XPost: misc.survivalism   
   From: DB@cocks.net   
      
   Long, but very well-researched piece on the 4th of July flood in Texas   
   that took many lives.   
      
   The Texas flood was due to a chronic failure   
   to mitigate the eco-impact of past sheep herding   
      
   https://rense.com/general98/Texas-flood.php   
      
   By Yoichi Shimatsu   
   Exclusive to Rense   
   7-14-25   
      
   The mainstream news channels have a knack for spreading confusion and   
   fear while evading the root causes of unanticipated disasters and   
   “inexplicable” tragedies - as is happening in the wake of the Fourth of   
   July killer flood through the Kerrville region of west Texas (which is   
   south of Fredericksburg along the road toward Austin and north of San   
   Antonio). Slightly after midnight on the 4th, a surging wall of water   
   deepened and widen the channel of the usually tame Guadalupe River,   
   plowing under homes, campsites and vehicles along its path. Most   
   heart-rending of all casualties were young girls swept away from the   
   bunkhouses of their summer camp. The over-dramatized mass media   
   subsequently treated this terrifying act of nature as something like   
   “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” or, worse, as a whimsical act of a   
   merciless God.   
      
   For all the political correctness of media lightweights mindlessly   
   spouting catch phrases like “global warming”, “carbon emissions” and   
   “green energy”, the mainstream liberal press has consistently failed to   
   consider - much less detect and analyze - the causal factors affecting   
   regional weather systems now acting with extraordinary intensity across   
   the USA. The specific cause of the unexpected sudden flood, however, has   
   to do with the vast changes in the natural environment above and along   
   the headwaters of several regional rivers including Guadalupe (of this   
   disaster), the Nueces (an underlying element in the Uvalde school   
   massacre) and the ultimate cowboys and Indians waterway the San Saba –   
   which was evacuated this week with the onset of the second mega-flood   
   out of the massive Edwards Plateau. The environmental and human   
   threat/safety importance of the Edwards massif is discussed further   
   along this essay.   
      
   The horrified public reaction over the Guadalupe River flood killing   
   more than a hundred local residents and girl campers in the   
   post-midnight darkness has cast a shadow of obscurity over the root   
   cause of this mega-disaster. The lack of credible explanation about the   
   sudden flood has been followed by the anti-Texan liberal assertion that   
   riverside zoning regulations had been ignored - despite the fact that   
   dozens of properties on river-banks deemed to be safely out of reach   
   along embankments were also swept away in droves with lethal consequence   
   for their inhabitants. It was a monster flood of historic proportions -   
   which has detectable causes in the transformation of the western states   
   from self-sustained rural communities to a current condition of a dying   
   wasteland exploited for housing tracts, vacation homes and new centers   
   of technology divorced from serious long-standing issues related to the   
   natural environment in a changing economy over the past century, most   
   seriously over the past 50 years.   
      
   The day of independent ranchers, migratory herders, independent   
   craftsmen and roving bands of Indians may seem to be long ago over and   
   out - along with those memories of the frontier and the notion of range   
   land shared by local communities. But it’s been the “taming of nature” -   
   with ever-increasing bureaucratic rules and legal codes making an   
   independent rural lifestyle practically impossible – and that   
   disappearance of local stewardship has removed all human barriers to   
   forest fires, drought, water scarcity, pollution, periodic floods and   
   neglect of natural resources across the western states – not just Texas.   
   In the fading light of a once wild west, the wild rage of the Guadalupe   
   River is nature’s call to return us back toward values of hard work,   
   craft practices, moral behavior, common sense and love of the land as   
   practiced by our frontier ancestors. Failure to learn from the   
   mega-disaster will be yet another factor in the collapse of rural   
   America, broken apart at the seams and sold to the highest corporate   
   bidder and Frankenstein data center from Florida to Pennsylvania to   
   Kentucky and on to California. Let us not interpret the tragic deaths of   
   the Kerrville flood victims as an excuse to turn our backs on rural   
   America but instead accept this tragedy with a noble spirit and renewed   
   commitment to this vast precious land - yours and mine - for Americans   
   will always be pioneers rooted in the land in search of wider vistas   
   blessed by God’s grace.   
      
   Neither have the news reporters and media pundits considered the   
   possibility that so-called “modernization” across the American West over   
   past decades might have destabilized the tricky balance between solid   
   ground and stormy conditions. Indeed, sudden downpours routinely sweep   
   through “arroyos” (storm-carved channels) across the dry zones of the   
   western states Arizona, New Mexico and west Texas, resulting in   
   permanent depopulation of vast areas of nature’s flood zones.   
      
   Stuck by the Storm System   
      
   Had not I protected my own abode in New Mexico similarly threatened with   
   flooding (by the same storm system although of lesser power than the   
   Kerrville flood) – and minimally deflected with piles of bricks, new   
   rain curtains and my relentless sweeping away rainwater off the back   
   patio with a broom while being personally soaked like a frog - well, I   
   would now be residing inside an emergency shelter for the homeless. That   
   physical effort, prior preparation for heavy rainfall and sheer   
   determination, while successful at saving the property, kept me from my   
   journalistic impulse to immediately drive to Kerrville to conduct   
   interviews of local residents and make first-hand assessments of causal   
   factors - as I had done previously on-site at the Uvalde school shooting   
   (which was largely motivated by planning for an electric power plant by   
   Nueces River to supply the Los Angeles basin with TV access).   
      
   Well, the harsh fact in Kerrville that so many residents and summertime   
   sojourners were overpowered and therefore unable to swim to shore   
   resulting in death by drowning made my early-on hope of covering the   
   flood situation a pre-ordained exercise in futility. That disappointment   
   of being powerless to come to the aid of those frightened people swept   
   along the churning water came to pass – and there would have been   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)