Our daughter left Saturday for a two-week trip to Peru. The first part is a volunteer service mission, which will be spent high up in the Andes mountains working in remote villages on agricultural projects. After that she spends a week hiking through the jungle, visiting Machu Picchu and other Inca ruins, and white water rafting.
Needless to say, I'm a little nervous about her going off on her own to the middle of nowhere. She's a smart, tough, determined kid, but she's only 18 and naive in the ways of the world. It helps a little that she's traveling with a group of fellow volunteers and experienced guides, but still... she's my little girl and she's going to be a long way away in a strange part of the world with a bunch of strangers.
All I can think of is the movie Taken...
The other big news in this neck of the woods is the weather. We've had a wet spring. In fact, we received 7 inches over the last week. All that was just a prelude to Saturday. The skies opened up and dumped almost 8 inches of rain on us in less than 24 hours. Since the ground was already saturated from the previous rain, all that water had nowhere to go. So the Central Texas area was basically flooded out.
Record rainfall was wreaking havoc across a swath of Texas...
Rivers rose so fast that whole communities woke up Sunday surrounded by water. The Blanco crested above 40 feet — more than triple its flood stage of 13 feet — swamping Interstate 35 and forcing parts of the busy north-south highway to close. Rescuers used pontoon boats and a helicopter to pull people out.
...the body of a man was recovered from a flooded area along the Blanco River, which rose 26 feet in just one hour and left piles of wreckage 20 feet high...
That's about 25 miles from our house. A little farther away - about 40 miles - are the small towns of Wimberly and San Marcos.
About 1,000 people were evacuated from homes in Central Texas, where rescuers pulled dozens of people from high water overnight.
"We do have whole streets that have maybe one or two houses left on them, and the rest are just slabs," said Kharley Smith, emergency management coordinator in Hays County, Texas.
Crews are still surveying damage, she told reporters Sunday; between 350 and 400 homes in the Texas county are gone, and more than 1,000 were damaged. Two main bridges washed away, she said, and others sustained major structural damage.
In San Marcos, Texas, a city between San Antonio and Austin that was among the hardest hit areas, Fire Marshal Ken Bell said at least one person was confirmed dead. Crews are searching for three missing people, he said, and others are trapped in areas that authorities can't reach because bad weather has forced them to stop air rescues.
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| IH 35 in San Marcos was closed due to flooding |
Twelve people are still missing in Wimberley after the house they were staying in was washed away by flood waters.
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| Bridge washed out in Wimberley |
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| Another washed out bridge in Wimberely. Yes, that's a large tree on top of it (click to embiggen). |
Closer to home, the small town nearest our house (Boerne - about 15 miles away) suffered some street flooding and evacuations, but fortunately no fatalities.
In Boerne, several hundred people were evacuated from the Creekside Apartments when the Cibolo Creek began rising Saturday, flooding cars and entering ground floor dwellings.
... preparations to evacuate elderly residents of the nearby Riverview Nursing Home, also near the Cibolo Creek, were called off Sunday when the water began receding, sparing those elders a major disruption.
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| Boerne flooding |
And another short video showing an SUV getting swept away by the flood. Fortunately the drive got out safely.
Our house is about 100 yards away from a dry creek that floods during heavy rain. This weekend it looked like a raging river, with standing waves and whitecaps. Luckily we're far enough away and on high enough ground so that the water isn't a threat.
The good news is that the beer was saved.
The bad news is that it's still raining...
5 comments:
Yup, it's been pretty nasty. Glad y'all are OK.
While attending SWTSU, we lived in the married housing. During those years, the river came close to our apartment and did flood some apartments closer to the river. But never did we see anything like this year's floods. Here in OK, we are having some flooding also. It is all pretty amazing.
Thoughts and prayers for the folks and the rescuers down there! Stay safe!
Terrible way to break a drought.
Thank you all. We're okay, but like y'all have said, thoughts and prayers for others.
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