Survivor Of Record 2015 TX Floods Gives Cruz 15,000 Signatures, Asks For Climate Meeting, Blown Off
Renee Boschert, whose home was severely damaged by record floods that swept through Texas last spring, describes the night of Memorial Day 2015 as “the most horrific thing” that she’s ever experienced. She remembers looking out the window of her home that night to see the nearby river — which, due to a prolonged drought, had been just a trickle hours before — rising by 30 or 40 feet. She remembers watching a woman be swept down the river, and hearing her cries for help. Unable to be rescued in the raging river, the woman later drowned.
All told, more than two dozen people across Texas and Oklahoma lost their lives during the floods, when record rainfall dumped at least 35 trillion gallons of water across the region. Nearly 300 homes in Boschert’s hometown of Wimberley, Texas, were destroyed. “Three hundred-year-old cypress trees broke like toothpicks,” Boschert told ThinkProgress. “The devastation is going to be there for generations to come.”
Scientists have since linked the record-breaking floods to climate change. But Texas Senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz (R) denies any link between climate change and the recent floods in Texas — at a press conference after the floods, he told reporters that “at a time of tragedy … it’s wrong to try to politicize a natural disaster.”
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On Friday, Boschert again spoke with Cruz after a campaign event. After reintroducing herself as a flood survivor, she delivered a petition with 15,000 signatures asking Cruz to meet with survivors affected by the flood to discuss climate change. Cruz handed the petition to a nearby staffer, but did not agree to a meeting. ThinkProgress reached out to Cruz’s campaign asking if the senator had decided to agree to a meeting, but did not receive a response by the time of publication. “He was very sympathetic about the house loss, but clearly dismisses climate change as a reality,” Boschert said. “It makes me very angry. I do not see it as a political issue. It’s a personal tragedy.” Boschert’s New Hampshire meeting wasn’t her first attempt at convincing Cruz to sit down with Texas flood survivors to discuss climate change. Immediately after the floods, a group of flood survivors traveled to his office to present signatures from thousands of people around the country asking that Cruz meet with constituents to discuss climate change. Boschert, who was a part of that group, never received a response from Cruz’s office.
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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/02/09/3747265/texas-flood-survivor-confronts-cruz-on-climate-change/
