At the end of September 2000, the long -standing county of Ker, Texas, resident W. Thornton sec -younger, sat down with an oral historian to Tell his story. Like many residents recorded within the decades of the efforts of the historical commission of the Ker, to document the history of the community, the Secor was much to say about the floods of the area.
“It seems that it also happens at night,” said Sekor about the local floods that he and his family survived. “I don’t see most of it.”
The Secor, who died in 2022, was the head of the third-generation lodge, which is still running along the Guadalupe River. His oral story shares family memories of floods that return until 1932 – as the time when the flood this year washed away the majority of the cabins that his grandfather built.
Now the SECOR daughter, Mandi Seka Lipkomb, remains given the future of the lodge after another devastating flood, July 4. Secor Lipscomb is the owner of the fourth -generation and operator the same lodge, Waltonia on the river.
Often, when I try to understand the place or process the big news, I am looking for records stored by local historical societies and libraries. In archival documents, preserved photos and oral collections, you can start seeing how the community understands itself. So, according to the news about the floods in Central Texas -Hill -the country, I went out for a week, I went to seek a historical context. What are the local knowledge that people who live or live in what is repeatedly described as a “flash -alaleus”? How people in the past Cur tried from the flood of their time?
Grass with more than 70 oral stories Recorded by the historical commission of Ker begins to answer these questions. Records document the memories of floods that return until 1900, but only oral stories rarely tell a complete or accurate history. However, there is at least one conclusion: everything has a story. This month’s flood that killed more than 130 people in Ker This is not the first time Flash -Return on the Gadalupe River took away the lives of people, including children.
Credit:
Kerrville Daily Times via Newspapers.com
I remember this story when I hear local and government officials say no one could see it. Take This exchange Between reporter and judge of the county Ker Rob Kelly:
Reporter: Why weren’t these camps evacuated?
Kelly: I can’t answer it. I don’t know.
Reporter: Well you’re a judge. I mean you are the chief official here in this county. Why can’t you answer this? There are children who are missing. These camps were in detriment. We knew that this flood was coming.
Kelly: We didn’t know that this flood was coming. Be sure no one knew that such a flood was coming. We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the US. And we are dealing with floods regularly. When it rains, we get water. We did not have reason to believe that it would be something like what happened here. No one.
Last week my colleague Jennifer Berry Haws wrote about an unusual resemblance Between Texas Floods and Hurricane Helen, which struck North Carolina last year. In both disasters, the weather forecasts were predicted by potential devastation, but people remained in detriment.
And, as another colleague, the propublica editor Abram Lasthant noted in the work about how Climate change makes catastrophes such as flood in Texas, more common“In the coming weeks will be tireless, and justified, the analysis of the one who is to blame for this heart loss.”
“Should the Ceur county, where most of the deaths occurred, installed the sirens of warning along this area of the waterway, and why were children allowed to sleep in the area prone to the flood at high speed?” Lustgarten wrote. “Why were urgent updates, apparently transmitted only by a mobile phone and on the Internet in rural limits?”
When we expect albo as journalists digging their oral stories that show, the residents of the Keri county warned each other, as well as the aliens and the owners, about the floods. In his oral history, the 2000 SECOR said he remembered the time in the spring of 1959, when his father tried to warn one new woman in the city about building a house so close to the river.
“He brought her out and showed her water signs on the trees in front of our house and everything,” Sekr said, most likely, citing the watermarks from the 1932 flood, which the local newspaper called “the most catastrophic flood, which, if – sneezed the upper Guadalpepe Valley.” Flood was killed at least Seven people.
“Oh,” she says, “it will never happen again,” the sec recalled.
He said her body was found on the tree a few months after the flood had swept and the roof on which she was on the visit.
“This will surprise the aliens when we get another flood as” 32 -I “,” the Secor said in 2000.
“This is when -something will get us again.”
As the Gadalupe river rose on the weekend of July 4, a 16-kabin home, which his daughter owned, was sold and full of guests. They all escaped the flood, SECOR LIPSCB said. They ran, some barefoot in the mud, up the steep hill behind the retaining wall. They hid in the barn.
Later, Secor Lipscomb assessed the damage to his family property. What she saw left her in tears: there was water in four cabins before the ceiling. Two more flooded about 5 feet. But among the debris was a crew of almost 40 volunteers ready to help with cleaning.
As long as I addressed her to ask her about her father’s oral history, six cabins and the head office were already demolished.
The cabin, her great -grandfather and grandfather, built together more than 100 years ago. But it won’t be much longer. It is so damaged by water that it will also have to go.
“This is our family history, our family heritage,” the Secor Lipscomb said to me. “Of course, we’re going to restore.”
If they do this, their customers will be ready. Many of the families who survived the flood have already told her that they would be the first in the queue to book the next available July 4.
