@stepheneb @ai6yr

I also learned that it’s good to note when you get to a huge beautiful beach with waves and all the locals are avoiding the center and are only playing at either end! Some friendly queries might be a good life choice in that situation!

@ai6yr @michael_w_busch

I know the area well and have been through the floods of 1987, 2002, 2006 & had lots of friends impacted by 2015.

A friend of mine has a place near the headwaters of the south fork of the Guadalupe, 5-6 miles above Camp Mystic. It's been in the family since it was part of Mexico. It has the original schoolhouse for the area on it, from 1836. I've spent probably more than a year cumulative there and lived in the area more than a decade. They remember the floods.

The family had a girls camp there in the 1970s-80s. The cabin footings are 6 feet above the 1936 high water line. The cabins are an additional 6 feet above that, sitting on 2x2 foot concrete piers poured directly onto limestone bedrock. In 1997ish I helped the owners anchor the floor joists and hurricane strap the walls and roofs.
At least one of those cabins is gone.
As is the dam which was built in the 1910s -- more than 2 foot thick concrete with down river buttressing extending > 10 feet.

I'm pretty sure the main building at Camp Mystic was the original from 1926. I've seen pictures of cabins *uphill* from the main building with walls missing.

*****************
Crider's Dance Hall and Rodeo* was 100% feet dry in 1987. I had lunch there when we were doing SAR.

[EDIT: A friend pointed out that we weren't at Criders in 1987. He can't remember where we went, but is sure it wasn't there. Therefore I don't know if Crider's flooded in 1987.]
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The main bar is well above most of the property. The pool tables were flipped by the force of the water. Today they were going to celebrate 100 years in business.

The Hunt Store -- easily 30 feet above the first flood plain (which is 10 feet above nominal) -- is wrecked and the owner is asking not to be contacted.

This isn't a problem of not remembering. This storm several sigmas past the worst seen in written history. All the river gauges I've seen so far go off scale at 20-25 feet, and stay off line for hours.

First pass guess by looking at the damage done, the crest on the south fork was 40+ feet.

The local officials didn't assess the risk appropriately and didn't have an appropriate notification plan. And to some extent I blame them for the loss of life.

There are also long-standing issues of lack of infrastructure:
There aren't gauges that far up the river -- where the floods start.
There's nothing like a flood warning siren system.
In the 1990s we had a telephone tree, where the upstream land owners would call us, and we'd call places further down, letting them know that they needed to pull stuff up from the river. Apparently that died at some point.

I haven't been back in that area in a while, mainly because I don't fit in politically any more, but even so I mourn.

*Yes, Dance Hall and Rodeo is a thing; and was a helluva good time too.