Grabbing keys and unlocking a kennel is a matter of 30 seconds. I get that they were under a lot of pressure when leaving their house but letting animals die because they couldn't spare 30 seconds isn't defensible, sorry.
You do know how flooding works, right? It's not like a dam burst into pieces and immediately flooded its surroundings, it's not like a tsunami hit the town. Flooding which is caused by heavy rainfall, aka in this case, is relatively slow at first, but as the water builds up, it becomes devastating. The dogs' owners absolutely had the time to at least open the kennel.
I get what you're playing at here. Trying to make us see how judgmental we are and that we shouldn't jump into conclusions and condemn these people right away because maybe this or maybe that. But the thing is, that approach would work in a situation where the details are unknown or unclear, if we really didn't know how fast the water was coming. But we do know what caused the flooding, we do know the details.
Flash flooding is distinguished from "regular" flooding by taking less than 6 hours. 6 hours is still quite a lot, not to mention that the reports of the incoming hurricane were available days before.
You have a point with the reservoirs. Yet, Houston's dam didn't actually burst, it overflowed which, as serious as it is, makes for a much slower process than one would imagine. A burst dam is a much bigger problem because all the water which is held by it suddenly spills into its surroundings. The situation over there is bad of course but there was a lot of time to prepare and even the onset of the catastrophe was relatively slow. Yet, Houston is a low-lying city with a not so good infrastructure and layout which has admittedly made the situation worse.
Maybe, we don't know what was going on at the time.
I get what you're playing at here. Trying to make us see how judgmental we are and that we shouldn't jump into conclusions and condemn these people right away because maybe this or maybe that. But the thing is, that approach would work in a situation where the details are unknown or unclear, if we really didn't know how fast the water was coming. But we do know what caused the flooding, we do know the details.
The preparation argument is decent, though.