Community hopeful that Bastrop will bounce back,
Series of disasters in recent years has at least provided experience.
Smithville Mayor SMITHVILLE — Scott Saunders was at his grandparents’house on Northeast Seventh Street when the first drop of
water trickled inside the home. Nana and Pawpaw, as Saunders endearingly calls them, had 9 inches of water in their home as Harvey pelted the city with 23 inches of rain before the system, then downgraded to a tropical storm, made its way back south to the Gulf of Mexico.
Nine miles east of Smithville, the storm dropped slightly more than 29 inches of rain.
Many of the homes on Northeast Seventh Street have flooded five times in the past two years. Bastrop County has received a federal disaster declaration four times since May 2015 when a storm over Memorial Day weekend flooded large swaths of the county. Since then, the county has suffered floods in October 2015 and in April and May 2016.
“The repetitiveness of these natural disasters put pressure on our county, but it also puts pressure on our citizens,” County Judge Paul Pape said. “There’s something called battle fatigue, and some of our residents have lost their homes or suffered property damage several times in the past two years.”
Adding to the challenge, Bastrop County’s acting director of emergency management, James
Gabriel, resigned last week, expressing doubts that he was the right person to succeed longtime director Mike Fisher, who died July 4 after a long battle with cancer.
Pape will coordinate and manage disaster response until a new director is hired.
Saunders said he spent much of his time during the storm traveling throughout the city, making sure residents were safe, checking on people he knew were immobile and even helping rescue a woman and her pets from her home, which had begun to flood.
“You just get beat up from every possible angle — emotionally, physically, mentally,” Saunders said. “But you take that and you push harder for the future. You rest in the knowledge that the decisions that you’re making will impact the people, and hopefully in a positive way.”
“Smithville is such a closeknit community that every time we go into a house, it’s not just some other person that’s flooded; it’s a family member, a friend or somebody that we’ve known our whole lives,” he said. “So it always breaks your hearts.”
At least 30 homes were under a substantial amount of floodwater during the storm, Saunders said. At least another 30 suffered roof and water-leaking damage from winds and rain. He estimated that 100 homes suffered some type of property damage.
“We want to do all we can to assist them,” Pape said. “I hope and pray, and I do believe, Bastrop County will come out of this. Life is full of trouble, and we learn to deal with it, and we’ll come out stronger out of this.”
Drainage ponds making a dent
After several floods, Smithville initiated infrastructure improvement projects in the past year to help alleviate flooding in the city. Saunders said more than $2.5 million — much of it grant money — has been spent building three detention ponds at Seventh and First streets and at the city barn, as well as bar ditches along Gazely Street and bar ditches and culverts along Martin Luther King Drive.
A half-finished detention pond at the end of Seventh Street near Marburger Street was able to hold 8 million gallons of water that would have otherwise exacerbated flooding on Seventh Street. Officials had a pump with an attached hose moving water from the flood-prone street into the detention pond. The pond, however, was overwhelmed with water as Tropical Storm Harvey unleashed sheets of rain on the city and the floodwaters swept into homes.
“I’ve been real hard on myself, feeling like I’ve failed to provide safety to the citizens,” Saunders said. “But the citizens have come forward with open arms, saying they understand this wasn’t a failure of the city but an unprecedented event.”
Saunders said the detention pond helped curb flooding on Seventh Street. He said that, before the pond, homes would have begun flooding after 5 inches of rain but that the new infrastructure made it so homes wouldn’t begin taking in water until after 11 inches had fallen.
On completion, the $1.1 million pond will be able to hold 13 million gallons, storing some of the excess rainfall until it can be pumped into the Colorado River. The pond is designed to handle a 10-year flood event over a 24-hour period, or about 6.2 inches of rain in a single day.
Damage on top of damage
Pape said commissioners are still assessing damage to develop preliminary estimates. Bastrop County Long Term Recovery, a nonprofit group developed after the 2011 Bastrop County Complex Fire to help residents recover from disaster, is working with property owners to assess damage to homes and businesses.
“It’s almost beyond belief that we’ve had repeated disasters, one after the other,” Pape said. “We have damage piling on top of damage from previous floods.”
But experience is a great teacher, Pape said, and the county knows how to respond to and recover from emergencies.
“Bastrop County is resilient,” he said. “We bounce back. We deal with reality. We don’t pretend these kinds of things don’t happen. We’ll work together and lift ourselves up and move forward.”
“We certainly can’t control Mother Nature — but we can control our response to Mother Nature, and I know Bastrop County will come out stronger out of this.”
A community stands together
Officials are urging residents to report property damage to a hotline — 512303-4300 — the county launched so it can meet federal thresholds for individual assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. County commissioners are taking stock of new flood damage to public infrastructure so FEMA can help cover repair costs.
“We hope to get public and individual assistance,” Pape said. “I have high hopes that we’ll be able to achieve individual assistance. But that’s partly dependent upon everyone who has sustained damages reporting it so every dollar is counted.”
Saunders, who was standing in his grandparents’ house when the first drop of floodwater made it inside and when the last drop was scooped out, said his community’s support keeps him hopeful.
“A community is only as good as its people,” he said. “And in Smithville we have the best people. I know we’re going to work together to help our neighbors bounce back from this.”