A woman in Texas is dealing with the heartbreaking realization that all of the work she put into restoring her home after a 2025 flood was for nothing. Kara Doctor tells CBS News that just a year after repairing her home, which had been destroyed in the Guadalupe River flood, she will have to start all over again.
Doctor shared how she woke up Thursday morning to an evacuation notice from emergency responders who were telling the community to evacuate as rain caused the Guadalupe River to fill. The resident and her neighbors quickly evacuated, only to find more devastation when they returned home a few hours later.
According to the homeowner, the Guadalupe River had entered her home, reaching around 2.5 feet. To add insult to injury, Doctor told reporters that the house had been in her family for generations, calling it her “dream” home.
Now, she and her neighbors are forced to decide if they want to rebuild after two back-to-back “500-year” floods.
Texas Woman Faces Rebuilding Yet Again
Doctor explained how the July 4, 2025, flood that killed more than two dozen campers and counselors had originally destroyed her home, requiring extensive repairs to the structure. On July 16, the rebuild was almost complete when emergency responders showed up to tell her to evacuate. “They told us, ‘The river’s coming. We gotta get out. You gotta get out now,'” she recalled.
When she returned later that day, she realized that she would have to start all over again. “The only thing left was my fireplace to finish out,” she continued. “He was going to come up and finish that out, so I texted him this morning and said, ‘Don’t bother.'”
Doctor said she spent all day crying, trying to decide whether it was worth it to rebuild yet again. “They said that was a 500-year flood,” she told CBS News of the 2025 flood. “Two years in a row kind of makes me nervous to rebuild, to try to settle back in.”
Now, the homeowner says she and her neighbors are likely going to take some time to think about whether it’s worth rebuilding in an area that has seen so much destruction in such a short time.
Climate Disasters Are Getting Worse
Climate Central reports that 2025 was the third-highest year when it came to billion-dollar disasters, with 23 of those events adding up to $115 billion in damages. And while the Los Angeles wildfires were the most expensive disaster of the year, it was hardly the only one.
When it comes to deadly disasters, the website reports that the Texas Hill Country event that destroyed Doctor’s home the first time, and left a community devastated by the tragic deaths at Camp Mystic, was one of the deadliest inland flooding events in our country’s history, totaling around $1 billion.
It’s easy to see why Doctor and her neighbors are cautious about attempting to rebuild in the area again, especially knowing that the Guadalupe River has already done the unthinkable two years in a row. Hopefully she and her neighbors have the time (and resources) to carefully consider what to do next before they have to decide.