Tavia Hunt, the wife of Clark Hunt, who owns the Kansas City Chiefs, has said that she is sad about a loss in the middle of the devastating Texas floods that have killed at least 82 people, including 28 children. Their nine-year-old cousin Janie Hunt was one of the victims. She was heading to Camp Mystic, a historic all-girls Christian summer camp on the Guadalupe River in Wimberley, Texas. Tavia wrote a really emotional statement on Instagram to tell everyone the awful news. She said, “The floods in Wimberley and the tragic loss of so many lives, including a dear little Hunt cousin and several of my friend’s little girls, have broken our hearts.”
On Friday morning, the Guadalupe River’s waters surged quickly, engulfing Camp Mystic while more than 750 campers and staff were there. The river soared more than thirty feet over its normal level. A lot of the younger girls were sleeping in shelters beside the river, which made them more vulnerable when the floodwaters hit. People died in the chaos, including Richard “Dick” Eastland, the camp’s beloved director, who died trying to save the children.
People thought of Janie Hunt as a smart, happy kid who was full of energy and kindness. Her great-grandfather, William Herbert Hunt, was a wealthy oil baron. Her great-uncle Lamar Hunt was a key figure in American sports history and created the Kansas City Chiefs. The Hunt family’s legacy goes back hundreds of years, but the recent death of a little girl has hit them and many others very hard.
Tavia’s Instagram post demonstrated that she was going through the deep spiritual pain that a lot of people feel when something bad happens. She said, “How can we believe in a God who is supposed to be kind, know everything, and be all-powerful but lets bad things happen, even to kids?” She went on to explain that having faith in suffering is hard, and that even the Bible is filled of people “crying out… still trying to trust the same God they think caused their pain.”
Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, has asked everyone in the state to pray and think about what happened. “We ask Texans to pray for the lives that were lost, the people who are still missing, and the safety of the first responders,” he stated in a speech to the public. Emergency workers have saved more than 850 people so far, some of whom were pulled from the tops of trees or debris as the water rose around them. There are still a lot of planes and even a MQ-9 Reaper drone in the air hunting for survivors in the big region.
Still, a lot of people are asking important questions about how fast and helpful emergency alerts are. On Thursday, the National Weather Service issued a flood watch, then on Friday morning, they issued a flash flood warning. But a lot of local officials say that the warnings came too late to save lives, especially in Kerr County, which was one of the hardest-hit counties. Matt Lanza, a meteorologist, told the Texas Tribune, “This wasn’t a failure of forecasting.” There was a problem with talking to each other. Warnings didn’t reach everyone in time.
People are also anxious about how prepared the federal government is. Reports suggest that the Weather Service office in charge of the area didn’t have enough workers. This is mainly because the Trump administration reduced jobs. Reports say that the important job of warning coordination meteorologist has been open since April. When asked if government cuts had anything to do with the disaster, former President Donald Trump first blamed the Biden administration but then changed his mind. “But I wouldn’t blame Biden either,” he said. “This is a disaster that will last for a hundred years.”
Families in Texas are still in pain as they wait for news of their missing loved ones as rescue workers keep working. Behind each number in the rising death toll comes a name, a story, and a community that is grieving. The floodwaters have left a mark on the Hunt family and many others that may never go away. Camp Mystic’s happy videos of girls singing and dancing that they posted just a week ago suddenly seem like the worst kind of grief.
Families hunt for survivors while holding on to memories, religion, and one other. They also have to deal with difficulties that are hard to solve. They have lost a lot, but they still have a common hope: that love, fortitude, and community would help them get through what has become one of Texas’s biggest natural catastrophes in ten years.
