Updated : Central and Upper South Texas Flooding Death Toll Rises to Seven
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Heavy rains Sunday forced hundreds of campers to flee a swollen Guadalupe River, trapped motorists in floodwaters, and caused a Greyhound bus to hydroplane on Interstate 35 and dangle from a bridge.
Thunderstorms sweeping across Texas haven’t dumped the catastrophic 20 inches of rain forecasters predicted. But some areas were hit hard — floodwaters have killed at least six people since last week, and another man is missing.
North of San Antonio, a flash flood on the Guadalupe River stranded dozens of tubers, washed away vehicles and prompted authorities to evacuate hundreds, possibly thousands, of campers.
“At about 3 p.m. we started warning the campgrounds of possible flooding,” Comal County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Mark Reynolds said.
“Then at about 3:30 p.m. the National Weather Service called and said, ‘Get the people off the river. We’ve got a torrent of water coming.’”
The culprit was a small but intense storm that stalled over the river, just below Canyon Dam. The clouds dumped about 21/2 inches of rain per hour starting at about 2 p.m.
Richard Ross of Jones Creek lost his Ford Mustang to the river.
“My buddy lost a 2007 Dodge Ram that he bought last week,” Ross said. “It went over Hueco Falls.”
Tubers trying to make the most of a dreary Memorial Day weekend said they had little warning of the danger.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Kristy Dexter of San Angelo said. “Police in a motorboat made us paddle to the shore and within minutes the river rose and swallowed our campsite.”
At least 26 people were rescued from under bridges at FM 306 and the Third Crossing on River Road.
“They took refuge from the rain under the bridges, and as the water rose, they kept moving up the banks until there wasn’t enough room to get out,” Reynolds said.
Two people climbed trees to escape the rising river and were rescued by helicopter.
No one was killed or injured.
Forecasters said the rain should lessen. Today’s forecast calls for a 50 percent chance of thunderstorms and showers with a mostly cloudy sky.
So far this year, nearly 20 inches of rain has been measured in San Antonio. Last year at this time, the city was in a drought with only 7 inches of rainfall.
On the Southwest Side of San Antonio, a Greyhound bus from Laredo carrying 33 passengers lost control on a soaked section of I-35.
Witnesses said the driver tried to gain control as the bus hit a guardrail, bounced across two lanes and broke through the railing of a bridge over the Medina River.
The front quarter of the bus hung over the bridge, high above the river, as pieces of luggage fell to the water.
“Kids were crying and grown men were freaking out,” said Valerie Roa, a student at Texas Woman’s University in Denton who was riding the bus from her home in Laredo back to school.
Frantic passengers popped out windows in the back of the bus to crawl to safety. Three people, including the driver, were taken to a hospital. San Antonio police Sgt. Mike Brown said the three had minor bumps and bruises.
“They were very lucky,” Brown said. “The river was right underneath them.”
Brown said investigators hadn’t pinned down a single cause for the accident but blamed the rain as a factor.
The dense cloud ceiling prevented a helicopter from aiding in a search concentrated along the Pedernales River for Edgar Garcia, 22.
Garcia’s family and fellow parishioners from St. Boniface Church in Comfort joined deputies, firefighters and other rescue personnel scouring the soggy terrain for a third day.
The use of cadaver dogs reflected the growing doubt that Garcia would be found alive.
“There’s very little hope,” Gillespie County Sheriff Milton Jung said.
In Fredericksburg, Garcia’s co-workers waited anxiously at the Ace Hardware, about 1 mile from the bridge over Barons Creek where he vanished.
“It really threw us when we found out” he was missing, said Anna Blocker, assistant manager at the store, where Garcia joined the handyman crew about four months ago. “He’s such a nice, quiet young man.”
Jung said searchers were expected to have covered 12 miles along the Pedernales River by late Sunday, on foot and in kayaks.
Bent trees and debris hanging in fences beside the crossing where the Comfort High School graduate disappeared indicate the floodwaters topped a one-lane bridge by several feet.
Jung said Garcia called his family on a cell phone after his Isuzu Rodeo got stuck in raging water that flowed over a low bridge on Goehmann Lane.
“He evidently told his dad he was afraid to get out of the car,” Jung said. “About that time, I’m told, the phone went dead.”
John Tedesco, Roger Croteau and Nancy Martinez
Express-News Staff Writers
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Seven people are now confirmed or presumed dead due to the recent floods, including a Waco woman found Monday north of the Waco Regional Airport.
Family members said Dolly Morris, 46, went missing Sunday morning. They believe when she tried to cross a bridge the water swept her car away downstream. Family members said she was on her way to the Cowboy Church on Rock Creek Road just before 10:00, but she never made it. Her husband and mother reported her missing that afternoon.
Some family members said no one would help them search for her, so they started looking early Monday morning.
They said two neighbors also helped them in the search and knew the area well.
He said ‘I think I know where the car is because there is no way she could have gotten through the trees. He pulled into this man’s driveway, there was her car and there she was in the car,” Morris’s sister Anna David said.
David adds after they discovered her body, McLennan County Sheriff’s officials along with volunteers from China Spring Fire Department arrived on the scene.
The McLennan County Sheriff’s Department hasn’t commented on this investigation.
www.kcentv.com
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Man Missing After Night Of Heavy Rain
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Posted: Friday, May 25, 2007 – 08:38:51 am CDT
A search that began during heavy rains last night is continuing today as a man is missing after his car was washed off of Goehmann Lane.
Edgar Garcia, 22, drove his 1992 Isuzu Rodeo around a posted barrier and was washed off the road at Town Creek at approximately 10:23 p.m.
The vehicle was swept off the roadway and was located at about 1:20 a.m., approximately one-half to three-quarters of a mile east of the water crossing.
Garcia was not in his vehicle and has not been located at this time.
Search and rescue efforts by the Gillespie County Sheriff’s Office and the Fredericksburg Volunteer Fire Department were activated to locate the missing driver.
Lt. Jim Judd reported that Garcia’s parents are at the scene and are active in the search.
www.fredricksburgstandard.com___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ravaging floodwaters claimed the lives of at least five people in the Killeen area in less than a 12-hour period during the overnight hours Thursday. Three of the five victims met their fate in Killeen, and one man is still missing, while two others died in Copperas Cove.
Carroll Smith, public information coordienator for the Killeen Police Department, said authorities were called after a report of an overturned vehicle on Watercrest Drive between 8 and 9 p.m. Thursday. A woman and two of her children had been rescued from her white Ford Excursion.
But her two other children remained trapped in the vehicle and could not be rescued, Smith said, adding that the SUV was swept away in the swift current, eventually sinking below the surface.
Divers from the Morgan’s Point Water Recovery Team were not able to locate the vehicle until 8:32 a.m. Friday, when the two boys, 5-year-old Jarvis Tarrance, and 6-year-old Javiante Tarrance, were recovered from the vehicle, stuck engine down in an estimated 18 feet of water that flowed across Watercrest Drive.
Justice of the Peace Garland Potvin pronounced the two brothers dead at just after 9 a.m.
Potvin said the mother and the two other children, a 3-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy, owe their lives to a man who transported them from their flooding vehicle by canoe to the safety of the banks.
“The mother drove the vehicle into the water, and it got picked up and carried it off the roadway,” Potvin said. “He just heard the screaming, and he went and tried to help. He got in his canoe and paddled out there to help.
“That guy saved three of them, because they wouldn’t have gotten out of there by themselves, I don’t believe.”
Potvin said the height of the water at that location was unprecedented.
“I’ve lived around here all my life, and I’ve never seen the water that high,” he said. “Of course, there is a flood control dam that did what it’s supposed to do. It’s designed to prevent that water from coming on into Killeen. But it didn’t back up until after this vehicle had washed off.”
The vehicle remains below the water’s surface, which Potvin estimated to be 300-400 yards wide.
“It’s too far to even hook up a cable,” Potvin said. “It’s probably 150 yards from the west side.”
Elsewhere, rising water proved equally deadly. At 11:42 p.m. Thursday night, the Killeen Fire Department recovered the first victim of the storms in Killeen. The body of Sean R. Cannon, 20, was found in a cement culvert on Avenue G. Smith said the man had been walking with his cousin when the two were swept away by the rushing waters.
The cousin was rescued by two nearby residents.
Potvin said Cannon went missing shortly after 7 p.m., but he wasn’t reported missing until three hours later.
The recovery of the body was delayed for more than an hour after it had been discovered due to the swiftness of the current.
In Copperas Cove Thursday night, an elderly couple were killed when their minivan was swept up by water rushing over Farm-to-Market 3046. Cove authorities said they found the bodies of the two victims later in the evening, nearly a mile from their abandoned vehicle.
Chief Deputy Joe Blakely identified the couple as Jesse Scott Hornsby, 75, and his wife. Gloria Evelyn Hornsby, 73. Both were residents of the area. They were driving a Dodge Caravan.
Deputies were dispatched at approximately 9 p.m. Thursday to a report of the mini-van washing off Farm-to-Market 3046, about a half-mile from Farm-to-Market 116.
“Deputies attempted to make their way to the mini-van, but high, swift-moving water at the low water crossing prevented them from reaching the van,” Blakely reported in a release. “Eventually, Cove Fire Department personnel were able to make their way to the van, but there were no occupants inside.”
The body of Mrs. Hornsby was recovered from floodwater three-quarters of a mile from the low-water crossing at approximately 10:30 p.m.
The search continued for her husband with deputies being aided by the Copperas Cove Fire Department, Emergency Medical Services, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Coryell County Citizens Emergency Response Team.
At 7:15 a.m. Friday, the elderly man’s body was recovered approximately 30 yards from where the woman’s body was recovered. Both were pronounced dead by Justice of the Peace Bill Price.
Sheriff Johnny Burks commended all of the emergency responders involved in the search and rescue effort.
“They gave their all in an effort to rescue the occupants of the minivan but, unfortunately, we were not successful,” Burks said.. “The best practice is to never attempt to cross a roadway covered in water, especially swift-moving water. Wait until the water recedes or turn around and go another way.
“It’s always tragic when someone looses their life to an incident such as this.”
Killeen police were still searching Friday night for Scottie Gjedrem, who was last seen in a vehicle near Nolan Creek Thursday night. The crushed remains of the empty green, 2001 Mitsubishi Spyder MR2 were dragged from the water by wrecker teams Friday morning off of Little Drive.
Carroll Smith said the Gjedrem was aiding the female owner of the vehicle by parking it for her, but was swept away in the current.
Gjedrem is potentially the sixth victim of the flooding in the area, an unprecedented figure, according to police.
“I’ve been with KPD for 25 years, and lived here all my life,” said Smith. “And we’ve never had this many weather-related deaths. We don’t normally have them in Killeen.”
Killeen Daily Herald
Contact Justin Cox at jcox@kdhnews.com or call (254) 501-7568
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The flash flooding that swamped parts of Central Texas overnight claimed at least five lives, officials say and two of the victims were children. Authorities found the bodies of a 5-year-old and a 6-year-old in a vehicle Friday morning at Prestige and Watercrest in Killeen.
More information about the discovery was not immediately available.
Killeen authorities were also investigating after the discovery of a convertible that had been swept away in another area of the city.
Two elderly residents, meanwhile, were found dead in the Copperas Cove area.
And Killeen firefighters recovered the body of a 20-year-old Killeen man just before midnight in a cement culvert on Avenue G.
Authorities say the man and his 25-year-old cousin were in the culvert around 7 p.m. Thursday during the heavy rain that caused the flash flooding in the area.
Drainage swept both men off their feet.
Two passersby rescued the 25-year-old man, but the 20-year-old couldn’t be found.
The victim’s name wasn’t immediately available.
An autopsy was ordered.
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Meanwhile Friday a search continues for a man who’s been missing since a flash flood swept his sport-utility vehicle from a low-water crossing overnight on the southeastern fringe of Fredericksburg.
The Gillespie County Sheriff’s Department says Edgar Garcia drove around road barriers late last night on Goehmann Lane at Town Creek, about a half mile east of US Highways 290 and 87.
The creek’s swift floodwaters swept his SUV about a half-mile downstream, where search crews found it early Friday morning.
The search continues for Garcia.
Overnight storms dumped up to eight inches of rain on parts of Central Texas and more heavy rain is in the forecast Friday.
Much of the Hill Country and Edwards Plateau are under flash-flood warnings.
A flash flood watch is in effect until Saturday evening for San Saba and McCulloch Counties.
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