I personally avoided being in Texas during that event, but I’ve certainly spent my share of shitty winter days in ill-prepared Dallas & other Texas places. And had many many coworkers caught in that disaster.
Yeah, Ted utterly and deliberately fled that one after it was well under way. Zero debate there. I’d simply forgotten the details.
Yeah, he left during the freeze, and was caught in the airport.
It’s one thing if you’re caught elsewhere when the disaster occurs, but it’s something else entirely if you actually bail during the disaster.
I doubt anything is really going to sway opinions at this point, but from my perspective, it’s part of his job.
If he were some random member of the public, no, I wouldn’t have expected him to do much differently or make any public displays. Especially on a family vacation, which he probably could only afford to take once, if that, a year.
As a sitting Senator who takes not just one but several holidays a year and makes a show of his ‘accomplishments’? Yes, I expect him to at least put on an act. That’s part of his job. To at least pretend to possess empathy, especially for his own constituents, not least because he clearly has no empathy for natural disaster victims in other states when urging no aid be given to them.
I don’t expect everybody to agree with that, but clearly enough people do agree with that to the extent it is considered an actual issue, minor though it is.
“I was trying to be a dad, and all of us have made decisions — when you’ve got two girls who have been cold for two days and haven’t had heater power, and they’re saying ‘Hey, look we don’t have school why don’t we go, let’s get out of here.’ I think there are a lot of parents that would be like, ‘Look, if I can do this great.’ That’s what I wanted to do,” he told the TV station.
I thought Cruz spent the vast majority of his time on his podcast and was hardly ever in DC either. Missed tons of votes?
Long article on some of the fallout from Camp Mystic.
I expect it will be a lot easier to get in next year [I believe they usually had .big waiting lists].
What parent in their right mind would ever send a kid to this place?
How many camp sessions over how many decades occurred without incident? I know I don’t know, but I bet it’s a lot.
It’s a fallacy to fall for recency bias or the accessibility heuristic. And especially for both.
Except there were prior incidents. Nothing as deadly, but there had been flooding events on more than one prior occasion. Those cabins were on a known flood plain. I’m certain one of the arguments being raised in court was that this was a known hazard and precautions should have been taken to better protect the people at the camp.
I’m sure those very well connected parents will have been reaching out to their very expensive lawyers.
Regardless of how safe it is, what parents would want to deal with all the worry and comments that would come from sending their kids there? Every rainstorm would have them worried about flooding. When they tell people where they sent their kids, the first response would be be “Isn’t that the camp where dozens of kids died?” With so many camps in that area, just pick a different one that isn’t in the headlines for a terrible disaster.
If everyone thought that way they’d already be out of business. Evidently they’re not. So not everyone is thinking that way.
Is it dumber than dirt to have a camp in a real riverbed? Yes it is. But in lots of relatively flat areas, “floodplain” describes the land holding half the housing stock and most of the commercial part of the city. This is especially true in states like TX that are fundamentally opposed to the very concept of zoning and prudential regulation.
It’s not obvious to me where on that spectrum this particular camp falls.
The article that @PastTense linked suggests they are opening their “Cypress Lake” facility, which apparently was unaffected by the flood. It’s not clear if the re-opening includes areas in the flood plain, tho. I guess it is a business and they need to find a way to continue operating - considering the size of the tragedy are people expecting them to just shut down operations? Or maybe change their name? Or sell to new owners?
I’m surprised that they’d have any customers at all. I’d think the camp would go out of business from not having any campers. With many camps to choose from, I’d think parents would naturally pick one of the other camps that doesn’t have a terrible tragedy associated with it. Even if they spent millions on flood control and warning systems and the camp was free, I wouldn’t send my kids there for the sole reason that I don’t want to send my kids to a camp where so many kids died.