This article was written by Mike Hager and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 31, 2025.
Atmospheric river washes out highway on the archipelago off B.C.’s north coast
Just an hour after Chris Ashurst finished a morning of frigid crosscountry skiing, an atmospheric river descended upon Haida Gwaii from the south, swinging the temperature 15 degrees “almost into T-shirt weather” and setting off a massive melt that nearly led to calamity on the craggy archipelago off B.C.’s north coast.
That was Sunday morning. By the evening, Mr. Ashurst, a volunteer emergency co-ordinator for the North Coast Regional District, was one of more than 2,000 residents stranded on the north half of the main island when the lone highway was washed out by a flood.
The provincial government and local First Nations leaders said Tuesday afternoon that the rains had let up enough for repairs to begin on the main coastal highway and a single lane reopened later in the evening.
The authorities had prepared to install a temporary bridge over the washed out portion, but water levels dropped enough Tuesday for them to begin to install a culvert.
However, for more than two days, the north end of the main island was cut off from the southern half, which is home to the ferry and airport that transport people, food and fuel from the mainland.
Mr. Ashurst and his partner had planned to catch a ferry Monday morning for a ski trip on the mainland. They set out in their pick-up truck at 5:30 a.m. to take a logging road that curled around the island to the ferry terminal in Skidegate, but a kilometre onto the path they stopped at a puddle nearly half a metre deep.
Then, a logger in a bigger truck backed up toward them and said the path ahead had fallen trees and water flowing across it at double that depth.
“He was like, ‘nobody’s going that way,’ so we went back,” Mr. Ashurst said.
No major injuries were reported during the flooding and aftermath, though the emergency room in the north side’s largest community of more than 2,000 people, Masset, has been shutting down periodically because of staffing shortages.
Still, two days of being severed from civilization tested residents on the north half of the island, with stores being emptied of dairy and other essentials and the region surviving on one functioning gas pump, Mr. Ashurst said.
“We get zero groceries up here without the road – it all comes on the ferry – so I’m not going to town. We’re going to eat the food in our pantry until this all passes,” Mr. Ashurst added. He has lived outside Masset for 22 years.
No properties have had to be evacuated, but roughly 10 families stranded from getting to their homes by the flooding are being given vouchers for food and, in some cases, accommodation, according the provincial Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Ministry.
On Dec. 27, the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship issued a flood warning for Haida Gwaii and the region surrounding the north coast port city of Prince Rupert, with up to 15 centimetres of rain expected through Monday.
Billy Yovanovich, Chief Councillor of the Skidegate Band Council, said members in the southern part of the main island were also helping house their northern neighbours in need.
His elected council oversees the village of Skidegate in the south and another council oversees Masset in the north, both working within the governance structures of the wider Haida Nation.
“It is just such an extreme oneoff, both communities have been really helpful,” he said.
Mr. Yovanovich said his main concern with flooding is the ongoing erosion of Haida Gwaii’s shores, which his nation is trying to fight through various projects.
Yet, his biggest takeaway from the past few days is that everyone on the ground co-operated beautifully, a fact he says may surprise some convinced that reconciliation in B.C. with Indigenous people has gone awry after recent court rulings on competing property rights.
He noted that this fall the B.C. Supreme Court cemented the Haida Nation’s agreement with federal and provincial governments to take over Aboriginal title to all one million hectares of Haida Gwaii, once known as the Queen Charlotte Islands.
“We’re still able to coexist: Nothing’s going to change that way. We’ll still all work together during crises and during day-today living,” he said.
Fraser Valley could see more flooding, officials say
This article was written by the Canadian Press and was published in the Toronto Star on December 15, 2025.
British Columbia is preparing for another widespread deluge of rain after flooding through the province’s Fraser Valley temporarily shutdown a portion of Highway 1 last week.
Emergency Management Minister Kelly Greene said Sunday that flood and landslide risks in parts of the province will increase with more stormy weather in the forecast, even as floodwaters receded in Abbotsford after heavy rains last week.
Environment Canada issued several rainfall warnings across B.C., including for the Fraser Valley, forecasting up to 80 millimetres of rain in some areas where localized flooding is “likely.”
Agriculture Minister Lana Popham said 56 farms remain under evacuation order, with 13 on alert, as flooded barns led to deaths of chickens on some affected poultry farms.
Connie Chapman with the province’s water management branch said Sunday that flood warnings remain for the Sumas and Chilliwack Rivers, and high stream flow advisories in several other parts of B.C. including Haida Gwaii, the north, central and south coast and on Vancouver Island.
She said the forecast is “less intense” than last week, but officials are still concerned about areas affected by flooding being hit again.
Environment Canada put rainfall warnings in place across British Columbia’s flooddrenched Fraser Valley as another wave of soaking weather hits the region.
Environment Canada said the valley, including Abbotsford, which was inundated by crossborder flooding last week, can expect the new system to bring “significant rain” of up to 80 millimetres with the heaviest downpours expected Monday.
The B.C. government said Sunday that Highway 1 out of Abbotsford was reopened in both directions, but officials said there could be “short notice” closures on some stretches due to flood risk on Highway 5, the Coquihalla Highway, Highway 1 through the Fraser Canyon, and Highway 99 from Cache Creek to Pemberton.
This opinion was written by Steve Wadden and was published in the Globe & Mail on October 11, 2025. .
STEVE WADDEN Mi’kmaq elder Marian Nicholas, 56, originally of Eskasoni First Nation, stands at the lookoff at Cape Clear, the crown jewel in the Highlands of Unama’ki, Cape Breton, against the backdrop of the plateau and the Margaree River valley on Sept. 11. Marian is the keeper of the sacred fire at the Hunters Mountain, Mi’kmaq land defender camp. She is a Grassroots Grandmother water walker that has dedicated much of her life to land and water protection, prayer, has walked thousands of kilometres on pilgrimages and has taken part in a number of Canada’s First Nations land protection acts, including Oka in 1990.
What started as a land-protection act opposing long-term logging and hydroelectric developments has drummed steadfast into an around-the-clock gathering, writes photographer Steve Wadden
On Sept. 4, Hunters Mountain in the sacred Highlands of Unama’ki, Cape Breton, became centre stage in the Mi’kmaq fight to protect our environment.
What started as a land-protection act opposing long-term logging and hydroelectric developments on Crown land has drummed steadfast into an around-theclock gathering.
At the base of Hunters, on one of a handful of access roads into the Highlands, front-liners have formed a checkpoint using logs they confiscated from loaded 18wheelers trying to leave the mountain. All traffic in and out through here is restricted.
Ten days in, the strong voice of Kukuwes Wowkis boomed out from the crowd: “We still have our treaties, our treaties will protect this land.”
Tents, trailers, and a few cars and trucks dot the sides of the dirt road. Two recently donated barns serve as a men’s hut at the entrance, and a kitchen in the heart of the camp.
Mi’kmaq elder Marian Nicholas tends a sacred fire inside a tipi, where the rally cries of those gathered are balanced with ceremony, moments of prayer and healing. Ms. Nicholas began a life of land defending in 1987, opposing logging on this very same mountain.
This land is where many Mi’kmaq harvest moose and traditional medicines.
The Highlands comprises tens of thousands of square kilometres of mountainous plateau bordered by protected lands, including, most famously, Jim Campbells Barren and the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. This complex ecosystem also feeds into the lion’s share of what remains of Cape Breton’s Atlantic salmon-spawning rivers, including the world-renowned Margaree.
Some of my most memorable days of fishing, taking photographs and spending time with friends and family have happened here. I proudly watched our oldest boy Joseph, now 15, land and release his first salmon at the age of 11 against the backdrop of the mountains. Our youngest son, now 3, is named River.
In recent years, the fishing has been up and down with droughts and river closures due to low and warm water, contrasted by the occasional flood. Many fishers look for answers in the mountains above, and the land cultivated along the river. Trees are the lifeblood of a river system.
At least once every year, my wife Emily and I make the pilgrimage with our three boys to the Highlands and the Cabot Trail, making every effort to end our evenings with a drive over North Mountain in hopes of seeing a moose. This summer we saw our first moose in four or five years, and it was the first time River felt the excitement of spotting a moose in the wild.
The Highlands is said to have housed an estimated 835 moose in 2024, down from 1,500 or so in 2023, and down from 4,700 a decade ago. The drop in population sparked an island-wide, three-year moose hunting moratorium that started last fall in an agreement between the province of Nova Scotia and the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs.
Today, the strong sentiment from frontliners at the Hunters Mountain camp is a call for a complete stand-down of all industrial developments in the area, especially at a time when hunters have agreed to let the land rest in an effort to bring back the moose.
Others demand more consultation, transparency and accountability, and they will stand the gaff to make sure their individual and collective voices will be heard.
Twenty-five years ago, my father Barry and I made our first visit to the look-off at Cape Clear, the crown jewel of the Highlands that towers over the Margaree. I was just 19 at the time. I remember thinking, as he climbed down to a dizzying perch at the edge of the 1,000-foot cliff, there are a lot worse places to die.
Upon more serious reflection, I realized what a special place it is to live.
Fast forward to Sept. 11, 2025, when I found myself back at Cape Clear, this time with my son Joseph.
Mi’kmaq moose hunter Joey Sylvester, nephew of the late Donald Marshall, Jr., drove us up to the summit, along with elder Marian Nicholas and others to take photos and survey the cutting in and around that area.
The feeling you get looking out over this ancient, wild place never fails to put life into perspective. I want our sons to be able to return with their own children some day and experience what I just felt.
On the drive back to camp, Joey spoke fondly of his memories growing up hunting in the Highlands with the late Danny Paul of Membertou. As he pointed down an unassuming, one-lane dirt road, and told us “that was Danny’s favourite place to hunt,” he added, with a sly grin, “I’m not saying there’s moose in there but that was his favourite place.”
On Sept. 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and Oct. 1, Treaty Day and the beginning of Mi’kmaq History Month in Nova Scotia, the camp was packed with folks celebrating their way of life and unity in their resolve to protect the mountains above.
But, many also expressed anger and contempt over the Nova Scotia government’s new Bill 127 – the Protecting Nova Scotians Act – a piece of omnibus legislation that in part makes it illegal to block forest roads.
On Oct. 2, the bill was passed, much to the disapproval of the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs, who issued a release stating, among other things, that “as the Rightful owners of these lands and resources, other levels of government need to understand that the Mi’kmaq also have a jurisdiction over how their territory is used.”
As of Oct. 9, the camp still stands. Where this all ends, and what the best path forward is, I’m not sure. I’m admittedly out of my depth to guess.
But I will say this: I breathe the same air as the Mi’kmaq, I fish the same rivers and lakes as the Mi’kmaq, and my children will share whatever the future holds with the children of the Mi’kmaq.
Whether or not that future will include wildlife, I am sure that is our decision to make.
“I CAME HERE AS A WARRIOR, I CAME HERE AS A GRANDMOTHER, AND I CAME TO START THE SACRED FIRE, BRING OUR ANCESTORS IN TO HELP US”
This article was written by Claire McFarlane, Ian Bailey, and Evan Roth, the Associate Director for the Crestwood Valley Day Camp in Toronto, and was published in the Globe & Mail on July 15, 2025.
Some locations are redesigning daily events to tackle the double challenge of heat and poor air quality
Wildfire smoke in several parts of the country is forcing summer camp providers whose communities are under air quality warnings to shift activities indoors or make other changes to keep campers safe.
Environment Canada issued special air quality statements or warnings on Monday for much of Central Canada, Manitoba and Saskatchewan owing to smoke from wildfires in northern Ontario and the Prairies, while smoke also drifted into Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
Evan Roth, associate director for the Crestwood Valley Day Camp in Toronto, said the camp began receiving e-mails from parents early on Monday morning asking what the plan for the day was and how it might adapt to the poor quality of air lingering in the city.
He said the camp quickly issued a message notifying the community that all programming would be moved indoors for the time being.
“Thankfully, a lot of our programs have the ability to be a little bit portable,” Mr. Roth said.
He said that if poor air quality becomes a more frequent phenomenon, he hopes to receive more guidance from government about how to safely proceed with camp activities.
“Our hope is that this doesn’t obviously become a regular thing, because it would ultimately change the overall camp experience if the kids can’t be in the pools and using the sports fields.”
On Monday morning, summer camps across the region were left to decide how to proceed with camp activities, as wildfire smoke hung in the air.
Camp Robin Hood in Markham, Ont., runs exclusively outdoor programs.
“Days like this can be challenging, of course, because we don’t have air-conditioned spaces for campers or staff,” said Howie Grossinger, co-director of the camp.
He said that on days that are especially warm, or when the air quality is poor, the camp designs programs that can take place in the shade and that avoid children overexerting themselves.
Mr. Grossinger said the camp has three registered nurses on site and that staff are trained to look for signs of overexertion.
The YMCA offers summer camp programming at 45 locations – both indoors and outdoors – across the GTA.
They, too, were modifying their outdoor programming, opting for low-intensity games in lieu of flag football or soccer.
Our hope is that this doesn’t obviously become a regular thing, because it would ultimately change the overall camp experience if the kids can’t be in the pools and using the sports fields.
Lisa Greer, the general manager of YMCA day camps, said the camps also offer values-based programs such as storytelling that they can pivot to on days when outdoor exertion might be ill advised.
“The staff are so adaptable, and we have so many programming options that it would take us a few weeks of really, really hot weather to run out of ideas,” Ms. Greer said.
She said all staff are trained in first-aid and CPR, and that they monitor the children closely, especially those with asthma who may be sensitive to air quality.
Attendance at the YMCA’s camp on Toronto Island was “a little lower than normal,” Ms. Greer said, as some parents may have opted to keep children indoors at home. But she couldn’t conclusively say it was related to the air quality in the city.
All CampTO locations have access to indoor spaces in the event of extreme weather, and programming is adjusted accordingly, said Jas Baweja, senior communications adviser for the City of Toronto, in a statement.
Camp organizers in Ottawa say wildfire smoke hasn’t yet had any impact on programming so far this summer.
Retired navy captain, Graham Roberts, with the Tall Ships Adventure program, said that, during extensive fires in 2023, he had to limit activity for workers for about a week while preparing for the summer. But he noted that the actual camp has not been affected since he joined in 2022.
Cary Primeau, the director of the University of Saskatchewan’s USask Rec program that provides recreation programming for students, staff and members of the community, said the smoke from wildfires across Western Canada has an impact on all programming.
“In all instances, our most important focus is to ensure the safety of the children in our programs,” he said in a statement.
“We have not yet had to cancel programs but have made some operational changes so that we can continue to provide this very valuable service to the community, but in the safest manner possible.”
The university offers a number of children’s activity camps, sports camps for children and youth, and camp programs for children who are visually or hearing impaired and physically and/ or developmentally delayed.
He said programming is being moved indoors when smoke, as measured by portable air quality monitoring devices, gets above a certain threshold.
In Manitoba, where there was a special air quality statement issued on Monday, the City of Winnipeg offers a program of summer camps. Adam Campbell, a communications officer for the city, said most offered summer programs have access to indoor spaces.
“When smoke is particularly bad, we direct program leaders to spend more time indoors and/or reduce the time spent on more intense physical activity,” Mr. Campbell said in a statement.
This article was written by Patrick White and was published in the Globe & Mail on July 12, 2025.
A campground grill lies buried in mud and debris in the remnants of the Guadalupe River on the Sam Good Campgrounds in Kerrville, Tex.
A community seeks answers in Texas’s Flash Flood Alley. Patrick White reports
As the death toll in Texas climbs, many ask whether more could have been done to prevent the tragedy
It was after one in the morning and Lorena Guillen couldn’t sleep. Rain pelted the roof. A flood alert buzzed on her phone. Nothing unusual here along the Guadalupe River. It rarely amounted to much.
But this time she had a bad feeling.
Hours earlier, her riverfront honky-tonk, Howdy’s, had been packed for grilled catfish night. A fiddler played. Families danced.
Now, those same families slept by the water’s edge at her campground, Blue Oak RV Park, and a bigger park a hundred metres upriver.
She would later see some of their faces on missing posters.
Around 2 a.m., she rolled out of bed and drove 100 metres through the rain to the riverbank. The Guadalupe looked calm. The nearest National Weather Service depth gauge measured less than a foot of water, about eight feet short of flood range.
She wasn’t new to flood risks. Four years of owning the park had made her a student of them. Out here in Flash Flood Alley, locals recited past disasters like scripture: ’32, ’78, ’87.
Just to be sure, she called the sheriff’s office. They had nothing to report.
She went back to bed.
By the time she woke up, about two hours later, she would no longer recognize her riverfront haven. Before sunrise, the lives of everyone staying in her park that night – along with thousands of people living and camping along the river – would be forever changed.
The numbers fluctuate by the hour, but the July 4 Hill Country flash flood is already the deadliest in Texas in more than a century – a grim distinction for a state that far outpaces all others in flood-related deaths.
Despite unfolding in a place long known by that ominous moniker – Flash Flood Alley – the storm’s severity caught nearly everyone off guard. A relatively routine weather system stalled over a narrow stretch of Hill Country that acts like a sieve feeding into the river’s headwaters – a slight shift in direction, and the entire system might have passed without notice.
The path of the deluge that dark morning led to stories of human tragedy – a serene river basin full of young campers and Fourth of July revellers swept away in their sleep – but there’s a political tale playing out here, too.
Flash floods are America’s top storm-related killer, and climate change is making them more powerful. In an area with flood deaths going back generations, improvements to the warning system had been put off, even nixed.
As the death toll climbs, many are asking whether more could have been done to prevent such loss of life and limit the damage – a difficult conversation in a region where climate change, though increasingly impossible to ignore, is often denied and remains politically untouchable.
What Ms. Guillen couldn’t know from her eyeball test of the water was something taking place about 50 kilometres upriver.
Meteorologists had been watching it build for days: a dying lightning storm in West Texas had left behind a spinning gyre – a mesoscale convective vortex, or MCV. It met the moisture-laden remnants of Tropical Storm Barry and birthed something volatile: more lightning, more downpour, all of it parked directly over the headwaters of the Guadalupe’s south fork.
“That’s what made this particularly devastating,” said John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist. “If it had been a few miles in either direction, nobody would be talking about this.”
Steep limestone hills and shallow soil turned every ridge into a gutter, channelling rain into the river like a storm drain. The Guadalupe began to rise. A pulse of water surged down the south fork about 14 kilometres, where it hit the River Inn Resort & Conference Center.
JD Fry was staying there with 32 family members, a Fourth of July tradition. He didn’t receive any flood alerts on his phone before waking up around 2:45 a.m., when his father banged on his door. “He said the water level was rising, but not a full-on flood yet,” said Mr. Fry in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
The calm didn’t last. Within five minutes, staff told them to evacuate. They tried to drive to the highway but rushing water blocked their path. The current swirled around their tires. They abandoned the cars and returned to the hotel on foot.
“When I got out of the car, the water was ankle level and by the time I got to the Inn it was up to my waist,” said Mr. Fry.
Mr. Fry and others clambered onto the roof of a one-storey staff quarters. Using towels as makeshift ropes, they pulled others out of the rising waters. The entire family survived.
Just three kilometres downriver, at Camp Mystic, hundreds of girls aged 7 to 17 were trying to sleep through lightning and thunder. At least 27 campers and counsellors are now confirmed dead. Satellite images show only bare ground where the bustling camp once stood.
From there the water swelled through the small town of Hunt, where the north and south forks of the Guadalupe meet. From 3:45 a.m. until 6:10 a.m., a river gauge in town shot up from nine feet to 37.5 feet, shattering a record 1932 inundation that wiped the town flat.
At 4:03 a.m., the National Weather Service issued a sharper warning: seek higher ground now.
For many, it came too late.
Nicholas Panagiotou was struggling to sleep in his RV parked at Ms. Guillen’s campground when the alert lit up his phone. He grabbed a flashlight and popped his head out the door to check the water levels.
“That’s when I saw the people in the water,” he said.
The campground had 28 spaces on the riverfront and another five on an island reachable by a concrete bridge. A family of five, the Burgesses, had rented an island spot earlier in the week.
Now the bridge was under water. Julia Burgess was screaming. Her husband, John, held their two boys – five-year-old Jack and one-year-old James – clutched against his chest.
Mr. Panagiotou tried to guide them, shouting over the roar, pointing to where the submerged bridge had been. Ms. Guillen’s husband, Bob Canales, and another full-time camper, Justin Brown, did the same.
Mr. Brown – a former kayak instructor who normally sought out whitewater – looked upriver and froze. He saw a staircase of waves, each one taller than the last, charging downstream.
The torrent hit fast.
Mr. Burgess staggered. Someone yelled for him to toss the boys.
“I had my hand out with the flashlight, and we had eye contact,” said Mr. Panagiotou. “And then he went under, and I looked down and I saw the baby’s face under the water.”
The couple’s bodies have been recovered. The sons remain missing. Their daughter was attending a summer camp and survived.
As he lost sight of the family, Mr. Panagiotou felt his own stance wobble as the water rose around his ankles. “I got taken under,” he says.
He was being swept downriver, feet first. After about 25 feet- he can’t precisely recall the distance-the soles of his feet touched a metal sign planted firmly in the ground, stopping him from washing away. With his feet braced against the sign, water blasted over the top of his head, tore off his clothes and separated his shoulder.
Was he there for 30 seconds or three minutes? He doesn’t know. He didn’t think of living or dying. Just hanging on.
On the shore, a man in baggy pants appeared with his arm extended. They locked eyes, but didn’t recognize each other.
“Get away,” Mr. Panagiotou recalls yelling. “If! rea ch for you, we’re both going under.”
The man in the baggy pants didn’t listen. Mr. Panagiotou decided if he was going to live, he had to roll toward shore. As he did so, the man on the shore waded in to haul him out of the rapids.
Mr. Panagiotou scrambled up the bank, grabbed a bag from his RV and called once for his three cats. They didn’t appear. There was no time to go inside.
He made his way up some stairs and looked back at the scene before him.
“I see that RVs are passing by, trucks, buildings now it’s becoming clear,” he said.
The neighbouring campground a few hundred metres upriver had been swallowed, its more than so RVs and cabins hurled downriver and dashed against Cypress trees. Ms. Guillen filmed the wreckage – trees, vehicles, screams, all riding the black river past her bar.
Eight kilometres downriver, the river gauge in Kerrville shot up arounds a.m., rising from LS feet to 34.29 feet over the next three hours. The flood tore through the 25,000-person county seat, ripping homes from their foundations, bending two-tonne pickups like toys.
At 6 a.m ., David Chambers got a call from his business partner, who was staying at the riverside RV park they owned in Center Point, about 16 kilometres downriver from Kerrville. The water was rising, fast. Mr. Chambers sped to the property in time to see a violent boil of water rolling toward them, carrying trees, roofing and busted lumber. He banged on RV doors until all 15 of his customers had escaped safely. Within 20 more minutes, everything was gone.
“A few minutes either way and we could’ve lo st some people ,” he said .” We needed more warning .”
The same has been said after every deadly flood in these parts. Those discussions ramped up in 2016, when Tom Moser, then a Kerr County Commissioner and former NASA engineer, proposed purchasing a series of autonomous river gauges that would ping emergency officials’ when they detected dangerous conditions. The system would also have sirens audible for three miles. The units cost $40,000 a year, with $2,000 in annual maintenance.
The county’ s Emergency Management Director, W.B. “Dub” Thomas, was on board, saying an audible system would give people in RV parks the” needed information when they need to know to get out ,” according to a March, 2016, meeting transcript. Sheriff Rusty Hierholzer agreed. He’d pulled kids from the 1987 flood that killed 10 campers. Phone alerts didn’ t reach remote areas, and many people opted out, he said. A siren could cut through all that.
But another commissioner, Buster Baldwin, balked.
“A little extravagant in Kerr County,” he said.
Funding never came. The idea died. Their debate centred on the last mile conundrum: precise forecast sand warnings don’t matter if they don’t reach the people who need them.
“It’s one of the biggest problems in disaster communications ,” said Erik Nielsen, assistant professor at Texas A&M University specializing in extreme weather and warning systems. Even if you can get warnings to people efficiently, not everyone will interpret it the same way. Some people will flee immediately, others will waste precious time trying to tow their RVs out of harm’s way.
Dr. Nielsen said the late hour, spot ty phone coverage, the optional nature of phone alerts and the number of visitors unfamiliar with flash-flood dynamics all played a role in the high death toll.
Then there was alert fatigue. The National Weather Service has issued 185 flash flood alerts for Kerr County over the past decade-an average of one every three weeks, according to a Globe analysis of federal data. Warnings become noise. People turn them off.
Sirens had, however, long played a useful role another 16 kilometres downriver, in the town of Comfort. The flood waters arrived just after 9 a.m. The sun was up. Word had spread. People had ample time to evacuate.
Danny Morales, assistant chief of the town’s volunteer fire department, learned decades ago not to take chances with the river. After the 1978 flood, he had to identify his grandfather’s body. The 1987 flood , meanwhile, killed 10 teens at a nearby camp.
For as long as Mr. Morales can remember, the town hash ada giant yellow siren next to the fire hall that blares in case of high water. Last year, they installed anew siren and moved the old one to one of the town’s low spots. The cost was negligible – $20,000 or so, he says and the department didn’t worry about interference from other levels of government .”We take care of our own here ,” he said. “We’re unincorporated .”
Both sirens blared on Friday morning. He can’t say whether they saved lives. Most people in town had heard of the devastation up river before the high water reached Comfort.
“We had no loss of life here ,” he said .” Basically from here on down, there was advance notice .”
Though the river’s tragic path stopped at Comfort, tough work remains. By week’s end ,161 people were still missing. Searchers walked the banks. Boats nosed through wreckage. Helicopters scanned the valleys. Buzzards, circling over head, led them to the dead.
“I hate to say it, but the buzzards are showing us where to go right now,” said Mr. Morales. “If they’re circling, that’s where we know to investigate.”
Meanwhile, local officials face difficult questions during daily press conferences. Why didn’t people have more warning? Why were the lessons of previous floods not heeded?
On Wednesday, Governor Greg Abbott an nounced a special legislative session to discuss improvements to state-wide flood warning systems.
Homeland Security-Secretary Kristi Noem, mean while, said she wants to upgrade “neglected ” and “ancient” systems at the National Weather Service.
David Maurstad, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’ s former deputy associate administrator for insurance and mitigation, worries new investments will go into disaster response rather than disaster prevention, a pattern he saw regularly as a high-ranking bureaucrat.
“All we want to talk about is equipping to respond to the next disaster-that’ s not good enough anymore,” he said. “The whole idea of mitigation and resilience needs to be a bigger part of the conversation.”
That conversation is difficult here. For every degree of increase in temperature, the atmosphere can hold 7 percent more water va pour. That means heavier rainfalls.
But talk of climate change is anon- political starter. This county gave ne arly So per cent of its vote to Donald Trump. When I asked one flood victim about the scientific phenomenon, he went on at angen ton that touched Pizza gate, them ass harvesting of children’s’ organs and other conspiracy theories. A woman who launched a petition ford floo sirens on the river told me climate ch ange was a liberal theory and equated it with cloud seeding.
“It’s a political is sue in Texas,” said Ramalingam Sara van an, head of the Department of Atmospheric Science sat Texas A&M. “It does make our life difficult. People are aware the climate is changing. But the moment you associate it with a cause and act ions to mitigate, th at be comes challenging.”
There was a chance meeting at Howdy’ son Tuesday. The Eagles played on the stereo-Take It Easy. Mr. Panagiotou was there, telling his story for a cluster of print reporters. His outlook was grim. He was an outsider in Kerrville and lived a hermitic existence. Despite the thousands of volunteers thronging the town, handing out food and clothes and bibles, he expected he would end up living on the streets.
He’d been there before. He said that his only two arrests came after stealing food from the local Walmart.
What he missed most, aside from his cats-Sammy, Do die, and Wicca-was an electric scooter that whisked him into town so he could fetch food and medication for his bipolar disorder. His daughter had started a GoFundMe.
As he was talking on the Howdy’s patio, he looked at am an with wraparound shade san dared bear data nearby table and snapped upright.
“Is that -?” he muttered as he stood and walked over to the man.
They locked eyes. This time they recognized each other.
“Was that you down there?” said Mr. Panagiotou .
“Yeah ,” said them an, Mr. Brown, the former kayak instructor. Someone asked if Mr. Brown was them an with the baggy pants.
“Yes !” said Mr. Panagiotou.
“They weren’ t baggy, I just didn’t have my belt on.
“They embraced and talked like old friends. How you doing? Where you staying? Mr. Brown had a line on dona ted hotel rooms.
After ward, Mr. Panagiotou’s spirits were buoyed. Maybe everything would beo kay. Maybe Texas would come through for people like him .” Something lifted me out of the water ,” he said .” Something will lift me off the streets.”
This article was written by Patrick White and was published in the Globe & Mail on July 8, 2025.
Above: Francoise Wilson turns away after surveying damage caused by floodwaters from the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Tex., on Monday. Twenty-seven campers and counsellors are confirmed dead after Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp, was hit by the catastrophic flood.
The logo of the Guadalupe Keys RV Resort features a cartoon turtle playing a guitar, with a piña colada and a palm tree nearby – a real Margaritaville vibe.
“We’re all about good times here,” said David Chambers, who bought the land in 2006, enchanted by its 250 feet of Guadalupe River beachfront in Center Point, Tex.
On Thursday of last week, all his pads were occupied, the rental trailers filled with people anticipating a steamy Fourth of July weekend along the river. There were kids on the beach, he said, and barbecuers taking shade under a canopy of cypress trees, waving at the occasional reveller floating by on an inner tube.
In a matter of minutes on Friday morning, Mr. Chambers lost his little patch of paradise as flash floods barrelled through Hill Country with little warning.
“This is a war zone now, buddy,” said Mr. Chambers, a Vietnam War veteran. “It’s like Agent Orange out here. That’s all I can compare it to.”
By late Monday, officials here said at least 104 people were dead and countless missing. Joe Herring, the mayor of Kerrville, the city of 24,000 that has become a hub for emergency workers from all over the country, warned of a “rough week” ahead as search efforts head into a recovery phase.
Mr. Chambers got word of an incoming flood at 6 a.m. on Friday. He rushed to the resort from his home about 25 minutes away. By the time he arrived, water was lapping at the RVs. His business partner, Drew Yancey, who lived on-site, was frantically trying to get people to safety.
“At one point I ran to my trailer to get my wallet, and by the time I got out, the water was past my knees,” Mr. Yancey said.
Officials said the river rose 26 feet in 45 minutes. It looked faster, both men said. By 7 a.m., all the campers were safe, but the river had wiped their property of everything but a few jagged stumps. Two hundred feet from the resort, the warped remnants of seven RVs could be seen wrapped around a stand of cypresses.
“That’s mine down there,” Mr. Yancey said, pointing to a tangle of metal floating at the river’s edge. “All I got left are the clothes on my back.”
Along a 120-kilometre stretch of the Guadalupe, such scenes had become tragically routine by Monday afternoon. A chorus of chainsaws whined and helicopters thumped up and down the river. Everywhere along the shoreline, search and rescue volunteers in muddy boots probed for bodies. Just down the beach from Guadalupe Keys, several men tried to dig out a compact car enveloped in the riverbank like a fossil.
Thirty kilometres northwest in Ingram, a popular recreation site, a pair of searchers from Texas EquuSearch picked their way along a riverfront strewn with downed trees. They were guided by smell, they said, finding the remains of dogs, deer and fish in the 30-degree heat.
Normally at this time of year, tourists and locals would be walking out onto the Ingram Dam and sliding down into the Guadalupe’s calm pools, Jeremy Edelstein said.
“We won’t see that again for a long time,” he lamented as he cleaned out a small plaza of shops and apartments owned by his father. In one apartment, the high-water mark reached nearly two metres up the walls of the 40year-old building.
“We’ve never seen any river water in here,” he said, “much less water going seven feet up the walls.”
He lost an RV and three trailers he used in his general contracting business. “I can’t complain,” he said. “We have friends who lost kids, friends who woke up to screams of people being washed away.”
In trees all around Ingram, flotsam clung to branches 50 feet up: a blue kayak folded like a pretzel, a buckled aluminum rowboat, a green outhouse door, a deflated children’s floatie. Police closed public access to the highway leading farther upriver, where the death toll at Camp Mystic, a Christian girls’ summer camp, reached 27.
Over at the Ingram Little League baseball field, steel stanchions that held up the outfield wall are all bent in the direction of the river’s flow. In centre field, a
Everywhere along the shoreline, search and rescue volunteers in muddy boots probed for bodies.
reeking perch lies next to a battered Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner – a surreal still life of the flood’s reach.
Next door, the Hill Country Arts Foundation was getting ready for a production of Jimmy Buffett’s Escape to Margaritaville at its outdoor theatre just before the flood.
“We were set to open this Friday,” said Jennyth Peterson, the theatre’s special events director. “But the entire set and all the props, all the costumes, they’re all down the river now.”
Both the outdoor and indoor theatres sustained heavy damage, along with several other foundation buildings on the riverfront property. A volunteer construction crew showed up Monday morning to repair what they could, but the future of the water-logged buildings remains unknown until an insurance adjuster can arrive.
“We’re overwhelmed right now but blessed,” Ms. Peterson said. “We had no fatalities on site. The rest is just stuff. And stuff is fixable.”
Flash floods have killed at least 43 people, with 27 girls missing from riverside Christian camp
This article was written by John Seewer and Jim Vertuno, and was published in the Toronto Star on July 6, 2025.
As the floodwaters began to recede from Camp Mystic, a torrent of grief remained as the identities of some of the campers who died in the flash floods began to emerge on Saturday.
At least 43 people, including 15 children, died in Kerr County after a storm unleashed nearly a foot of rain on Friday and sent floodwaters gushing out of the Guadalupe River through the hilly region known for its centuryold summer camps. Another eight people died in nearby counties.
State officials said 27 girls from Camp Mystic, a riverside Christian camp for girls in Hunt, Texas, still were unaccounted for about 36 hours after the flood.
An eightyearold girl from Mountain Brook, Ala., who was at Camp Mystic, and the director of another camp just up the road were among those confirmed dead Saturday.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who toured the camp Saturday with rescue crews, vowed that authorities will work around the clock to find the missing girls and others swept away in the storm that caught many residents, campers and officials by surprise.
Many more are still missing, and authorities said about 850 people had been rescued so far.
The National Weather Service said a flood watch would remain in effect for the Hill Country region through late Saturday night.
The camp was established in 1926. It grew so popular over the following decades that families are now encouraged to put prospective campers on the waitlist years in advance.
Photos and videos taken before the flood are idyllic, showing large cabins with greenshingled roofs and names like “Wiggle Inn,” tucked among sturdy oak and cypress trees that grow on the banks of the Guadalupe River.
In some social media posts, girls are fishing, riding horses, playing kickball or performing choreographed dance routines in matching Tshirts. Girls ranging in age from 8 to 17 years old pose for the camera with big smiles, arms draped across the shoulders of their fellow campers.
But the floodwaters left behind a starkly different landscape: A pickup truck is balanced precariously on two wheels, its side lodged halfway up a tree. A wall is torn entirely off one building, the interior empty except for a Texas flag and paintings hung high along one side. A twisted bit of metal — perhaps a bedframe — is stacked next to colourful steamer trunks and broken tree limbs. First responders are scouring the riverbanks in hopes of finding survivors. Social media posts are now focused on the faces of the missing.
State and county officials defended their actions Saturday amid scrutiny over whether the camps and residents in towns long vulnerable to flooding received proper alerts. The National Weather Service issued a flood warning for the region on Thursday, and it sent out a series of flashflood warnings in the early hours Friday. The federal agency had predicted up to 15.2 centimetres of rain in the region northwest of San Antonio, but 25.4 cm fell.
The Guadalupe River rose to 7.9 meters within about 45 minutes in the early morning hours, submerging its flood gauge.
It was not immediately clear what kind of evacuation plans Camp Mystic might have had.
The county itself does not have a warning system, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said. He maintained that no one knew a flood of this magnitude was coming.
By Friday afternoon, Texas Game Wardens had arrived at Camp Mystic and were evacuating campers. A rope was tied so girls could hang on as they walked across a bridge, the floodwaters rushing around their knees.
Elinor Lester, 13, said she was evacuated with her cabinmates by helicopter after wading through floodwaters. She recalled startling awake around 1:30 a.m. as thunder crackled and water pelted the cabin windows.
Lester was among the older girls housed on elevated ground known as Senior Hill. Cabins housing the younger campers, who can start attending at age 8, are situated along the riverbanks and were the first to flood, she said.
“The camp was completely destroyed,” she said. “It was really scary.”
Her mother, Elizabeth Lester, said her son was nearby at Camp La Junta and also escaped. A counsellor there woke up to find water rising in the cabin, opened a window and helped the boys swim out. Camp La Junta and nearby Camp Waldemar said in Instagram posts that all campers and staff were safe.
Elizabeth Lester sobbed when she saw her daughter, who was clutching a small teddy bear and a book.
“My kids are safe, but knowing others are still missing is just eating me alive,” she said.
Dozens of families shared in local Facebook groups that they received devastating phone calls from safety officials informing them that their daughters had not yet been located among the washedaway camp cabins and downed trees. Camp Mystic said in an email to parents of the roughly 750 campers that if they have not been contacted directly, their child is accounted for.
Camp Mystic sits on a strip known to locals as “flash flood alley.”
“When it rains, water doesn’t soak into the soil,” said Austin Dickson, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, which was collecting donations. “It rushes down the hill.”
My Climate Change Website 