deadly rivers — to the first responders who will likely be scarred forever by what they’ve seen recently, the former campers whose happy memories of summers canoeing and making lanyards are darkened now, the classmates and friends of those girls, their teachers and all the other camp counselors who survived. 

Surviving these things carries its own leaden weight — and working through the trauma of it all will take a long time. 

In the days after the floods, I was seeing people trying to do their shopping at our beloved H-E-B (if you don’t already know, this grocery chain routinely does more to help people here than our inept politicians) blinking back tears while picking out juice boxes for their kids. People were having such a hard time going through the motions of their daily lives, work, child care, social events — while feeling completely shell-shocked and shaken. Even if they weren’t directly affected, many people here are just emotionally shattered by the impact of these floods… 

The extreme weather chaos just feels very nonstop here, and everywhere. The aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina is still so sharp, along with the brutal California wildfires, and more lethal flooding in New Mexico. If you haven’t been affected yet by extreme weather events and disasters, I hate to tell you that it’s likely only a matter of time. I don’t think that anywhere is really safe, anymore. 

But I do know that wherever we are, our the strength of our communities is our only way to survive any of this. I’m looking now, as always, to the helpers — the regular people who feel motivated to turn their grief and anger into action, and do something to make a difference.

Case in point: I had a gaggle of volunteers (just kids, really!) show up at my house to help move out huge piles of debris I still had left over from the storms that hit us so hard in June. It was really humbling to receive that help, especially when there’s so much need elsewhere.  My roof is still smashed from a giant tree falling on it in one of the other big storms, and I still have so much damage that neither I or the volunteers can manage, but it’s just gonna have to wait.

In the days after the floods, I helped a friend load up a U-Haul van full of donations, and sent some pet beds, food, and carriers to Austin Pets Alive, for animals impacted by the flooding. We’re all just trying to move the help (and supplies!) around, wherever we can. 

In the aftermath of all the devastation, I found out that my friend Brianna Keeper lost her home, and everything she owned or ever made as the river she lived alongside in Hunt, Texas swelled and flowed through her house.

She lived right on the river, in the house where she took care of both her parents, until they passed. This home was supposed to be her forever place, and she’d learned to build beautiful boats to take out on the water. 

When the waters rose with a fury, she was barely able to get out with her life, and her little dog Fidel. But she saved her neighbor’s lives by waking them up in those terrifying hours before dawn, and making sure they could get some kind of safety until more help came. 

She described it as being in “the mouth of a monster” — the fury of the rushing river cracked her pier and beam house in half, and rose as tall as she is (5 feet, 4 inches). 

Now her home is being gutted by volunteers, all her possessions covered in mud. There are people willing to help rebuild, if she can get enough money for materials, and she’s waiting to hear if a FEMA trailer might be provided, but as that agency (along with so many others) is also being gutted, there’s not a lot of hope that will happen.

I know what it’s like to lose everything in one night. After Hurricane Katrina blew my roof off in New Orleans (20 years ago in August), I recovered what I could from my destroyed life, and had to try and rebuild myself and a sense of community, here in Austin. 

That first week back (ATX is my hometown, where I was born and grew up), I spent a lot of time on hold with FEMA, trying to assess the whereabouts of all my friends who’d been through the storm, wearing awkwardly fitting donated clothes, and feeling very adrift and traumatized. 

There were no GoFundMes or Venmo back in 2005. I remember going to a fundraiser for Katrina refugees at the Carousel Lounge, and I met kind punk friends who offered to come over and help me clean mold off of the furniture and books I could salvage. 

But I never directly received any money — and I really could have used it to buy new clothes and shoes that actually fit me, and replace everything I’d lost in the storm. 

So, I want to help out Brianna directly now — because though there are lots of great organizations doing important flood relief work, many of them have received a ton of donations, while the individuals affected may never receive the immediate financial help they need. 

We raised $450 for Brianna on the last full moon in Capricorn, just from folks donating directly — and that helped out a lot! But it’s just a drop in the bucket, considering everything she’s going to need to rebuild her life, moving forward.

This isn’t an easy thing to manage any at any age, but when I went through it, I was 26 years old. Brianna is 68 now — and the idea of having to start all over from scratch as an elder is incredibly overwhelming. 

Her neighbors have started a GoFundMe for her that is now more than halfway funded. They and her family know her as Brian, which she also goes by, for ease of relating in very small town Hunt, Texas. Brianna accepts any pronouns (she/he/they) and identifies as queer and trans/non-binary. 

Brianna is an incredibly kind, generous, and gentle person — a maker, artist, gardener, and nature lover. She got through the pandemic making jams, jellies, and. pickles — and after her folks died, switched her focus from painting landscapes in acrylics to building gorgeous boats. 

An amazing handbuilt canoe, made by Brianna — with a backdrop of one of her paintings.

Brianna isn’t certain what this next chapter holds, but remains hopeful that she’ll find some way to create some beauty from the rubble. But right now, it’s all about survival, and getting through each day by putting one foot in front of the other.

You can donate from afar through the GoFundMe link above, and by coming out to the benefit show for her on Saturday the 26th, here in Austin, at the Carousel Lounge.

Raffle tickets will be available at the door, and a portion of the cover collected will go directly to Brianna (as will everything from the sale of raffle tickets!) 

Let’s get her back on her feet, and help create some ease in her life, knowing that she’s got some money for whatever comes next. ♥