Perry declares 29 counties disaster areas
Posted on 07/03/2002 1:16:56 PM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Perry declares 29 counties disaster areas
07/03/2002
Gov. Rick Perry signed a disaster declaration for 29 Texas counties Wednesday after a five-day rainstorm pounded Central and South Texas. The governor asked President Bush for a federal disaster declaration.
Heavy rains and severe flooding have hit South and Central Texas extremely hard, especially in San Antonio, Gov. Perry said. It is important we move as quickly as possible to secure all emergency assistance available to help Texans whose homes and businesses have been damaged.
The rainstorm has killed three people and forecasters warn the deluge would linger through the Fourth of July.
AP Firefighters attempt to rescue Steve Cleveland and his father from the front porch of their Kerrville home. |
The Department of Public Safety said three people died from the high water. On Tuesday, a Utopia man died when he was washed off his farm tractor. In Bandera County, a man died when he drove into a pool of water and slid into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer.
Two days earlier, an Austin man died when he fell into a swollen creek near Barton Springs.
DPS trooper Travis Hall said another man near Utopia, which is about 75 miles west of San Antonio, was missing after being swept away from a car stuck in deep water Tuesday.
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At least two people were injured as several feet of debris-strewn water roiled through parts of San Antonio and Austin, prompting hundreds of evacuations and road closures.
A television news photographer was in stable condition at a San Antonio hospital after being struck by lightning Tuesday evening. An 11-year-old San Antonio boy who fell into a creek while playing remained on life support at a city hospital.
The Texas National Guard was called up by Gov. Perry on Tuesday, and crews in helicopters, boats and personal watercraft were helping pluck stranded motorists and homeowners from the floods.
On Wednesday, Perry announced the state disaster declaration following an aerial tour of flood damage in San Antonio. If a federal disaster declaration is granted, it could provide federal grants for individuals and families, disaster housing assistance, disaster unemployment assistance, crisis counseling and disaster loans from the Small Business Administration. Assistance may also be used for debris removal.
The counties included in the disaster declaration are Atascosa, Bandera, Bastrop, Bexar, Blanco, Burnet, Caldwell, Comal, DeWitt, Edwards, Frio, Gillespie, Gonzales, Guadalupe, Hays, Karnes, Kendall, Kerr, La Salle, Lavaca, Live Oak, Llano, McMullen, Medina, Real, Travis, Uvalde, Williamson and Wilson.
The copious rainfall provided a major boost to the rain-starved Edwards Aquifer, jumping 20 feet in five days. The aquifer is the only source of drinking water for more than a million residents in San Antonio and surrounding areas.
TXCN The Medina River near San Antonio carves a new path for itself around the western edge of the dam. |
About 25 miles northwest of San Antonio, there was growing concern that rising waters at the Medina Lake dam could threaten the integrity of the 90-year-old structure.
Dramatic aerial views of the dam showed the Medina River carving a new path for itself around the western edge of the dam, flowing in a whitewater torrent estimated at 38,000 cubic feet per second and creating a new, snake-shaped waterway paralleling the spillway.
The National Weather Service said the storm, which began Saturday and intensified Sunday, has dumped 16 inches of rain near San Antonio - already a record amount for the month of July.
The weather system was expected to slowly lumber west in the next few days.
In the meantime, rain falling at a rate of 2 to 3 inches an hour was likely in the same flooded region of Texas, forecaster Ken Widelski said.
"We're stuck in a blocking pattern right now," he said. "It's just developing these little storm complexes over and over.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said most parks should be open for holiday revelers.
Bill Granberry, regional director of 13 state parks in the Texas Hill Country, urged those with camping reservations at state parks in flooded regions of Central and South Texas to call the Texas State Parks central reservations center to confirm arrangements.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
HM...this is where you will be living. You won't be on a river though.
COB, is that your son?
He told me last night that the area at Ingram was okay, that the Guadalupe was not out of it's banks there, but as you know, it's a few miles to Kerrville.
Some of those houses in Kerrville are built at the base of some pretty big hills so any run-off is going to flood them.
His rent house in Kerrville was flooded to the bottom of the windows.
How sad about your sons house. I'll pray for him to have strength as he deals with this now. Please keep us posted. I wonder how high the water is. Did it get up to The Inn of the Hills?
For whatever it's worth, the Red Cross and Goodwill spearheaded a lot of the relief efforts in Missouri in 1993. People who want to donate should probably contact one of those orgs because it doesn't seem like anyone else is doing anything.
Okay, here goes click
Yeah, rock and cedar trees!
Texas Flood
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Well there's floodin' down in Texas
All of the telephone lines are down
Well there's floodin' down in Texas
All of the telephone lines are down
And I've been tryin' to call my baby
Lord and I can't get a single sound
Well dark clouds are rollin' in
Man I'm standin' out in the rain
Well dark clouds are rollin' in
Man I'm standin' out in the rain
Yeah flood water keep a-rollin'
Man it's about to drive poor me insane
Well I'm leavin' you baby
Lord and I'm goin' back home to stay
Well I'm leavin' you baby
Lord and I'm goin' back home to stay
Well back home ain't no floods and tornados
Baby and the sun shines every day
Caught up in a whirlwind, can't catch my breath, knee deep in hot water, broke out in cold sweat...
Tightrope
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