Jeff Lindner - Harris County Flood Control District Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Five fifty one hour time here in Houston's morning News.
The flooding along the Guadaloupe River in Kirk County, especially
in Kerrville, death toll currently at eighty two. We still
have people who are missing. Probably the worst part, I
would think for any of these search and rescue people

(00:22):
is coming across the bodies of children. And there has
been a lot of kids who have died as a
result of this flooding. But I think we're all still
shaking our heads. If you've seen any of the time
lapse video of the Guadalupe rising from the rain, it's

(00:43):
just mind boggling how quickly the river came up, and
how high it got, and just how powerful that water was.
Joining us to talk about guy knows a little bit
about flooding. I mean, he's seen plenty of it here
in Harris County. I'm kind of having a little bit
of a Harvey flashback looking some of the video on
this stuff, Jeff Lender, because it kind of reminded me
of that we've had a storm system that basically parked

(01:06):
itself over a specific area of Texas and just capt raining.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, you know, this is the data's still coming in.
We had the gauge at Hunt, Texas and the gauge
of Kerrville, Texas both taken out by the flooding, but
it looks like preminarily at the Hunt, Texas gauge, this
is the highest floods are passing the nineteen thirty two
flood out there that we've ever experienced in the Waterloope River,

(01:34):
and just you know, recently with the fatality counts, what
has got to this appears to be now the worst
flood in the United States based on fatalities since the
nineteen seventy nine Big Thompson Canyon flood in Colorado. Non
tropical related, so not like Helleen or something like that.
But you know, I think it's very hard for a

(01:55):
lot of us in other parts of Texas that don't
live in that Hill Country flash flood Alley area that
I thirty five corridor west over to the Hill Country
to really try to wrap our heads around how the
water can come up so fast, because what we deal
with here in Houston is more slow rising water. You know,
the water comes up in the streets, it's not moving,

(02:15):
it's not really carrying cars away, But it's a much
much different type of flooding that they get out in
the hill country and that I thirty five Austin San
Antonio Corridor and then a lot of it's the topography,
so they get the same type of rain that we
get here in Houston. And these really really intense rainfall rates,
you know, Saturday night and Friday night rainfall rates four five,

(02:37):
six seven inches an hour up around Marble Falls. Same
types of stuff we get here. It's not the difference
since they have these these limestone hills out there, and
it funnels the water off like a concrete parking lot,
and this water goes very quickly into whether these normally
dry creeks and river beds maybe low flowing and the
water comes up. It funnels that water very cool quickly

(03:00):
into these areas with these steep cliffs and the water
comes up very fast, and that's exactly what we saw. Unfortunately,
on the upper Guadalipe River at Hunt, the North Fork
and the South Fork of the Guadalipe kind of come
together right where the city of Hunt is. The South
Fork is where you have more of the population, the
camp and the RV parks and all that kind of stuff,

(03:22):
And unfortunately that's where the magnitude of the rainfall was greatest.
About ten inches fell just upstream of Hunt, and Hunt
is very near what we call the headwaters where the
river starts, and so as that water came down, there's
just not a lot of time in these types of instances,
like you mentioned, twenty nine thirty feet of rise of
the water level in an hour or so, and even

(03:45):
if even if you could attempt to try to move,
for example, people and RVs and stuff like that, it
just comes up so fast that in those types of situations,
in a lot of cases, and we've seen this four
out there. This isn't the first time we've seen this.
It's just got to climb to safety. And I know
that's you're trying to wrap your head around that at

(04:08):
three o'clock in the morning, you're telling me to climb
to safety. It's exactly what do you have to do
sometimes these hill country areas to save your life up
in trees and up the hillside. It's just a horrific,
horrific event, and it kind of showcases what can happen
out there in that Texico curry. You know, the same

(04:29):
area was hit in July nineteen eighty seven, and we
had a bus of forty three kids at a camp
down in the Comfort area on the Guadalupe River that
was washed away and we had ten fatalities there. So
this area is prone to this type of stuff. They
get these big, heavy rains and the results can be
just absolutely devastating and tragic.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
That being the case, you know, the obviously, Jeff, there
would be a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking. After all,
this is Monday morning about warnings. When more were issued,
whether or not evacuation should occurred have occurred sooner than
what they did, knowing that this area is prone to
this type of flooding. Again, it doesn't happen every year,
clearly they call it. Last time it happened at this

(05:12):
kind of level was probably the better part one hundred
years ago. But you know, it can happen. Do we
need to come up with a better evacuation system for
these flood prone rivers that can rise so quickly?

Speaker 2 (05:25):
You know, it's it's a good it's a good question.
It's a question that you know, we just went through
this almost ten years ago on the Blanco River at Wimberley, Texas.
Very similar situation that happened, and a lot of work
has been put in on the Blanco River at Wimberley, Texas,
was gauging and flood warning systems and potentially sirens systems

(05:45):
and protocols in place of you know, for expecting heavy
rain or the gauge is rising, you know, you put
first responders to watch the river and do the notifications
and that type of stuff. I think the you know,
the problem we get into the Central Texas area and
the Hill Country is that you just can't gauge and

(06:05):
put any warning system every single creek and river out there. Yeah,
there's certainly some obviously the Guadaloupe the Frio that are
much more populated and have much more have a lot
more visitors that probably could utilize these systems a little
bit you know better. But you know, there's there's there's
always gonna be these ungauged dry creeks that can turn.

(06:27):
And that's exactly what happened in Marble Falls and Laga
Vista on Friday night. We're talking cal Creek and Hamilton
Creek came up to record levels and even there the
devastation is is tremendous up in that area. But it's
always going to be some little creek or river out
there that it hasn't happened in one hundred years, or
it hasn't happened recently, you know, in this particular instance,

(06:51):
it just really was when you put all the pieces together,
the rainfall was in the right exact location. You're talking
about a holiday weekend where you have a lot more
visitors into this area than you would normally have, you know,
a tremendous amount of visitors into this area in a
very vulnerable situation and a very vulnerable spot in the

(07:13):
river out there. And then lastly, of course, in the
middle of the night, and just like at Wimberley, this
happened in the middle of the night where our warning
communication systems to hit your cell phones the only work
if you get it. Yeah, So cell phone reception is
a little spoty out there. If you're sleeping, you may
not hear it, and a lot of people have turned
those notifications off, and so the warning system works only

(07:38):
if you can receive it. On the end of it.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, online as it was the perfect storm. Thank you, sir,
appreciate it. Jeff Linder from the Harris County Flood Control District.
It's five point fifty nine