Hundreds of Homes Destroyed, Deaths as Flash Flooding Sweeps Through Texas, Oklahoma
A storm system dropped record amounts of rainfall across the southern Plains Sunday, causing flash floods in normally dry riverbeds, spawning tornadoes, destroying homes, and forcing at least 2,000 people to flee.
Two people were confirmed dead in Oklahoma where a firefighter was swept to his death while trying to rescue people from high water and a woman in Tulsa died in a traffic-related crash. In Texas, a man’s body 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, authorities said.
In Wimberley, Texas, southwest of Austin, eight people were reported missing, including three children, according to KXAN.
“It looks pretty bad out there,” said Hays County emergency management coordinator Kharley Smith, describing the destruction in Wimberley, part of a fast-growing corridor between Austin and San Antonio. “We do have whole streets with maybe one or two houses left on them and the rest are just slabs,” she said.
Between 350 and 400 homes were destroyed in Wimberley, many of them washed away, Smith said. In nearby San Marcos, flooding had damaged about 300 homes, she said. Kenneth Bell, the emergency management coordinator in San Marcos, said the damage in Hays County alone amounts to “millions of dollars.” (Read more from “Hundreds of Homes Destroyed as Flash Flooding Sweeps Through Texas, Oklahoma” HERE)
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