Jimmy Higgins
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- Jan 31, 2001
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- Calvinistic Atheist
The flood in Texas that look to have killed nearly 300 people is a stark reminder of this important of vigilance, even when it costs money. One thing could have saved the lives of at least a couple dozen children. An alarm system that was in place, but then disappeared.
The trouble with alarm systems is you only want them when you need it. You are always paying for it and it is never being used. But not being used doesn't mean not needed. Every family that lost a child in that flood would have had no problem in hind sight cutting their own checks to pay for the alarms that would have saved those girls lives.
But instead, the desire to save money cost those families their children. All to save what in the end was just a few bucks.
That alarm system was put into place because of people that died. Now a magnitude more died because the empathy of those losses waned and no one (or not enough people) cared enough to ensure the system remained in place to prevent the loss of so many people.article said:But other, more serious events had affected camps in the area. In July 1987, 10 teenagers were killed as they fled a flash flood at Pot O’ Gold Ranch, a Christian camp also along the Guadalupe River. A year later, two brothers were swept away in flash floods at the Bear Creek Scout Reservation camp.
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An automated flood warning system that relied on water gauges was installed along the Guadalupe in 1989. But a decade later, the company that monitored it had closed, and river authorities shut it down. So locals returned to “the old-fashioned way,” with river spotters issuing warnings via telephone up and down the waterway, according to the Kerrville Daily Times.
The trouble with alarm systems is you only want them when you need it. You are always paying for it and it is never being used. But not being used doesn't mean not needed. Every family that lost a child in that flood would have had no problem in hind sight cutting their own checks to pay for the alarms that would have saved those girls lives.
But instead, the desire to save money cost those families their children. All to save what in the end was just a few bucks.