The Guadalupe River burst its banks and overflowed on 4 July 2025 in the Hill Country of central Texas, to the west of the state capital of Austin. Following an overnight 7 to 10 inches of rain, the river rose by as much as 33 feet, submerging the town of Kerrville, where a planned annual Fourth of July celebration had to be abandoned. Kerr County saw the most deaths, with 60 adults and 36 children losing their lives, including 27 girls and staff members at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp on the South Fork of the river. The camp, which dates back to 1926, was housing 557 campers and over a hundred staff members at the time, between its Guadalupe and Cypress Lake sites. Owner and director, Richard “Dick” Eastland was among those killed. Several other summer camps are also located on the banks of the river. A total of 121 deaths have since been reported from six counties, including Burnett, Kendall, Travis (which contains Austin), Tom Green, and Williamson counties, while 173 people are still missing. Trees have been uprooted, homes lifted off their foundations, and vehicles destroyed by the raging waters, which soon filled with floating debris. Roads are muddy and impassable in places. Injured and orphaned wild animals have had to be rescued. It is carnage all around.
The Guadalupe River, given its name by Spanish explorers as far back as 1689, flows south-east for about 230 miles, fed by the springs of the Texas Hill Country on its way to San Antonio Bay on the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America to Donald Trump and his followers). ‘Flash Flood Alley’, a crescentic area stretching between Dallas and San Antonio and including the Guadalupe River Basin, is demarcated at its eastern edge by the Balcones Escarpment, a line of cliffs and steep hills which parallels Interstate 35. The area is prone to flash-flooding, the frequency and severity of which appears to be increasing with global warming. The Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority listed major flood events in the area in 1936, 1952, 1972, 1973, 1978, 1987, 1991 and 1997. On 16 July 1987, under similar circumstances, ten teenagers from the Pot O’ Gold Christian Camp near the town of Comfort were killed as a bus they were leaving on was swept away by the flood waters.
On 2 July 2025, state inspectors gave the go-ahead for Camp Mystic after approving its disaster plan and evacuation procedures. A bulletin issued by the Austin-San Antonio office of the National Weather Service (NWS) at 1:18PM CDT (Central Daylight Time) on 3 July warned that “pockets of heavy rain are expected and may result in flooding of low-lying areas, rivers/creeks, and low water crossings.” Further warnings were issued by the NWS on 4 July, at 1:14 AM CDT and 4:03 AM CDT. The NWS warnings were backed up by meteorologists at AccuWeather, a weather forecasting service. The local police department then announced a “life-threatening event” at 5:16 AM CDT, while sixteen minutes later the Sheriff’s department instructed residents to “move to higher ground immediately.” There appear to have been gaps in communication at the highest levels as key Kerr County officials later claimed at a press conference to have been alerted only later in the day.
President Trump first declared a federal emergency on 6 July. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), not particularly favoured by the president, was activated and the Coast Guard called in. Rescue efforts involved local, state, and federal agencies, as well as volunteers. Boats, drones, helicopters, and cadaver dogs participated in search-and-rescue operations. Local residents pitched in and helped distribute supplies and assist vulnerable members of their communities. Mexican volunteers from the Dirección de Protección Civil y Bomberos de Acuña in Coahuila and the nonprofit organisation Fundación 911 crossed the border in a show of solidarity. As the flooding spread, Texas Governor Greg Abbott went on to declare a state of disaster in 15 counties – Bandera, Coke, Comal, Concho, Gillespie, Kendall, Kerr, Kimble, Llano, Mason, McCulloch, Menard, Reeves, San Saba, and Tom Green.
Texas often experiences extreme weather conditions and rapid weather changes, more so than any other state in the US. Hence, it is essential for Texans to be suitably prepared for natural disasters. On this occasion, human encroachment on the natural floodplain in the Guadalupe River Basin has been complicated by waterlogging of the ground caused by hard, compacted, impermeable soil following an earlier drought, with its underlying limestone bedrock, while the steep terrain encourages the accumulating water to flow into shallow creeks and rivers. Remnants of a tropical storm, Storm Barry, added to the warm and moist air moving in from the Gulf. This moisture-laden air came into contact with colder and drier air from the north, condensed, and manifested itself in heavy rainfall.
Conducting summer camps in flood-prone areas, in retrospect, may not have been such a good idea. Camp Mystic counsellors had no access to walkie-talkies and their smartphones had to be switched off, which meant they were oblivious to text alerts. They were indeed asleep at night when the floods began. Plans to install outdoor warning sirens in Kerr County had not been implemented owing to the high costs. The detrimental impact of any DOGE cuts to the NWS and its parent agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is yet to be determined.
A blame game is only just beginning, although Texas state officials naturally wish to prioritise search-and-rescue and cleanup operations over all else. As is usual in America today, Republicans and Democrats have diametrically opposite views on what could have been done to prevent damage and save lives. In keeping with expectations, bizarre conspiracy theories from the far-right, such as the role of “weather modification and geoengineering” by cloud seeding (Marjorie Taylor Greene and many others), and “DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) hires” in emergency services who are not suited for the job (Charlie Kirk), are also emerging. Kirk singled out the actions of Austin Fire Department Chief Joel G. Baker, a Black man, in support of his theory. All that we can surmise at present is that deficiencies in flood warning systems and flood control infrastructure, in the basin of what is being described as one of the most dangerous rivers in America, appear to have let down the people of the Texas Hill Country, who need to be better prepared in future for increasingly severe flash floods in the face of climate change.
Ashis Banerjee