July 7, 2025 • 32 mins
Texas Flooding Update / Tales from Camp Mystic: Parents are still waiting for news, Michael McCown discusses the situation, and "Girl Dads" are searching for updates. In Texas, at least 82 people have died due to the flooding as rescue efforts continue. Officials were concerned about the flood risk to youth camps but decided against implementing a warning system.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app on this Monday, July seventh, twenty
twenty five. Is everybody back to work? It didn't feel
like it with the way traffic was moving today. It's
always such a nice surprise when you realize, oh, people
are still gone, they're still on vacation. It only took
(00:21):
the appropriate amount of time to get to work. Gary
is on vacation and he will be on vacation for
quite some time. I'm actually wondering how he's going to
be on vacation. He doesn't do vacations. You know those
people who don't do vacation. I have no problem with
doing vacations. It's the same thing for the people who
say I'm never going to retire. I don't know what
(00:44):
I do with myself. I like going to work. I
too like going to work. I do think it's important
for me to go somewhere at least once a day,
but like that somewhere could be anything. It could be,
you know, going to the grocery store, going to yoga,
going on a walk.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I mean, it could be anything. Just leave the house.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I think that's gonna be my thing is I got
to leave the house at least once a day.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
But some people there, they got to go to work.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
They've got to have that that purpose that I'm doing something.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I don't have that purpose. Gary, I think definitely does.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So it's gonna be I can't wait un till he
comes back and we get to hear about how he
was able to relax, or maybe how he wasn't able
to relax. I don't know, all right, so hang out
with me. It's gonna be a fun two weeks. I
don't know how I'm gonna deal with all the pressure
because listen, I know y'all like to think that I
get suspended all the time, and I walk a line.
(01:42):
I walk the line very very close to the edge.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
This is true.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
And if I'm on my own, so I don't have
anyone to pull me back, tell me no. Kana can
tell me no, but she also walks the line. I mean,
you've hurt her nuggets to do so, and so I mean,
I gotta be careful because if I do run a
foul of the law here at KFI, there's no fallback on.
(02:10):
There's no, Gary can come in and clean it up. Uh,
there's there's nobody really who can come in and fill
for this length of time without creating some sort of
complete mess for management. So I've got to kind of
be on good behavior. We'll see how long that lasts.
But so the inmates are running the asylum.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
As I mean, I'm.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Feeling pretty strong at this point, Heather in terms of
doing the right thing for the next couple of weeks,
but that could go by the wayside at a moment's notice.
We know this and you're here, which is another bat.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
And I know. I'm like, I'm not going to be
a good influence either horrible influence.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
I heard you this morning. I'm like, great, like at
least like, oh, at least I'll have Amy King. No, no,
because Amy is also a walk the line person. Like
she is a straight she is a straight she is
a straight shooter.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
And then I hear you and I'm like, great, Oh
the wheels are off, let's go.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah. But anyway, we're gonna have a good time. Michael
Monks will be coming along as well. Tons to get
to I don't know if you heard us teas it
over the weekend, but if you were a teenager of
the nineties like myself. You went to a rave or
two and some sort of nondescript warehouse that you probably
couldn't find with a GPS assistant, Thomas' Guide or otherwise.
(03:28):
Where did these things take place? I have no idea.
I just remember great, big sorts of stadium not stadiums well,
because sometimes stadiums outdoor parks arenas just giant. Like I said, warehouses.
Where the hell were these things? Anyway, raves, they're coming back,
but they're not for your kids. Well they are for
(03:50):
your kids, they're for your youngest kids. There is this
new movement about raves for babies, and we'll get into that.
There was an another article in this vein in the
New York Times over the weekend. I still read the
physical paper on Sunday because I'm an old but I
love it. And there was an article yesterday about meditation
(04:14):
sound bats for babies as well, not just for the
elevated of mind in adulthood.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
It's for the babies.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So apparently we're into doing all sorts of influences for
the young'uns.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
But we start there just a.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Story that you're going to hear about for the remainder
of your days. There will be books written about this.
There will be historical fiction written about this. There will
be documentaries and movies. There will be Monday Morning quarterbacks.
There already are of what went wrong. And the fact
of the matter is, disasters are disasters for a reason.
(04:55):
Much like we saw with the Palisades fire. Remember we
had that forecast. I knew the forecast was going to
be for extreme fire danger. Yet you saw how quickly
those flames took off on that morning in the Palisades.
We are no stranger to fires here. Wildfire season is
(05:16):
all year round in southern California.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
But yet there are.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Events that catch us off guard. And that's exactly what
happened in Texas. The area is called flash flood Alley.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
These were not areas new to flooding.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
This was something that happens all the time, and they
got the forecast and the forecast was dire. The forecast,
by the way, remains so for the next twenty four
to forty eight hours. We are not out of the
woods in central Texas in terms of flash flooding. But
much like we saw in the Palisades, with the ferocity ferocity,
(05:52):
ferocity that word of that fire you saw with the
flooding in Flash Flood Alley. You knew the floods were
going to hit. You knew they were going to hit
over the Fourth of July weekend, and they were prepared
to a point for this, the way they always are.
But when you're talking about a river rising twenty two
(06:15):
feet in forty five minutes, there's no way to prepare
for that. There are no crews that are going to
save anyone from that. There are no sand bags, there
are no amount of sand bags. There was nothing that
you were going to do. Nobody saw the ferocity of
this river coming.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
This is a river, Guadalupe River.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
You'll hear story after story after story of people, generation
after generation after generation of growing up at this river
in the summer. Wherever you're from, whether it's Michigan or
northern California or Central Texas, there's a river or a
lake or body of water that you remember going out
(07:01):
on as a kid. You remember playing in it, you
remember urban legends, you remember kind of testing boundaries, you
remember playing and rafting growing up, your siblings, your friends, whatever.
That's what the Guadalupe River is to people who have
gone to camps, whose parents went to these camps, whose
kids went to these camps. This was a river where
(07:23):
all their happiest, arguably childhood memories were made in the summer,
and the idea that this river could come and turn
into something so very deadly is a tragedy in its own.
The death toll in Central Texas now eighty two. Rescue
efforts are ongoing. You're hearing stories about dads combing through
(07:44):
the rubble, knowing that it's just rubble, knowing that they're
going to see little girl's bodies out there in the
in the trees, in the brush, in the mud, and
they're still going out there to see if they can
find their little girl. Get more tragic than what's happening
as we speak in Central Texas. Camp Mystic is a
(08:06):
camp that we keep hearing about. And the stories coming
out of Camp Mystic, from the little girls who survived,
what they saw, what they heard. It seems like this
camp was broken up into two points, a lower point
closer to the river, and a higher point. The girls
from the higher point are talking about what they heard
on the other half of camp. We're hearing about the
(08:27):
survivors who they were. This is a camp that's been
around for decades and everybody knows someone who went to
this camp. We'll tell you about the stories from Camp
Mystic when we come back.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
All right, here are the facts.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
The death toll in Central Texas is at eighty two
because of that flooding. As I mentioned, search and rescue
efforts are ongoing, including at that Mystic Girls camp on
the Guadalupe River. Ten children still missing. They've been able
to recover the bodies of forty adults and twenty eight children.
(09:11):
Some have been rescued live people from rooftops and trees.
There has been a major disaster declaration for the area.
Those are the facts, but here are the stories behind
those facts. Picture this twenty two year old woman, Devin Smith,
was one of the people found alive. She was found
(09:35):
desperately clinging to a tree, barely clinging to a tree, exhausted.
One of the few moments of celebration there. Devon had
been dragged downriver more than fifteen miles, through three dams,
past broken RVs, what was left of an RV park, refrigerators,
(09:57):
fifteen miles She was dragged through the river waters from
about four am, when a lot of this flooding hit
was overnight, adding to the horror of it all. Talk
about no response time, it's no response time, plus you're
just waking up. It's a dead of night. Four am,
(10:19):
Devon is taken by the floodwater and she's not rescued
until about ten am. So from four am to ten
am she's in floodwaters, fighting for her life, finally grabbing
a hold of that tree with what strength, I don't know.
Twenty two year old Devon remains obviously hospitalized, staples in
(10:43):
her head, every inch of her body, scratched and battered.
Camp Mystic is one of the big stories coming out
of a massive tragedy, and stories have been trickling out.
This is really a storied summer camp. Books probably have
(11:04):
been written about Camp Mystic before, or certainly have been
the subject. Camps of this nature have been the subject
of countless books and movies. There's something fascinating about the
transformation that happens when you're at summer camp or any
sort of camp, when you're at a formative age. Right
sometimes you're away from home for the first time, you're
(11:26):
in those ages from what nine to fourteen fifteen, where
you're becoming who you are, You're figuring out what you're
going to be. Your dignity is tested, your integrity is
tested when it comes to foraging friendships and boundaries in
terms of physicality and what you can do, and lifelong
bonds are made when you go away to these types
(11:48):
of camps. And these are the types of camps where
you know family after generation after generation will go this camp.
Camp Mystic is a Christian camp and it's a very
tight knit community as you can imagine of parents and alumni.
(12:09):
Three generations of descendants of Lyndon Johnson went there. Laura
Bush was a counselor there. Her daughter Jenna on her
morning show today on television on NBC in tears over this.
Janie Hunt is of course from the Hunt Oil fortune.
One of the towns by the way in the central
Texas area is called Hunt, Texas, no doubt after the
(12:33):
Hunt Oil family. But now you know them as owners
of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Nine year old Janie Hunt, one of the.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Lost parents whose daughters were at camp in this session
that began last weekend, raced towards camp on Friday when
the early reports of the flooding came in. And early
I mean like first thing in the mornings. It all
had happened overnight. There was a brief email from the
(13:03):
camp that parents got, and I want you to put
yourself in the shoes of a parent. You wake up,
you maybe get a news alert on your phone like
we get right, catastrophic flooding Central Texas. You know your
daughter's at camp like she was last year, or maybe
she's there for the first time, and the email from
(13:24):
the camp just says, we have sustained catastrophic level floods.
If your daughter is not accounted for, you have been notified.
If you have not been personally contacted, then your daughter
is accounted for.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Now.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
I am not one to criticize anybody's response to any
sort of tragedy or crisis. I have no idea how
I would respond. Who does You're also in trauma, You're
also in crisis. But to be a parent that gets
that email would be awful. If your daughter is not
(14:06):
accounted for, you've been notified, Well I haven't been notified.
What if that calls around the corner? Do I leave
the house now? Do they have my cell they have
the home number. What if they don't. What if they're
trying to get a hold of me to tell me
something about my daughter? But cell service is gone by
the time I get up there, because guess what, there
(14:27):
was no cell service in a lot of the area
where those camps were. You know how it is, you
go out in nature and it's beautiful, and I was
out in nature last weekend and I kind of loved it.
When my cell signal disappeared, I thought, Oh, relief, leave
my phone in the car on this hike.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I don't have to look at it. No one can
get a hold of me.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
But man, when you're in crisis and somebody you love
is in one of those areas with no cell service,
I can't imagine the panic. So parents, get that email.
If your daughter's not accounted for, you've been notified, If
you haven't been personally contacted, then we know where your
kid is. About seven hundred and fifty girls were at
(15:08):
camp in this session, and the hundreds of campers who
had been stranded there from hours are talking harrowing but little,
piecemeal stories of what their experience was from the middle
of the night when they heard the thunder and the lightning,
to the sound of the helicopters that was just deafening,
(15:28):
to the realizing that their friends on the other side
of the camp were gone. We'll get into their stories
when we come back.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
We are talking about Texas and about the flooding and
about Camp Mystic, and I'll just get right into some
of these stories that are coming.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
From children. And sometimes when you hear the.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Quotes from children, they really nail it, don't They are
something that comes from the purest expression of what you're
going through, without any pretense or bravado or anything. That
is just striking right. Jenny McLennan's ten year old daughter
(16:20):
was among hundreds of children that thankfully was rescued on
fourth of July. Her cabin there at Camp Mystic was
high enough above the river that counselors decided to keep
the children in the cabin as the rank continued to
pour down overnight, and the next day they were rescued
by Texas Parks and Wildlife officers and brought by bus
(16:43):
to a reunification center. Now, the fact that the counselors
made the call was interesting to me that the counselors
decided to keep the children in the cabin.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Remember no self service, and I a lot of self service.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I'm assuming they have walkie talkies and things like that
for the higher ups to make decisions. But camp counselors
in this regard are usually what seventeen nineteen something like that.
It's a very young age to make a decision like that,
and you wonder about the weight that those decisions will
continue to carry as well. This was Jenny mcclennan's daughter's
(17:16):
first summer at sleepaway camp. But when her daughter, after
being rescued throughout this whole thing, gets in the car,
she starts singing camp songs. These are the same songs
sung by Mystic campers for one hundred years. Another mother,
who asked not to be named, set out from Dallas
(17:37):
on Friday morning after she got that alert on her
phone catastrophic flooding. She set out to retrieve her daughter.
She had heard nothing beyond that email that I mentioned.
She only had hope, so she hadn't heard anything. So
she's hoping, well, since I haven't heard anything, maybe my
daughter's accounted for. So she goes to that reunification center
at Ingram Elementary School. Her and her husband wait there
(18:00):
for hours hours. Remember she left first thing in the morning.
At five thirty pm, somebody hands them a phone and
the daughters on the other line, and about three hours
later she walked to them, wearing clean and dry clothes
lent by other campers on higher ground. And this was
her daughter's story. She says, she woke up in the
(18:23):
middle of the night and she was guided by counselors.
There was rushing water and they were led to the
indoor balcony of the camp's recreation center, and the water
continued to rise and rise and rise as they're standing
(18:43):
above on that balcony inside that room. And so the
decision is made that they got to get out of there.
So they trek through the mud to another campsite again,
just hoping that conditions are better there and maybe it's
up to higher ground. And then she could hear the
helicopters and they were able to get her onto one
(19:05):
of the helicopters, and she only described it as loud.
The mother says, we're just so grateful to have our
daughter with us, barely even taking in all the details
of our story, just happy to put her hand on
her head. There was another camper, she sixteen years old,
(19:26):
Calli is her name.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
She says.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
We went to bed thinking it was just a normal thunderstorm.
One minute, you're seeing lightning strike next to your cabin,
and then next to you you hear the waters coming up.
And you have kids, she said, just trying to get
to other cabins, trying to get to safety. Her mother
said that they live in Virginia, but that mom's from
(19:52):
Texas and it was important for her to have her
kids have these Texas roots, and so that's why she
sent her daughter there. I mean, this has been one
of those camps that instills in women. I think I
saw it as kind of strength and femininity. Beauty inside
and out is one of the classes or one of
the electives or what have you that you go to there,
(20:14):
along with all the different sports that they do as well.
This sixteen year old Cali says, you know, one second,
it was really bad thunder and lightning, and one of
the campers ran into our cabin and said, hey, our
cabin is flooding. So we were sharing beds, were had
(20:36):
some girls sleeping on the floors. It was so flooded
in three they thought it was just some flooding. You've
had that, right, maybe it's your basement or whatever. You
get home and you're like, oh man, something broke and
there's like, you know, inches or maybe a foot of water.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
It's awful, what a mess.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Your mind doesn't think that that's going to keep going
up and up and up. And the rain kept coming,
and the water kept going up and up and up.
This sixteen year old started getting really nervous, as did
all the girls in that cabin, as the water was
rushing up and they knew that some of the cabins
were just gone, I mean swept away, gone, like swept
(21:18):
off the foundation, gone from this river that had risen
twenty two feet in forty five.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Minutes, something like that, she says.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Sixteen year old Callie says she put a name tag
on her body in the middle of the night. She said,
I was worried that our cabin might be next, and
I was thinking in my head, if something does happened
and I.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Do get swept away, at least I'll have.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
A name on my body. Sixteen years old and you're thinking,
you know, dog tag style. There was a teenager. That
was another one who was rescued who said that she
and the other girls were his miracle when they learned
that other campers had been lost in the flooding and
(22:04):
when they saw the devastation that it looked nothing like
Camp Mystic. This was a thirteen year old Stella is
her name, and she was in part of the camp
that's on that higher ground and she says, I think
while it was going on, I sort of felt a numbness.
Thirteen year old Stella saying, saying it out loud is
(22:25):
making me realize what actually happened and how bad it
actually is. And that's what I'm talking about. That coming
from a thirteen year old, Like how pure that is
of her, able to lay out perfectly what shock is
that when you're going through it, you're just numb, and
then when you say it out loud, it becomes real.
(22:46):
I mean, she nailed it. This is her sixth summer
at Mystic. Sella says she was on the Cypress Lake
side when the storms rattled her cabin, awake early that
Friday morning. The cabin lost power. At some point during
the night. She could see the headlights of camp leaders
driving the grounds checking on cabins in the rain.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
She said.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
At daybreak, they were told to stay inside and that
breakfast would be delivered. That can't be bad if they're
bringing in breakfast, right. They had no idea what was
going on on the other side of camp. They had
no idea that the other side of camp had been
completely ripped off the foundations and swept away and all
the campers with it.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
She says.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
It wasn't until helicopters began buzzing overhead that she realized
something was truly wrong, and it was the uncertainty, she said,
that really shook up our cabin. They were told to
grab clothes from their trunks so counselors could give dry
clothes to the campers that did survive the other part
of camp, she said. At one point she was told
(23:48):
that the other side of camp had been evacuated due
to the flooding and that the helicopters were airlifting girls
from the property. But they still had no idea of
the scope of the crisis, and as I started to
find out that some of their friends didn't make it,
that they were swept away by the very river that
they loved in summer after summer that they lived to
(24:11):
play in, that they had all their activities, that that
river had risen twenty two feet and wiped them all out. Luckily,
this is a camp built on prayer. This is a
Christian camp, and a lot of those girls, luckily, are
built to lean on prayer. And I think that that
(24:32):
was a major part of how they were able to
handle this. And like I said, we are not out
of it. Twenty four to forty eight hours. They say
the forecast remains dire in terms of flash flooding. Now,
when we come back, we'll talk about what the forecast
was and what forecasters nationally are saying in terms of
(24:53):
was this preventable? What do we learn from this, how
bad was the forecast? And should those cam have just
been called off.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
Am sixty.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Chris Little, formerly news director here at KFI, has sent
me a story.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I don't know if he's trying to get me in
trouble here. I might watch it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yeah, after I said that I'm trying to evade.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
The police here at KFI.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
In my time alone without Gary, he sent me this
story from the New York Post, and I'll just read
you the headline and maybe we'll dig into it later.
Disgusting BBL smell side effect might make people reconsider getting
popular surgery. Apparently there's a smell that goes along with
(25:43):
the Brazilian butt lift surgery. Yet not a smell after
perusing this article. Not a smell that happens. Well, I'm
sure there's a smell that happens during the procedure, but
but sorry, see your influence.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
I couldn't let that slie.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Apparently, after you get the procedure, if you sit for
long periods of time, there is a smell that omits
from your rear end. Maybe we'll get into that coming
up later. Something to look forward to, everybody, something to
look forward to. I did want to mention this about
(26:26):
Camp Mystic. You'll hear the name Dick Eastland from time
to time in connection with this story because the camp
has been run by the same family for three generations.
Dick Eastland was the camp's director, has lived on the
property since the seventies with his wife named Tweety Tweety
and Dick. Does it get sweeter than that? Dick has
(26:50):
been reported among the dead. Alumni described a couple as
the camp's patriarch, matriarch, constant presence at the camp that
Dick Eastman seemed to somehow remember every former camper who
returned with her own.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Daughter after years away. And that's something that's so sweet.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
The couple only had sons, so their daughters are all
the campers. That's coming from Claire Cannon, who's a real
estate in Dallas. Claire's mom attended Camp Mystic in the
sixties and then went back as a counselor. Claire was
a camper from the late eighties to early nineties and
sent her own daughter there for eight years until she
(27:33):
graduated as a camper in twenty twenty two. And Claire
really talked about when she was interviewed by I believe
that it was The New York Times, about how this
was a place just pure childhood joy. When you think
about this camp, it's why people continue to send their kids.
Nothing could go wrong. It's that false sense of security
at sleepaway camp. Everything's beautiful, you're in nature, everything can
(27:54):
be okay. Old Dicky Eastmin still runs the place. You
don't think that you're putting your kids in danger and
you're not. I mean, this is a freak accident. It's
a freak flash flood and so once in a lifetime
tragic event. It was as early as Wednesday that tax
that Texas officials were getting the state's emergency response resources
(28:18):
resources to prepare for this storm, and by Thursday afternoon,
the National Weather Services local office there in San Antonio
and Austin issued a floodwatch for multiple counties. The warning
was this pockets of heavy rain and the potential for flooding,
but this was historic.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Flooding. This was fierce, unrelenting flooding.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
In the early hours of Friday, everyone caught by surprise.
Heavy downpours lifted that Guadalupe River twenty six feet and
forty five minutes. Again, the death toll is around eighty
right now, with a lot of people missing. The top
elected official in Kerr County there, Judge Rob Kelly, says
(29:07):
flooding is common in this area. It's the most dangerous
river valley River Valley in the US, and we know it,
but it's not this devastating. We didn't know this was coming.
No one knew this type of flood was coming. National
Weather Service says the agency did hold forecast briefings for
(29:27):
emergency officials on Thursday, issued that floodwatch on Thursday, set
out those flash flood warnings Thursday evening and Friday morning.
But again flash floods, yes, they're used to that, but
not like this. There has been talk about a warning system,
a warning system that was rejected, and you'll hear people
(29:48):
in the area say, well, you know what, we've got
warning systems for tornadoes. Then the warnings go off and
still hundreds of people die. But you got to at
least have the conversation, right. It was eight years ago
when officials there in Kerr County debated if they should
build a warning system along the banks of the Guadalupe
(30:09):
River because they'd known that there's a series of summer camps.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
It's not just mystic. There's a bunch of camps that.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Use the river area and they're packed with children for
the summers and forever. It's just been a word amouse system.
When floodwaters start raging up river, camp leaders warned those
down river that the water search was coming their way,
and that's just what it was.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
But was that enough.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Eight years ago, officials for the first time considered supplementing that,
you know, ear system with sirens and river gauges, modern
communication tools, but little was done. It's a rural county,
about fifty thousand people, and it was going to be
way too expensive. As you can imagine that, the county
has an annual budget of about sixty seven million and
(30:54):
lost out on a bid at the time to secure
a one million dollar grant to fund the project. As
recently as May had a budget meeting, county commissioners were
discussing a flood warning system as something that they.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
May be able to make use of.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
A recent interview the Kerr County judge there that I mentioned,
Rob Kelly, said that local residents had been resistant to
new spending.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Taxpayers won't pay.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
For it, says A doesn't know if people might reconsider.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Now. It's an awful thing to think that money could
have prevented this, But.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
How often do we have those projects pop up that
just aren't sexy enough to voters? You think about the
just the water system back to water here in California,
about how nothing's done about it, getting our own water systems,
reclamation sites, things like.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
That, because it's not politically sexy an election here.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Who wants to hear someone get on the campaign stump
or the podium and talk about water anyway, we will
stay on top of Texas again. We are still not
out of the woods when it comes to the forecast there,
with the next twenty four to thirty six hours still
being still a lot of caution over flash flooding in
(32:05):
central Texas where the death toll remains at about eighty two.
Right now, all right, when we come back a huge
ten o'clock hour, Michael Monks will join us. We've got
a special chapter of Burbank Airport history. I did not
know about taking your Baby to a Rave Wait Raves
are Back, and a tale of two theme parks that
(32:25):
were both hit by a place called Disneyland.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
It's all coming up next. You've been listening to The
Gary and Shannon Show.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio ap
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app on this Monday, July seventh, twenty
twenty five. Is everybody back to work? It didn't feel
like it with the way traffic was moving today. It's
always such a nice surprise when you realize, oh, people
are still gone, they're still on vacation. It only took
(00:21):
the appropriate amount of time to get to work. Gary
is on vacation and he will be on vacation for
quite some time. I'm actually wondering how he's going to
be on vacation. He doesn't do vacations. You know those
people who don't do vacation. I have no problem with
doing vacations. It's the same thing for the people who
say I'm never going to retire. I don't know what
(00:44):
I do with myself. I like going to work. I
too like going to work. I do think it's important
for me to go somewhere at least once a day,
but like that somewhere could be anything. It could be,
you know, going to the grocery store, going to yoga,
going on a walk.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I mean, it could be anything. Just leave the house.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I think that's gonna be my thing is I got
to leave the house at least once a day.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
But some people there, they got to go to work.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
They've got to have that that purpose that I'm doing something.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I don't have that purpose. Gary, I think definitely does.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So it's gonna be I can't wait un till he
comes back and we get to hear about how he
was able to relax, or maybe how he wasn't able
to relax. I don't know, all right, so hang out
with me. It's gonna be a fun two weeks. I
don't know how I'm gonna deal with all the pressure
because listen, I know y'all like to think that I
get suspended all the time, and I walk a line.
(01:42):
I walk the line very very close to the edge.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
This is true.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
And if I'm on my own, so I don't have
anyone to pull me back, tell me no. Kana can
tell me no, but she also walks the line. I mean,
you've hurt her nuggets to do so, and so I mean,
I gotta be careful because if I do run a
foul of the law here at KFI, there's no fallback on.
(02:10):
There's no, Gary can come in and clean it up. Uh,
there's there's nobody really who can come in and fill
for this length of time without creating some sort of
complete mess for management. So I've got to kind of
be on good behavior. We'll see how long that lasts.
But so the inmates are running the asylum.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
As I mean, I'm.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Feeling pretty strong at this point, Heather in terms of
doing the right thing for the next couple of weeks,
but that could go by the wayside at a moment's notice.
We know this and you're here, which is another bat.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
And I know. I'm like, I'm not going to be
a good influence either horrible influence.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
I heard you this morning. I'm like, great, like at
least like, oh, at least I'll have Amy King. No, no,
because Amy is also a walk the line person. Like
she is a straight she is a straight she is
a straight shooter.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
And then I hear you and I'm like, great, Oh
the wheels are off, let's go.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah. But anyway, we're gonna have a good time. Michael
Monks will be coming along as well. Tons to get
to I don't know if you heard us teas it
over the weekend, but if you were a teenager of
the nineties like myself. You went to a rave or
two and some sort of nondescript warehouse that you probably
couldn't find with a GPS assistant, Thomas' Guide or otherwise.
(03:28):
Where did these things take place? I have no idea.
I just remember great, big sorts of stadium not stadiums well,
because sometimes stadiums outdoor parks arenas just giant. Like I said, warehouses.
Where the hell were these things? Anyway, raves, they're coming back,
but they're not for your kids. Well they are for
(03:50):
your kids, they're for your youngest kids. There is this
new movement about raves for babies, and we'll get into that.
There was an another article in this vein in the
New York Times over the weekend. I still read the
physical paper on Sunday because I'm an old but I
love it. And there was an article yesterday about meditation
(04:14):
sound bats for babies as well, not just for the
elevated of mind in adulthood.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
It's for the babies.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So apparently we're into doing all sorts of influences for
the young'uns.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
But we start there just a.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Story that you're going to hear about for the remainder
of your days. There will be books written about this.
There will be historical fiction written about this. There will
be documentaries and movies. There will be Monday Morning quarterbacks.
There already are of what went wrong. And the fact
of the matter is, disasters are disasters for a reason.
(04:55):
Much like we saw with the Palisades fire. Remember we
had that forecast. I knew the forecast was going to
be for extreme fire danger. Yet you saw how quickly
those flames took off on that morning in the Palisades.
We are no stranger to fires here. Wildfire season is
(05:16):
all year round in southern California.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
But yet there are.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Events that catch us off guard. And that's exactly what
happened in Texas. The area is called flash flood Alley.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
These were not areas new to flooding.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
This was something that happens all the time, and they
got the forecast and the forecast was dire. The forecast,
by the way, remains so for the next twenty four
to forty eight hours. We are not out of the
woods in central Texas in terms of flash flooding. But
much like we saw in the Palisades, with the ferocity ferocity,
(05:52):
ferocity that word of that fire you saw with the
flooding in Flash Flood Alley. You knew the floods were
going to hit. You knew they were going to hit
over the Fourth of July weekend, and they were prepared
to a point for this, the way they always are.
But when you're talking about a river rising twenty two
(06:15):
feet in forty five minutes, there's no way to prepare
for that. There are no crews that are going to
save anyone from that. There are no sand bags, there
are no amount of sand bags. There was nothing that
you were going to do. Nobody saw the ferocity of
this river coming.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
This is a river, Guadalupe River.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
You'll hear story after story after story of people, generation
after generation after generation of growing up at this river
in the summer. Wherever you're from, whether it's Michigan or
northern California or Central Texas, there's a river or a
lake or body of water that you remember going out
(07:01):
on as a kid. You remember playing in it, you
remember urban legends, you remember kind of testing boundaries, you
remember playing and rafting growing up, your siblings, your friends, whatever.
That's what the Guadalupe River is to people who have
gone to camps, whose parents went to these camps, whose
kids went to these camps. This was a river where
(07:23):
all their happiest, arguably childhood memories were made in the summer,
and the idea that this river could come and turn
into something so very deadly is a tragedy in its own.
The death toll in Central Texas now eighty two. Rescue
efforts are ongoing. You're hearing stories about dads combing through
(07:44):
the rubble, knowing that it's just rubble, knowing that they're
going to see little girl's bodies out there in the
in the trees, in the brush, in the mud, and
they're still going out there to see if they can
find their little girl. Get more tragic than what's happening
as we speak in Central Texas. Camp Mystic is a
(08:06):
camp that we keep hearing about. And the stories coming
out of Camp Mystic, from the little girls who survived,
what they saw, what they heard. It seems like this
camp was broken up into two points, a lower point
closer to the river, and a higher point. The girls
from the higher point are talking about what they heard
on the other half of camp. We're hearing about the
(08:27):
survivors who they were. This is a camp that's been
around for decades and everybody knows someone who went to
this camp. We'll tell you about the stories from Camp
Mystic when we come back.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
All right, here are the facts.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
The death toll in Central Texas is at eighty two
because of that flooding. As I mentioned, search and rescue
efforts are ongoing, including at that Mystic Girls camp on
the Guadalupe River. Ten children still missing. They've been able
to recover the bodies of forty adults and twenty eight children.
(09:11):
Some have been rescued live people from rooftops and trees.
There has been a major disaster declaration for the area.
Those are the facts, but here are the stories behind
those facts. Picture this twenty two year old woman, Devin Smith,
was one of the people found alive. She was found
(09:35):
desperately clinging to a tree, barely clinging to a tree, exhausted.
One of the few moments of celebration there. Devon had
been dragged downriver more than fifteen miles, through three dams,
past broken RVs, what was left of an RV park, refrigerators,
(09:57):
fifteen miles She was dragged through the river waters from
about four am, when a lot of this flooding hit
was overnight, adding to the horror of it all. Talk
about no response time, it's no response time, plus you're
just waking up. It's a dead of night. Four am,
(10:19):
Devon is taken by the floodwater and she's not rescued
until about ten am. So from four am to ten
am she's in floodwaters, fighting for her life, finally grabbing
a hold of that tree with what strength, I don't know.
Twenty two year old Devon remains obviously hospitalized, staples in
(10:43):
her head, every inch of her body, scratched and battered.
Camp Mystic is one of the big stories coming out
of a massive tragedy, and stories have been trickling out.
This is really a storied summer camp. Books probably have
(11:04):
been written about Camp Mystic before, or certainly have been
the subject. Camps of this nature have been the subject
of countless books and movies. There's something fascinating about the
transformation that happens when you're at summer camp or any
sort of camp, when you're at a formative age. Right
sometimes you're away from home for the first time, you're
(11:26):
in those ages from what nine to fourteen fifteen, where
you're becoming who you are, You're figuring out what you're
going to be. Your dignity is tested, your integrity is
tested when it comes to foraging friendships and boundaries in
terms of physicality and what you can do, and lifelong
bonds are made when you go away to these types
(11:48):
of camps. And these are the types of camps where
you know family after generation after generation will go this camp.
Camp Mystic is a Christian camp and it's a very
tight knit community as you can imagine of parents and alumni.
(12:09):
Three generations of descendants of Lyndon Johnson went there. Laura
Bush was a counselor there. Her daughter Jenna on her
morning show today on television on NBC in tears over this.
Janie Hunt is of course from the Hunt Oil fortune.
One of the towns by the way in the central
Texas area is called Hunt, Texas, no doubt after the
(12:33):
Hunt Oil family. But now you know them as owners
of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Nine year old Janie Hunt, one of the.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Lost parents whose daughters were at camp in this session
that began last weekend, raced towards camp on Friday when
the early reports of the flooding came in. And early
I mean like first thing in the mornings. It all
had happened overnight. There was a brief email from the
(13:03):
camp that parents got, and I want you to put
yourself in the shoes of a parent. You wake up,
you maybe get a news alert on your phone like
we get right, catastrophic flooding Central Texas. You know your
daughter's at camp like she was last year, or maybe
she's there for the first time, and the email from
(13:24):
the camp just says, we have sustained catastrophic level floods.
If your daughter is not accounted for, you have been notified.
If you have not been personally contacted, then your daughter
is accounted for.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Now.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
I am not one to criticize anybody's response to any
sort of tragedy or crisis. I have no idea how
I would respond. Who does You're also in trauma, You're
also in crisis. But to be a parent that gets
that email would be awful. If your daughter is not
(14:06):
accounted for, you've been notified, Well I haven't been notified.
What if that calls around the corner? Do I leave
the house now? Do they have my cell they have
the home number. What if they don't. What if they're
trying to get a hold of me to tell me
something about my daughter? But cell service is gone by
the time I get up there, because guess what, there
(14:27):
was no cell service in a lot of the area
where those camps were. You know how it is, you
go out in nature and it's beautiful, and I was
out in nature last weekend and I kind of loved it.
When my cell signal disappeared, I thought, Oh, relief, leave
my phone in the car on this hike.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I don't have to look at it. No one can
get a hold of me.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
But man, when you're in crisis and somebody you love
is in one of those areas with no cell service,
I can't imagine the panic. So parents, get that email.
If your daughter's not accounted for, you've been notified, If
you haven't been personally contacted, then we know where your
kid is. About seven hundred and fifty girls were at
(15:08):
camp in this session, and the hundreds of campers who
had been stranded there from hours are talking harrowing but little,
piecemeal stories of what their experience was from the middle
of the night when they heard the thunder and the lightning,
to the sound of the helicopters that was just deafening,
(15:28):
to the realizing that their friends on the other side
of the camp were gone. We'll get into their stories
when we come back.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
We are talking about Texas and about the flooding and
about Camp Mystic, and I'll just get right into some
of these stories that are coming.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
From children. And sometimes when you hear the.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Quotes from children, they really nail it, don't They are
something that comes from the purest expression of what you're
going through, without any pretense or bravado or anything. That
is just striking right. Jenny McLennan's ten year old daughter
(16:20):
was among hundreds of children that thankfully was rescued on
fourth of July. Her cabin there at Camp Mystic was
high enough above the river that counselors decided to keep
the children in the cabin as the rank continued to
pour down overnight, and the next day they were rescued
by Texas Parks and Wildlife officers and brought by bus
(16:43):
to a reunification center. Now, the fact that the counselors
made the call was interesting to me that the counselors
decided to keep the children in the cabin.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Remember no self service, and I a lot of self service.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I'm assuming they have walkie talkies and things like that
for the higher ups to make decisions. But camp counselors
in this regard are usually what seventeen nineteen something like that.
It's a very young age to make a decision like that,
and you wonder about the weight that those decisions will
continue to carry as well. This was Jenny mcclennan's daughter's
(17:16):
first summer at sleepaway camp. But when her daughter, after
being rescued throughout this whole thing, gets in the car,
she starts singing camp songs. These are the same songs
sung by Mystic campers for one hundred years. Another mother,
who asked not to be named, set out from Dallas
(17:37):
on Friday morning after she got that alert on her
phone catastrophic flooding. She set out to retrieve her daughter.
She had heard nothing beyond that email that I mentioned.
She only had hope, so she hadn't heard anything. So
she's hoping, well, since I haven't heard anything, maybe my
daughter's accounted for. So she goes to that reunification center
at Ingram Elementary School. Her and her husband wait there
(18:00):
for hours hours. Remember she left first thing in the morning.
At five thirty pm, somebody hands them a phone and
the daughters on the other line, and about three hours
later she walked to them, wearing clean and dry clothes
lent by other campers on higher ground. And this was
her daughter's story. She says, she woke up in the
(18:23):
middle of the night and she was guided by counselors.
There was rushing water and they were led to the
indoor balcony of the camp's recreation center, and the water
continued to rise and rise and rise as they're standing
(18:43):
above on that balcony inside that room. And so the
decision is made that they got to get out of there.
So they trek through the mud to another campsite again,
just hoping that conditions are better there and maybe it's
up to higher ground. And then she could hear the
helicopters and they were able to get her onto one
(19:05):
of the helicopters, and she only described it as loud.
The mother says, we're just so grateful to have our
daughter with us, barely even taking in all the details
of our story, just happy to put her hand on
her head. There was another camper, she sixteen years old,
(19:26):
Calli is her name.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
She says.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
We went to bed thinking it was just a normal thunderstorm.
One minute, you're seeing lightning strike next to your cabin,
and then next to you you hear the waters coming up.
And you have kids, she said, just trying to get
to other cabins, trying to get to safety. Her mother
said that they live in Virginia, but that mom's from
(19:52):
Texas and it was important for her to have her
kids have these Texas roots, and so that's why she
sent her daughter there. I mean, this has been one
of those camps that instills in women. I think I
saw it as kind of strength and femininity. Beauty inside
and out is one of the classes or one of
the electives or what have you that you go to there,
(20:14):
along with all the different sports that they do as well.
This sixteen year old Cali says, you know, one second,
it was really bad thunder and lightning, and one of
the campers ran into our cabin and said, hey, our
cabin is flooding. So we were sharing beds, were had
(20:36):
some girls sleeping on the floors. It was so flooded
in three they thought it was just some flooding. You've
had that, right, maybe it's your basement or whatever. You
get home and you're like, oh man, something broke and
there's like, you know, inches or maybe a foot of water.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
It's awful, what a mess.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Your mind doesn't think that that's going to keep going
up and up and up. And the rain kept coming,
and the water kept going up and up and up.
This sixteen year old started getting really nervous, as did
all the girls in that cabin, as the water was
rushing up and they knew that some of the cabins
were just gone, I mean swept away, gone, like swept
(21:18):
off the foundation, gone from this river that had risen
twenty two feet in forty five.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Minutes, something like that, she says.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Sixteen year old Callie says she put a name tag
on her body in the middle of the night. She said,
I was worried that our cabin might be next, and
I was thinking in my head, if something does happened
and I.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Do get swept away, at least I'll have.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
A name on my body. Sixteen years old and you're thinking,
you know, dog tag style. There was a teenager. That
was another one who was rescued who said that she
and the other girls were his miracle when they learned
that other campers had been lost in the flooding and
(22:04):
when they saw the devastation that it looked nothing like
Camp Mystic. This was a thirteen year old Stella is
her name, and she was in part of the camp
that's on that higher ground and she says, I think
while it was going on, I sort of felt a numbness.
Thirteen year old Stella saying, saying it out loud is
(22:25):
making me realize what actually happened and how bad it
actually is. And that's what I'm talking about. That coming
from a thirteen year old, Like how pure that is
of her, able to lay out perfectly what shock is
that when you're going through it, you're just numb, and
then when you say it out loud, it becomes real.
(22:46):
I mean, she nailed it. This is her sixth summer
at Mystic. Sella says she was on the Cypress Lake
side when the storms rattled her cabin, awake early that
Friday morning. The cabin lost power. At some point during
the night. She could see the headlights of camp leaders
driving the grounds checking on cabins in the rain.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
She said.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
At daybreak, they were told to stay inside and that
breakfast would be delivered. That can't be bad if they're
bringing in breakfast, right. They had no idea what was
going on on the other side of camp. They had
no idea that the other side of camp had been
completely ripped off the foundations and swept away and all
the campers with it.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
She says.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
It wasn't until helicopters began buzzing overhead that she realized
something was truly wrong, and it was the uncertainty, she said,
that really shook up our cabin. They were told to
grab clothes from their trunks so counselors could give dry
clothes to the campers that did survive the other part
of camp, she said. At one point she was told
(23:48):
that the other side of camp had been evacuated due
to the flooding and that the helicopters were airlifting girls
from the property. But they still had no idea of
the scope of the crisis, and as I started to
find out that some of their friends didn't make it,
that they were swept away by the very river that
they loved in summer after summer that they lived to
(24:11):
play in, that they had all their activities, that that
river had risen twenty two feet and wiped them all out. Luckily,
this is a camp built on prayer. This is a
Christian camp, and a lot of those girls, luckily, are
built to lean on prayer. And I think that that
(24:32):
was a major part of how they were able to
handle this. And like I said, we are not out
of it. Twenty four to forty eight hours. They say
the forecast remains dire in terms of flash flooding. Now,
when we come back, we'll talk about what the forecast
was and what forecasters nationally are saying in terms of
(24:53):
was this preventable? What do we learn from this, how
bad was the forecast? And should those cam have just
been called off.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
Am sixty.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Chris Little, formerly news director here at KFI, has sent
me a story.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I don't know if he's trying to get me in
trouble here. I might watch it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yeah, after I said that I'm trying to evade.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
The police here at KFI.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
In my time alone without Gary, he sent me this
story from the New York Post, and I'll just read
you the headline and maybe we'll dig into it later.
Disgusting BBL smell side effect might make people reconsider getting
popular surgery. Apparently there's a smell that goes along with
(25:43):
the Brazilian butt lift surgery. Yet not a smell after
perusing this article. Not a smell that happens. Well, I'm
sure there's a smell that happens during the procedure, but
but sorry, see your influence.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
I couldn't let that slie.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Apparently, after you get the procedure, if you sit for
long periods of time, there is a smell that omits
from your rear end. Maybe we'll get into that coming
up later. Something to look forward to, everybody, something to
look forward to. I did want to mention this about
(26:26):
Camp Mystic. You'll hear the name Dick Eastland from time
to time in connection with this story because the camp
has been run by the same family for three generations.
Dick Eastland was the camp's director, has lived on the
property since the seventies with his wife named Tweety Tweety
and Dick. Does it get sweeter than that? Dick has
(26:50):
been reported among the dead. Alumni described a couple as
the camp's patriarch, matriarch, constant presence at the camp that
Dick Eastman seemed to somehow remember every former camper who
returned with her own.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Daughter after years away. And that's something that's so sweet.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
The couple only had sons, so their daughters are all
the campers. That's coming from Claire Cannon, who's a real
estate in Dallas. Claire's mom attended Camp Mystic in the
sixties and then went back as a counselor. Claire was
a camper from the late eighties to early nineties and
sent her own daughter there for eight years until she
(27:33):
graduated as a camper in twenty twenty two. And Claire
really talked about when she was interviewed by I believe
that it was The New York Times, about how this
was a place just pure childhood joy. When you think
about this camp, it's why people continue to send their kids.
Nothing could go wrong. It's that false sense of security
at sleepaway camp. Everything's beautiful, you're in nature, everything can
(27:54):
be okay. Old Dicky Eastmin still runs the place. You
don't think that you're putting your kids in danger and
you're not. I mean, this is a freak accident. It's
a freak flash flood and so once in a lifetime
tragic event. It was as early as Wednesday that tax
that Texas officials were getting the state's emergency response resources
(28:18):
resources to prepare for this storm, and by Thursday afternoon,
the National Weather Services local office there in San Antonio
and Austin issued a floodwatch for multiple counties. The warning
was this pockets of heavy rain and the potential for flooding,
but this was historic.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Flooding. This was fierce, unrelenting flooding.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
In the early hours of Friday, everyone caught by surprise.
Heavy downpours lifted that Guadalupe River twenty six feet and
forty five minutes. Again, the death toll is around eighty
right now, with a lot of people missing. The top
elected official in Kerr County there, Judge Rob Kelly, says
(29:07):
flooding is common in this area. It's the most dangerous
river valley River Valley in the US, and we know it,
but it's not this devastating. We didn't know this was coming.
No one knew this type of flood was coming. National
Weather Service says the agency did hold forecast briefings for
(29:27):
emergency officials on Thursday, issued that floodwatch on Thursday, set
out those flash flood warnings Thursday evening and Friday morning.
But again flash floods, yes, they're used to that, but
not like this. There has been talk about a warning system,
a warning system that was rejected, and you'll hear people
(29:48):
in the area say, well, you know what, we've got
warning systems for tornadoes. Then the warnings go off and
still hundreds of people die. But you got to at
least have the conversation, right. It was eight years ago
when officials there in Kerr County debated if they should
build a warning system along the banks of the Guadalupe
(30:09):
River because they'd known that there's a series of summer camps.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
It's not just mystic. There's a bunch of camps that.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Use the river area and they're packed with children for
the summers and forever. It's just been a word amouse system.
When floodwaters start raging up river, camp leaders warned those
down river that the water search was coming their way,
and that's just what it was.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
But was that enough.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Eight years ago, officials for the first time considered supplementing that,
you know, ear system with sirens and river gauges, modern
communication tools, but little was done. It's a rural county,
about fifty thousand people, and it was going to be
way too expensive. As you can imagine that, the county
has an annual budget of about sixty seven million and
(30:54):
lost out on a bid at the time to secure
a one million dollar grant to fund the project. As
recently as May had a budget meeting, county commissioners were
discussing a flood warning system as something that they.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
May be able to make use of.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
A recent interview the Kerr County judge there that I mentioned,
Rob Kelly, said that local residents had been resistant to
new spending.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Taxpayers won't pay.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
For it, says A doesn't know if people might reconsider.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Now. It's an awful thing to think that money could
have prevented this, But.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
How often do we have those projects pop up that
just aren't sexy enough to voters? You think about the
just the water system back to water here in California,
about how nothing's done about it, getting our own water systems,
reclamation sites, things like.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
That, because it's not politically sexy an election here.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Who wants to hear someone get on the campaign stump
or the podium and talk about water anyway, we will
stay on top of Texas again. We are still not
out of the woods when it comes to the forecast there,
with the next twenty four to thirty six hours still
being still a lot of caution over flash flooding in
(32:05):
central Texas where the death toll remains at about eighty two.
Right now, all right, when we come back a huge
ten o'clock hour, Michael Monks will join us. We've got
a special chapter of Burbank Airport history. I did not
know about taking your Baby to a Rave Wait Raves
are Back, and a tale of two theme parks that
(32:25):
were both hit by a place called Disneyland.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
It's all coming up next. You've been listening to The
Gary and Shannon Show.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio ap
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