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Just the thought of a child dying in a violent way tears at the heart of anyone who has a heart.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s an auto or boat crash, a schoolhouse rampage by a kid armed with an assault weapon, bombs dropping on schools in Ukraine, or a rampaging river in Texas. Violence against children creates a painful path that survivors must follow.

We ache for them because we know their innocence. Their vulnerability is ours to bear. And to answer for.

The flash flood in Kerr County, Texas, killed at least 119 people. Of that growing total, at least 36 were children. At least 173 are still missing. The flood was one of the deadliest disasters for children in the United States in the past 100 years. Most of the young people were at Camp Mystic, a girls’ summer camp located on the Guadalupe River.

You might even know one of the families that lost a child or grandchild, as I do.

Although some people would rather we not ask questions, we must, and we will. We must demand full disclosure at all levels of government.

Although Texas had FEMA funds of more than $100 million after the 2016 disaster in southeast Texas, funds that were earmarked for communities across the state to prepare for future disasters, we now know that Kerr County’s applications for those funds were denied in 2017 and 2018 by the Texas Division of Emergency Management. In subsequent years, commissioners debated installing an updated flood warning system, including sirens, but decided against it. Why? Mainly because they feared a voter backlash. The public had voiced opposition to a tax increase to pay for the warning system.

We also know that the new Washington administration has been gutting federal agencies with wholesale firings, including the National Weather Service. The NWS is a small army of federal employees who labor to watch and report developing weather. They are the voice of both picnic weather and disastrous storms.

When a reporter asked a high-ranking local official in Kerr County why evacuation orders were never issued, the official said, “No one knew this kind of flood was coming.”

The NWS issued three dire warnings at 1:14 a.m., 4:03 a.m., and 6:06 a.m. But the one NWS employee whose job it was to make sure those warnings got traction, Paul Yura, had recently opted to take an unplanned early retirement rather than risk being fired as part of the White House decimation.

He was not replaced. Money was saved. Lives were lost.

Accountability is anathema to many politicians these days. Give them a ribbon to cut, or a photo op, and they come running. But hold them accountable, and they scurry to hide or bash the news reporter for asking the tough questions.

Let’s hope our local elected officials are watching and learning that a voting populace fixated on cutting taxes, or a source of funding such as FEMA, is no reason to risk lives.

Larry McDermott is a local retired farmer/journalist. Reach him at hardscrabblehollow@gmail.com