5 days ago
After the Floods, a Pain So Vast It Makes Texas Feel Small
Beaumont, Texas, is a good 360 miles down Interstate 10 from where the Guadalupe River charged over its banks on July 4 but not far enough to spare it from the pain of the flood. Crowds solemnly lined a street on Sunday, holding cutouts of hearts, as a hearse pulled off the highway carrying one of their own — a 22-year-old college student named Aidan Heartfield, one of four natives of the city who were killed.
In Houston, Keli Rabon worried about her 7-year-old son, Brock. He came home from a summer camp session that ended after just two days and pointed out a space in her kitchen between the top of the cabinets and ceiling. That's where he would hide, he told her, if a flood swamped their house.
So much about the scale of the floods that tore through Central Texas has been staggering: the ferocity and speed of the water, harrowing stories of survival, and heroism that gave way to agonizing accounts of loss. The death toll from the floods stands at 135, making it one of the deadliest weather events in the state's history. Nearly 100 remain missing.
The magnitude of the disaster has made Texas almost feel small: Roughly 270,000 square miles, and yet some aspect of the grief and the trauma seems within arm's reach of its 31 million people.
'They say six degrees of separation, but it's a lot smaller than that,' said Ms. Rabon, 40. 'We can truly all see ourselves in this tragedy.'
In conversations across the state, those who did not directly feel the wrath of the floods said they could easily trace their ties to someone who did. As funeral directors sent home the remains of the dead, the destinations emanating from the Central Texas epicenter could shade a map of the Lonestar State: Austin, San Antonio, Lubbock, Amarillo, Liberty.
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