Needed 'train bomb' takes heavy toll
Blanco River surges 27 feet above flood stage, tearing homes off foundations.
HAYS COUNTY — Central Texans have been watching and hoping for a “rain bomb” to thoroughly extinguish a years-long drought and replenish dangerously low reservoirs. A former governor even suggested that Texans pray for such relief.
Overnight Saturday, that big rain came, dumping up to a foot of rain over a large expanse of the Hill Country, Austin and points to the east. The rainfall sparked a rapid rise in storage lakes throughout the area, but the storm exacted a steep price.
A Hays County man died and at leas t three
people were reported missing in historic flooding along the Blanco River that inundated sections of Blanco, Wimberley, San Marcos, Martindale and Luling. A thousand or more people are left homeless.
In Wimberley, the river reached at least 40.21 feet — the water gauge washed out at that point, officials said — about 7 feet above its all-time high in 1929 and about 27 feet above flood stage.
The body of the man who died, whose name was not released, was discovered in San Marcos on Sunday afternoon, said Ken Bell, the city’s emergency management coordinator.
Separately, Hays County officials said they were searching for three missing people in Wimberley, and they urged evacuees who were staying with family or friends to call the county at 512-3937896 so the county can “ensure they are safe and not among the missing.”
“We’re looking at over a thousand properties damaged,” Bell said. “We’re into the hundreds of just missing homes.”
Former Nueces County Commissioner Joe McComb said his daughterin-law, Laura, and grandchildren, Andrew and Leighton, are among eight people who were missing in the flooding in Wimberley. McComb said his son, Jonathan, was injured after being knocked into the river but managed to climb out and is recovering at a San Antonio hospital.
Hays County, San Mar- cos and Wimberley officials ordered a 9 p.m. Sunday curfew for those two cities and nearby unincorporated areas south of FM 150 because of safety concerns over downed power lines and damaged roads.
Bridges were wiped out on Fischer Store Road west of Wimberley and FM 165 east of Blanco. Even Interstate 35 was closed for a couple of hours at dawn Sunday in San Marcos when the Blanco River overtopped the highway.
The storm, which lasted from early Saturday evening until daybreak Sunday, spawned reports of a tornado in Dripping Springs that damaged a trailer park and what some people thought might have been tornadic winds — not yet confirmed by National Weather Service officials — that tore down trees and damaged property in Austin and some Williamson County suburbs.
Those winds, and the fallen trees, knocked out power to 30,000 Austin Energy customers and about 9,800 Pedernales Electric Co-operative customers. All but about 2,800 Austin Energy customers had electricity again by mid-afternoon Sunday, Austin Energy spokesman Robert Cullick said. About 2,900 PEC customers were still without power Sunday evening.
Residents reported waking between 4 and 5 a.m. to the terrifying sounds of fast-rising rushing water in their homes. They scrambled in the dark for higher ground.
“We were going to retire here,” Wimberley resident Bob Harla said Sunday as cleanup work- ers pumped brown water out of the house he recently bought on the banks of the Blanco River. “I don’t know what we’re going to do now.”
A low-lying area in northeastern San Marcos saw the worst flooding in memory Sunday morning. Cars and trucks were washed into a ditch across from Gary Park. Ice chests spilled their contents hundreds of yards from their owners’ homes. Mailboxes were plucked up and thrown down like jacks.
Roads in these parts, hundreds of yards east of the Blanco River, were deemed impassable until about 10 a.m. Sunday, when residents began taking further stock of the neighborhood. Some who have lived here for decades said they have not seen this kind of flooding.
The Blanco River runs through both Wimberley and San Marcos — it joins the San Marcos River just south of town — and it was swollen by nearly 10 inches of rain that fell Saturday night over neighboring Blanco County. Upstream in the town of Blanco, the river ran roughshod over its banks through Blanco State Park and reached the U.S. 281 bridge.
The San Marcos River already was well out of its banks near Luling late Sunday and crested at 38 feet, officials said. Flood stage there is 21 feet.
In Austin, Barton Creek flooded. Emergency officials at midafternoon had to rescue a person who had climbed a tree to escape the rising waters.
However, the positive effect on Austin’s drinking supply — the waters impounded in lakes Travis and Buchanan — was significant and immediate. From Saturday morning to Sunday evening Lake Travis jumped roughly 10 more feet. Buchanan, which missed out on much of the heavier rain and is considerably larger, has gone up only about a foot in the past week.
“If you look at the history books, the droughts we’ve had, that’s what breaks them: a rainy system that eventually produces a flood event,” said West, the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority leader. “I think this will go down as the five-year drought of 2011 to 2015. And this is what ended it.”