COMMENTARY — Kerrville flood echoes Del Rio disaster

By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times

Some Del Rioans who woke on the morning of July 4 and watched the Weather Channel
and other regional and national newscasts from the flood-devastated communities of
Kerrville, Hunt, Comfort, Center Point and San Angelo may have experienced a strange
déjà vu.

The catastrophic flash flooding of the normally-serene Guadalupe River, a placid stream
that winds its picturesque way through the heart of Kerrville, was swollen by more than a
dozen inches of rain when the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry contributed to a wet
weather system that stalled atop its watershed and sent a wall of water and debris roaring
down its waterway.

In some ways, the July 4 flood of the Guadalupe echoes the Aug. 23-24, 1998 flood of
the San Felipe Creek and the Cienegas Creek drainage in Del Rio.

On Aug. 23, 1998, the remnants of Tropical Storm Charley stalled just north of Del Rio,
dumping more than 20 inches of rain on the area in about 24 hours. Fishermen who went
out on Lake Amistad that Sunday – this reporter’s husband and son being two of them –
reported the lake rose seven feet between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. Over the course of that week,
the lake level came up over 14 feet.

Like the disaster that struck Kerrville, the worst of the flooding in

Val Verde County
came under the cover of darkness, while most people were sleeping.

Like the residents of Kerrville, Del Rioans who woke up the next morning were greeted
by unimaginable scenes of death and destruction.

The San Felipe Creek, normally a small, clear, friendly riverlet, had become a raging
monster, devouring people, pets, homes and vehicles.
Survivors, some who lived – and continue to live – within a stone’s throw of the creek,
remember standing in shoulder-deep water inside their homes, sometimes supporting a
weaker, often older, family member through the long hours of the night.

Another survivor remembered leaving her home along the creek to seek higher ground
and letting her three leashed pit bulls pull her to safety through the rushing water when it
swept her off her feet.

Yet another climbed to the roof of her home as it was washed down the creek. When it
ran into a large tree and began to break up, she climbed into the tree’s sturdy limbs and
waited to be rescued.

A fourth, a former city councilman, remembers just barely escaping the rising water with
his family.

Other families were not so lucky. A childhood friend of this reporter’s husband, David
Pyatte, who was looking forward to a career in the U.S. Border Patrol, died trying to save
his mother-in-law, JoAnn Schumann. Both died when they were swept into the water
coursing through the normally-dry Cienegas Creek drainage on the city’s north side.

Pyatte and Schumann were two of the nine people known to have lost their lives in the
flood. Seven other people died in the flood of the San Felipe Creek in south Del Rio, including Gilbert Chacon, Concepcion Chacon, Octavio Hernandez, Candelario Paredes,
Maria Pina, Carman Rios and Enrique Zuniga, and there is a rumor that lingers that many
more people lost their lives.

The devastation left in Del Rio when the waters receded was truly astonishing, in the
worst possible way.

This reporter, then a photographer and graphic artist working for a contractor on Laughlin
Air Force Base, was assigned to a team of sheriff’s office deputies and other law
enforcement officials tasked with surveying the flood damage and taking photos for an
upcoming visit by the then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

A sheriff’s office deputy accompanied this reporter into the San Felipe area and cresting
the creek bank on Johnson Street overlooking the Tardy Dam is one of those experiences
that I will never forget.

Cars, trucks and vans washed down the creek lay helter-skelter in the receding mud-
brown waters, some stopped from further forward movement by the dam. Debris was
caught in the branches of trees 20 feet above the ground. A wooden telephone pole eight
inches in diameter had snapped off a few feet above the ground. Steel supports holding
up a small footbridge over the Blue Hole were bent at 90-degree angles.

In the aftermath, the water receded and the harsh memories were softened as the years
passed.

The county investigated possible flood mitigation projects, but when the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers recommended buying out an additional 140 homes near the creek in
south Del Rio, that plan was abandoned. As it was, the city’s San Felipe neighborhood
was never quite the same.

The city of Del Rio used FEMA funds to take the extraordinary step of buying out some
property owners whose homes had been built right on the banks of the creek in south Del
Rio, and as of today, no building has been allowed in that floodway.

More troublesome is the Cienegas Creek drainage on the city’s north side. The problem is
there is no flowing stream there to remind people of the danger, though flooding occurs
in and around the drainage every time there are more than two or three inches of rain.

The Cienegas Creek drainage extends from the Del Rio Hedges area into the wide field
north of Walmart, under Highway 90/Veterans Boulevard and crosses Amistad
Boulevard into the neighborhoods along Fox Drive, crosses Kings Way and eventually
continues to the Duck Pond.

Like the San Felipe Creek, this drainage became a large, fast-flowing river during the
1998 flood, and even though no water flows there now, it will become a river again at
some date in the future.

The city should take the same steps it did along the San Felipe Creek and not allow any
building or development in the Cienegas Creek floodway.

We forget at our peril that we live our little lives largely at the mercy of Nature, and at
any time are subject to – not masters of – forces so powerful that they beggar the
imagination. The very best that we can do is pray for the best – and prepare for the worst.

The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com