Bastrop County road damage hits $1.5 million
150 homes destroyed or damaged; roads and bridges are collapsing.
About 150 homes have been destroyed or damaged, roads and bridges left crumbling, and many residents displaced after 8 to 10 inches of rain fell over Bastrop County from Thursday night into Friday morning, officials said Monday.
Bastrop Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Fisher said preliminary damage estimates to county roads and bridges have reached $1.5 million, and that figure is expected to grow as work crews reach hard-to-access areas.
“It was very obvious to me after a night of rainfall and how rapidly the rain fell that there was going to be significant damage countywide,” Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape said.
Several streets and bridges throughout the county were undermined and have begun collapsing as drivers head out on the roads, Fisher said. Undermined roads are crumbling under the added vehicular weight, Fisher said, though no cars have fallen into sinkholes and no injuries have been reported.
“It’s an unseen danger; you can’t see it until it happens,” Fisher said.
The Alum Creek Road bridge,
about a half-mile south of Park Road 1C, was washed out, Fisher said. Portions of FM 1441 north of Bastrop are toppling in, and about 20 roads in the Tahitian Village neighborhood have suffered minor to major dam- age, he said.
As more work crews head out and reports come in, assessed road damage and cost estimates will climb, Fisher said.
Pape said the extent of the damage is widespread and is
not only a result of the heavy rainfall but of the cumulative effects from floods that have plagued Bastrop County in
the past year. “We’re still struggling to recover from the Memorial Day flood of 2015,” Pape said. “We’re still making repairs to roads destroyed in that flood.”
Pape declared a state of disaster for Bastrop County on Friday, opening the door to state and federal aid.
For the fifth time in a year, Bastrop County is left recovering after a major disas- ter struck the suburbs east of Austin. The area has suffered four devastating floods and a massive wildfire in the past year.
“The number of disas- ters we’ve had in one year is unheard of,” Pape said. “It’s beyond any expectations, and in every one of them lives have been changed.
“The people in Bastrop are resilient and so giving and caring. They’re tough, and we’ll bounce back.”
Search for missing
The Travis County sheriff ’s office is continuing to lead a search for one or more peo- ple believed to be missing after finding the body of an unidentified Hispanic man Sunday, spokeswoman Lisa Block said.
Officials will probably bring in divers Tuesday to search a retention pond near Circuit of the Americas that’s about 30 feet deep, Block said.
A 911 caller reported a person holding onto a pole surrounded by floodwaters near the FM 812 on-ramp to Texas 130, which is southwest of Circuit of the Americas, Block said. Travis County Emer- gency Services District No. 11 firefighters also said they saw a truck swept away by water with one or more peo- ple in it.
Block said the county is working on assessing dam- age but doesn’t have a final tally yet.
Hays County damage
The primary damage to public infrastructure in Hays County, where heavy rain overwhelmed some local drainage systems, was to a state-owned bridge and the Buda fire station downtown, said Kharley Smith, the county’s emergency services director.
Smith said the intersection of Texas 21 and FM 2001 in Niederwald, a small town near Kyle, will probably be closed a couple of weeks because floodwaters damaged a bridge.
The Buda fire station, which has flooded before, received about 4 inches of water, Capt. Craig Odell said. It took the Fire Department a couple of hours to clean out the building, and the only lasting damage might be to one carpeted room, Odell said.
In Buda, first responders also evacuated the Onion Creek Village apartments, where many residents are retirees. Though water crept up to the doorways of a couple of units, the property ended up not being flooded, Smith said.
Emergency officials say they are already gearing up for the possibility of more rain this week, such as by making arrangements for extra staffing.