Tavia Hunt, the wife of Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, has said that she is sad about a loss that happened during the devastating Texas floods that have killed at least 82 people, including 28 children. Their young cousin Janie Hunt, who was just nine years old and headed to Camp Mystic, a historic all-girls Christian summer camp on the Guadalupe River in Wimberley, Texas, was one of the victims. Tavia wrote a really emotional statement on Instagram to communicate the sad news. She said, “The floods in Wimberley have broken our hearts and taken so many lives, including a dear little Hunt cousin and a few of my friend’s little girls.”
On Friday morning, the waters of the Guadalupe River rose quickly, engulfing Camp Mystic while more than 750 campers and staff were there. The river got more than 30 feet higher than it usually does. A lot of the younger girls were sleeping in huts beside the river, which made them more at risk when the floodwaters hit. In the chaos, several died, including Richard “Dick” Eastland, the camp’s beloved director, who died trying to save the kids.
People thought of Janie Hunt as a smart, happy kid who was full of life and kindness. Her great-grandfather, William Herbert Hunt, was a wealthy oil billionaire. Lamar Hunt, her great-uncle, created the Kansas City Chiefs and was a big part of American sports history. The Hunt family’s legacy goes back hundreds of years, but the recent death of a little girl has greatly affected them and many others.
Tavia’s Instagram post demonstrated that she was going through the deep spiritual pain that many people feel when something bad happens. “How can we believe in a God who is supposed to be kind, all-knowing, and all-powerful but lets bad things happen, even to kids?” she wondered. She went on to explain that it is hard to have faith while you are suffering and that even the Bible is full of people “crying out… still trying to trust the same God they think caused their pain.”
Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, has asked people to think about and mourn on a statewide day of prayer. “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 said in a speech. So far, emergency officials have saved more than 850 people. Some of them were rescued from the tops of trees or rubble as the water rose around them. There are still a lot of planes and even a MQ-9 Reaper drone flying about seeking for survivors in the big area.
Still, a lot of people are asking important questions about how fast and helpful emergency warnings are. On Thursday, the National Weather Service put out a flood watch. On Friday morning, they put out a flash flood warning. But a lot of local governments say that the warnings came too late to save lives, especially in Kerr County, which was affected the worst. Matt Lanza, a meteorologist, told the Texas Tribune, “This wasn’t a failure of forecasting.” There was a difficulty with how people talked to each other. People didn’t get the warnings 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 was largely because of job cuts that occured during the Trump administration. Reports say that the important job of warning coordination meteorologist has not been filled since April. When asked if the disaster had anything to do with government cuts, former President Donald Trump first blamed the Biden administration, but then he 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 sorrow as they wait for news of their lost loved ones. Rescue workers are still working hard to find them. Behind each number in the rising death toll comes a name, a story, and a community that is grieving. The floodwaters have hurt the Hunt family and many others in ways that may never fully heal. The happy videos of girls singing and dancing that Camp Mystic put up just a week ago now seem like terrible anguish.
As they search for survivors, families cling on to their memories, their faith, and each other. They also have to deal with issues that don’t have simple solutions. Even though they have lost so much, they still have optimism that love, fortitude, and community will help them get through what has become one of Texas’s biggest natural disasters in ten years.