From the Rio Grande to the Guadalupe River, rivers and creeks roll through the Texas Hill Country, and Central and South Texas.
On July 4, record rainfall caused the Guadalupe River in Kerr County to rise as much as 25 feet in a matter of minutes. Families, houses, trees and cars were all swept away downstream.
This is not the first time this part of Texas, nicknamed “flash flood alley,” has seen devastating flooding.
Floods all but wiped out parts of downtown and West Side San Antonio in 1921. Fifty-one people were officially killed in that event, but some historians believe up to 250 may have died.
Char Miller is the author of West Side Rising: How San Antonio’s 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement.
He spoke to Fronteras in 2021 about how the floods particularly impacted San Antonio’s historic West Side.
“There was no weather service flashing bulletins, and so on the West Side, those creeks rose rapidly and immediately spilled out of their very narrow banks and blew into the abutting neighborhoods,” said Miller. “The damage was intense, in part, because it's right around midnight and most people are asleep.”
Miller, a historian and environmental analysis scholar at Pomona College in Claremont, California, said the Westside Creeks were later restored with a view towards environmental conservation, recreation, and flood control.
“This is a story that is at once really devastating, but also is celebratory in that look at how the community … how it saved itself, and that's a tale that's rare in environmental justice stories,” he said.
Search and rescue efforts in Kerr County remain ongoing.
View how you can help survivors of the Kerr County floods below:
