The Texas flash flood waters are receding and is slowly revealing some truly venomous snakes that it’s hard to even imagine were there before this happened. Unfortunately I know a bit about this.

In 2004, my partner and I had the dubious distinction of having water reach the roof of our recently built home. Our property, thirty minutes east of Whanganui, was situated well above, and about 300 metres from, the confluence of the Whangaehu and Mangawhero rivers. Upstream of both, a weather bomb had dropped. The downstream effects were devastating.

In the early morning dark the water came so suddenly and violently yet, amazingly, no humans lost their lives – probably due to the remoteness of the area. The sheep and cattle, and every other living thing that couldn’t escape up high, were not so lucky. Most people were helicoptered out after having spent many hours cold and shivering on their roofs. All of them watched their own livestock, and all of their neighbour’s, either floating or flailing past them.

The sliding windows blew out from the pressure and our belongings spilled into the water. All of the farm vehicles were swamped and irreparable. The chock-full 30,000 litre water tank became buoyant and disappeared never to be seen again.

When it was all said and done, and the multitudes of dead and rotting livestock picked out of the debris, our land had gained an extra 2 metres in height from the mud and silt from half of the Parapara hill country having dumped its load on the entire property. Not one fence remained. Every mature tree within 10 metres of the riverbank was either broken in half or gone. The road access was washed away.

For me the Texas tragedy is as though those 21 years ago were just yesterday. Nothing and nobody stood a chance against the raging waters.

But the worst is yet to come. As of today – almost a week later – over 120 are confirmed dead and 170 reported as missing.

And, as in all tragedies, there are amazing stories of human bravery and sacrifice – and these have happened there too. But soon after, the snakes start slithering.

While we survived our flood and no humans were lost, the exhaustion and devastation is real. When not battling with our insurance company – that’s a whole ‘nother story – every time we returned to the scene during those first few days we would discover that persons unknown had made the mud-laden, dangerous trek to rip the copper guttering off or un-plumb the toilets and take them or just scavenge around for anything worth money. We caught them in the act once. They just shrugged and rapidly retreated. Which was probably best given my mood at the time.

One of our neighbours, who lived on a high hill and was spared by the water, decided to remove our old piston water pump in our absence. When I asked him about it he said, “Well, you won’t be needing it will ya”. Which was kind of true but not really the point.

But 21 years ago was a gentler time. Compared to what the 2025 version of snakes are doing to the Texas flood victims my complaints are frivolous.

Amidst reports of parents being phoned by scammers telling them they have their missing child and if they pay X they can have them back, here’s some more delightful behaviour by the ever-growing mentally ill amongst us.

Rita Panahi has put together a compilation of said nutjobs ranting in their own words, so I’ll temporarily hand you over to her.

So there you have it. It’s early days, and they’ll be more political point-scoring and scamming depravity to come. Nothing surer.

After our own biblical flood experience, and the swampy emergence of various rogues and miscreants, we had to deal with our insurance company. I won’t go into too much detail here, but it took many months to get closure while they tried every trick in the book to squirm out of paying for Full Replacement as per their legal contractual obligations.

For some reason there’s one memory that always cheers me up. And maybe on reflection their behaviour was all my fault.

A Christchurch-based insurance assessor, wearing a crisp blue suit, made the muddy, silt-ridden trek on the back of my quad bike over a makeshift and truly death-defying temporary track. A quad was the only means over it and it didn’t pay to look down while traversing it. He did. He screamed a couple of times in a high-pitched, very girly way and grabbed me tight from behind. I smiled to myself and roared on. I got him back out safely a few hours later but his suit, I’m sad to report, was not so lucky.

God bless all of those lost to and affected by the Guadalupe River flood.