With more than 170 still missing, communities must reconcile how to pick up the pieces around a waterway that remains both a wellspring and a looming menace.

In what experts call "Flash Flood Alley," the terrain reacts quickly to rainfall steep slopes, rocky ground, and narrow riverbeds leave little time for warning.

Two days before flash floods on the Guadalupe River in Texas killed dozens of campers at a Christian girls summer camp, a state inspector approved operations, noting there was a written plan for responding to natural disasters.

Eyewitness accounts reveal terrifying moments when a massive flood struck Hunt, Texas on July Fourth, killing more than 100 people.