FLOODSFlood of Doubt
Almost a third of Americans live in unincorporated communities beyond city limits, where disaster aid can confuse and frustrate.
Rain was already coursing through the usually dry creek near Abraham Stallins’ home in the Texas Hill Country when a flash flood warning lit up his phone. It was just after midnight on July 5, and many neighbors were sleeping, but Stallins, who tends to stay up late anyway, decided to keep an eye on things.
Three hours later, as the storm crescendoed, Stallins opened the front door to see what it was doing. He found water pouring off the roof in sheets and lapping the threshold. Alarmed, he shouted for his wife, Andrea, to fetch buckets and towels to mop up the rain that was starting to seep in, then ran outside. Hacking at the soaked earth with a shovel and pickax, he frantically dug a trench to lead the torrent away from the house. Five minutes later, the water began to follow the channel and Stallins collapsed into bed.
He was dozing when a friend called around 10:30 a.m. to ask if he’d seen the bridge, the only way in or out of their subdivision. Stallins said he hadn’t. “Dude, I can’t even explain it to you,” came the reply. “You’ve just gotta go.”
The quarter-mile drive through the neighborhood revealed some of what the flood had wrought. Though it largely spared Stallins’ home near Big Sandy Creek, it washed at least three others from their foundations. The inundation littered roads and shifted the deck of the bridge several inches, forcing officials to close it and isolating the community from the rest of Travis County. Tons of debris and, residents later discovered, a body lay tangled in the wreckage below. “It was total devastation,” Stallins said.
Everyone knew the path to recovery would require a coordinated effort, one that has long since started. But in the days and weeks after the storm, Stallins and many neighbors felt ignored by the county government even as it insisted that it was doing everything possible to help. This gap in perception highlights a dilemma facing the 30 percent of Americans who live in unincorporated communities like those along Big Sandy Creek. Without a municipal government to rely on, such enclaves depend on county and state officials whose response may come late, seem invisible, or fall short of expectations. This crisis of trust has followed climate disasters from California to Appalachia and threatens to undermine efforts to prepare for and respond to them.
