Powerful floodwaters that have tore through Central Texas for days began to ebb in some places on Friday, leaving behind battered homes, blocked roads and shaken residents, even as flash flood warnings blared in other areas.
At least two people have been reported dead after waters rose rapidly this week across the Texas Hill Country, west of San Antonio and Austin. The same area of the state was ravaged by catastrophic flooding last July.
This week’s relentless rainfall rivaled, and in some cases may have even surpassed, what fell last year, when more than a 130 people were killed by the rising Guadalupe River. The death toll last year included 28 at a girl’s summer camp, Camp Mystic.
The rains this week transformed many of the region’s usually low and slow moving rivers into violent brown torrents that uprooted trees and swept cars off the road.
For some in the town of Comfort, along the Guadalupe, the river appeared to rise higher this week than ever, even during last year’s catastrophic July flooding.
“It looked almost like the ocean,” said Harmony Schwethelm, whose family for the past 100 years has owned a riverbank property in Comfort with a few small homes. “It’s never come up this high.”
At one point in Comfort, the river rose more than 25 feet in one hour, peaking around 37 feet, according to the National Weather Service.
Ms. Schwethelm said that when she had come out before sunrise two mornings ago, she couldn’t see the water, but she could hear the rushing waves.That’s when she and her kids left, she said.
Her experience during the flood last year — “the closest I’ve ever been to panic” — helped her better prepare for this week’s rains, she said.
On Friday, debris littered country roads around Comfort and trees lay near a riverbank, some ripped from the ground. The still-swollen Guadalupe flowed loudly underneath a bridge where tree debris hung from the top of a bent river gauge, a sign of just how high the water had been.
At an evacuation center in the tourist town of Fredericksburg, Mike Fellows, a volunteer who also assisted during last year’s floods, said people appeared more ready this time. Crews rescued dozens of people from flooding of the Pedernales River, including more than 30 people in surrounding Gillespie County, according to a statement from emergency responders.
“I am feeling better about the response,” Mr. Fellows said. The rolls at the center on Friday showed more volunteers than evacuee check-ins.
Gov. Greg Abbott said on Thursday that two people had died in the flooding, a 65-year-old man the town of Center Point, and a 74-year-old man in Uvalde. Mr. Abbott said that the rainfall could surpass state records.
State officials planned to hold a news conference Friday afternoon.
Officials in Kerr County, which was hard hit by last year’s flooding, said they had improved warning systems and sirens along the Guadalupe over the past year, and that many residents had followed the evacuation warnings this week.
Farther west, along the Rio Grande, floodwaters swept away more than 100 floating orange border barriers that were meant to deter migrants from crossing the river near the city of Eagle Pass, State Representative Eddie Morales Jr. said on social media. The city said that the loose barriers prompted the temporary closing of two international bridges as a precaution.
After days of rain totaling over two feet in some locations, the deluge was beginning to subside in most of the state. However, the West Texas town of Sonora on Friday saw a torrent of rain and a flash flood emergency, the highest level issued.
Forecasters warned that the rains could last through the morning, exacerbating an already dangerous situation across the Hill Country. But overall, the bulk of the moisture was moving farther west and by Saturday the Hill Country was expected to begin drying out.
Judson Jones contributed reporting.
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