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Wednesday, October 18, 2000
Much-awaited rainfall wreaks
havoc on city
Reporter-News Staff Report
We prayed. We waited. We prayed
some more. Those prayers were finally answered Tuesday.
But no one expected them to be
answered so forcefully.
Abilene, particularly downtown,
came to an utter standstill Tuesday morning when the skies opened
and dumped as much as six inches of rain in the span of a couple
of hours.
The rainfall was generally seen
as more blessing than curse, however, in this drought-strangled
city. The sopping storms helped to replenish Lake Fort Phantom
Hill, the city’s shrunken water source, but not enough to
lift water consumption restrictions.
“The Lord is giving, so
I’m not going to say a thing about it,” said Randy
Scott, coordinator of the G.V. Daniels Recreation Center, one
of two emergency shelters designated by the city for those in
need of flood relief. “It all comes on God’s time,
and I guess today was the day.”
Accidents and reports of stalled
vehicles also poured in from all over the city when creeks swelled
from their banks and roadways became impassable rivers. Emer-gency
radios buzzed with activity and condition reports during the
storm’s heaviest rains. Dispat-chers were placing calls
for emergency rescues on standby while all available crews furiously
worked to free trapped motorists.
“I can barely see the tops
of cars,” said one firefighter, stationed near the underpass
on Treadaway Boulevard.
“It’s just a river
here,” said another just seconds later, stationed on North
12th Street near Catclaw Creek.
The National Weather Service
predicts drier air will be moving in today.
But on Tuesday, rain began gushing
from the skies about 9:30 a.m. at a rate of about 3¤ inches
per hour over downtown Abilene. Downtown, northern and eastern
Abilene bore the brunt of the storm, said meteorologist Phil
Baker of the National Weather Service in San Angelo.
The heavy rains were caused by
two lines of thunderstorms — one to the north of Abilene
and one to the south — converging on Abi-lene, Baker said.
An upper-level disturbance from northern Mexico moved across
the mountains of West Texas bringing moist unstable air into
West Central Texas, he said.
“The storms were very concentrated
on Abilene,” Baker said. “The storms moved slowly or
didn’t move for 1 to 1¤ hours and then they picked
up and moved to the southeast.’’
Light to moderate rain fell behind
the line of storms throughout the afternoon.
Tuesday evening, rainfall re-ports
at Abilene’s fire station ranged from 7.4 inches at the
Central Fire Station at 140 Mulberry St. to 2.1 inches at Station
6, 1482 N. Danville Ave. Officially, the airport received 3.38
inches as of 6 p.m.
The amount that will go down
in the record book is the amount measured at the airport. That
amount is far from the all-time record of 6.78 inches for a 24-hour
period. The record was set May 22 and 23, 1908.
Tuesday’s rain is the fourth-heaviest
ever recorded in October. It ranks behind 4.99 inches on Oct.
3, 1959; 3.83 inches on Oct. 13, 1981; and 3.72 inches on Oct.
12, 1981. The latter two dates marked what is known in Abilene
as the “Columbus Day Flood.”
Though Tuesday’s rains didn’t
measure up to 1981’s great flood, the city’s emergency
services were pushed to the limit as off-duty firefighters and
police officers were called to help handle the massive overload
of calls.
“At one time, we had all
our equipment out and calls waiting,” said Larry Bell, Abilene
Fire Department battalion chief. Firefighters covered emergencies
with the department’s fleet of 11 engines and trucks and
four vehicles kept in reserve.
Neither he nor Abilene police
had a tally on the number of vehicles caught in high water after
rushing through intersections and underpasses. Firefighters responded
to about 30 calls of people trapped in cars by noon, said an
emergency dispatcher.
The number of streets closed
was also unavailable.
Scott Riggins, a fire department
public education officer, was one of several firefighters who
rescued two people from atop a CityLink bus that drove into the
flooded Pine Street underpass.
Riggins called for assistance
after seeing what appeared to be a person’s head inside
the bus. With ropes draped on either side of the bus, firefighters
climbed across to extract the passengers, one of whom was an
elderly man, Riggins said.
“We were pretty fearful
that he couldn’t swim because there was a lot of water dumping
in from the streets,” he said.
The bus driver, prior to firefighters’
arrival, exited on his own power and also whisked a passenger
to safety.
Neither the driver nor the passengers
were seriously hurt — just wet and cold, Riggins said.
Lt. Mark Moore of the Abilene
Police Department said that at the height of the storm, officers
set priorities for their call load to respond only to emergencies.
Eight off-duty officers were called in as relief help.
Louis Aguilar, a Rural Metro
ambulance service supervisor, said the rash of medical and accident
calls did not tax his crews.
The most serious injury suffered
during the storm was by a lawman whose patrol car was smashed
by a tractor-trailer rig as he was investigating a wreck on Interstate
20.
Firefighters had to cut Texas
Department of Public Safety trooper Jason Graham free from his
crumpled car. Graham was treated for a broken wrist at an Abilene
hospital and released.
Neighborhoods
Though city officials reported
little serious damage, the swift-rising waters swept into many
northside homes.
North Abilene streets flooded
so badly in some places that drivers of large trucks and vans
even had second thoughts about crossing them. Abandoned cars
littered the streets, their caution lights warning others to
stay away.
One of the most water-logged
areas was around North 10th and Merchant streets. Three or four
blocks of North 10th were blocked off and at least three cars
were abandoned and surrounded by muddy water mixed with swirling
debris.
Diane Hardin, a nurse on her
way to see a patient, was caught in the rising water on the street.
She panicked as water seeped into her 2000 Ford Mustang.
“You don’t realize
it’s so deep until you get in,” she said, tears streaking
her face. “You get into it before you realize there’s
not adequate drainage.”
Two men rescued Hardin and pushed
her stalled car to higher ground.
The Galvan family, owners of
Galvan’s Grocery on North 12th Street, loaned a hand to
several people stranded near their store, which sits next to
Catclaw Creek. Family members rescued people stranded in three
stalled vehicles.
Rosanne Galvan, the daughter
of the store’s owners, helped Neal and Clara Brewer climb
from their stalled van. Neal Brewer, 56, said the water was waist
high when they waded out.
“This is the first time
anything like this has happened to us and we’ve lived here
forever,” he said.
Shoeless, Brewer’s wife
stood in the store with a blanket wrapped around her, watching
the rain from a window while her husband arranged a ride home.
Lisa Coates-Shrider, 33, and
her son, 7-year-old Jordan Schweitzer, were among several people
who found refuge at Galvan’s Grocery. Jordan warned his
mother about water leaking into the car, which stalled and floated
to the side of North 12th Street.
Coates-Shrider said she had second
thoughts about driving during the heavy rain, but her son was
insistent on getting back to his second-grade class at Alta Vista
Elementary School.
“We were in a parking lot
at 12th and Hickory (streets) and we should have stayed there,”
she said.
Flooding predicaments varied
from block to block.
With both streets and alleys flooded, Joe and Tera Kellum found
themselves trapped at their home at 1837 N. 10th St. The couple
had to wade to a neighbor’s home to phone their daughter’s
school and explain they’d be unable to pick her up.
For part of the day, the Kellums
stood stranded on their front porch, watching the murky water
rise over three subcompact cars whose drivers had boldly taken
on flooded North 10th, only to abandon those vehicles after stalling
out.
“It’s always like this
when it rains a lot,” 38-year-old Joe Kellum said. “For
one thing, our phone doesn’t work when it rains like this.
“But at least our house
is still dry,” he said. “And we’ve got lots of
food.”
Water began seeping through the floors and doors at 48-year-old
Francesca Ortiz’s home on Bois D’ Arc Street about
10 a.m. Her grandchildren, ages 2, 3 and 4, climbed onto chairs
to avoid the ankle-high water invading their northside home.
“They thought it was a big
swimming pool,” said their mother, 19-year-old Jennifer
Ortiz.
Their yard filled with water
high enough to reach family members’ knees by the time they
were finally able to leave, thanks to a neighbor who took them
to the Abilene Civic Center, which was designated as a temporary
emergency shelter during the flooding.
Evacuees dropped off at the civic
center by the fire department were later relocated.
No one appeared at the Daniels
Center, 541 N. 8th St., and the Salvation Army, 1709 Butternut
St., the two designated emergency shelters. Together, they have
a capacity to house as many as 500 people. Unlike many of the
downtown buildings, both shelters braved the weather relatively
unscathed.
During a lull in the storm, employees at Benny Crain’s Crankshaft
Grinding Co., 1826 N. Treadaway Blvd., devoted themselves to
sweeping water and debris out of the business while worrying
about the rainfall still to come.
“I’ve been working
here since 1973 and this is the worst it’s ever been,’’
said 53-year-old Travis Dewey. “Some of us had motorcycles
out front and the water came up to the exhaust pipes.”
Dewey said he wasn’t sure
how he was going to get back home; he drove his motorcycle in
from his residence in Haskell.
Fellow employee Harold Caffey
was trying to look at the bright side of the deluge.
“My wife told me this morning
not to take the motorcycle, that it was going to rain, and I
thought, ‘Well, yeah, but if I take the pickup to work,
it might not rain at all — and we’ve needed the rain.’
So I took the motorcycle.”
Caffey’s colleagues said
his wife had already phoned to say: “I told you so.”
Businesses
The rains were bittersweet for
area farmers, assistant Taylor County agricultural extension
agent Richie Griffin said.
The wet stuff came as a sheer
blessing to wheat growers, who were banking on some good rains
to make a crop this winter. But to cotton growers, the rains
were an utter disaster, Griffin said.
All season long they battled
drought, and if they managed to raise enough to harvest, they
had planned to do so in the next few days. Tuesday’s deluge
and sporadic hail probably wiped out what little was still in
the fields, Griffin said.
Even if enough is still standing
to harvest, the quality will be extremely poor because the fibers
will be saturated and soiled.
Depending upon the endeavor,
the work pace either went into hyperdrive or slowed to the speed
of frosty syrup during the rains.
Many people in the workplace decided it might be best not to
venture out during the lunch hour, something that added to the
burden of Abilene’s fast-food businesses.
“People wanted to know if
we were delivering and I said we wouldn’t be able to guarantee
delivery at a certain time,” said Sylvia Morales, 33, manager
of Papa John’s Pizza, 3900 N. 1st St. “It wasn’t
because of the water, it was because of all these orders.
“I mean, they started placing
pizza orders at 10 in the morning.”
Business at the Dixie Pig, 1401 Butternut St., Abilene’s
oldest, continuously operating eatery, continued unabated.
“Our customers aren’t
going to be stopped by something like this,” waitress Laurie
Noble said. “But some of them said they saw some pretty
strange things floating in the streets. One of our customers
saw railroad ties floating down South 14th.”
The Abilene Reporter-News spent much of the day figuring out
how to report the news of the storm without the benefit of phones,
lights, computers and printing presses.
Trickles of water into the newspaper
offices gave way to steady streams, steady streams to gushers.
Water pooled in the downstairs circulation offices, the loading
dock, the press room and in the mailroom, where the newspaper
is prepared for final distribution.
The building’s roof-drains,
though flowing properly, simply couldn’t handle the watery
volume streaming from the sky. As more water collected on the
rooftop, it had to find its way out someplace. That meant waterfalls
through ceiling tiles, air-conditioner vents and light fixtures,
said maintenance supervisor Dale Meador.
Mailroom staff tossed tarps over
machinery and grabbed mops. Phones were down, and by lunchtime,
the power had to be cut throughout the building. Rising water
levels near some power mains were causing sparks and the juice
was cut as a safety precaution.
But holding true to the paper’s
119-year tradition of daily publication, editor Terri Burke set
the wheels in motion to get the news out, as she said in her
morning staff briefing, “come hell or high water.”
Though plans were made to print
today’s newspaper at the San Angelo Standard-Times, owned
by the E.W. Scripps Co. that also owns the Reporter-News, maintenance
workers managed to get enough water out of the building late
Tuesday afternoon to print in Abilene.
“Our staff worked very hard
all day to keep things operational,” Burke said. “In
119 years of publishing, we’ve always managed to get the
news out every day, and I’m proud to say we’ve accomplished
that again today.’’
Portions of today’s newspaper
will be delayed because of the rains. “The Abilenian”
and several advertising sections that normally appear in the
Wednesday edition will appear in Thursday’s newspaper.
Abilene’s downtown museums and historic theater — all
located in old buildings — each were damaged slightly during
the downpour.
The Center for Contemporary Arts,
220 Cypress St., closed because water leaking into the center
knocked out lights in the main, first-floor gallery, director
Anna Powell said. Several pieces of art by Clint Hamilton were
removed from the gallery’s walls.
A small section of the Paramount
Theatre, 352 Cypress St., was damaged due to seepage through
the roof and because of basement flooding. Water soaked a section
of carpet — which is due for replacement anyway — and
filled light fixtures in the balcony and in the main theater.
Barry Smoot, the Paramount’s
executive director, said his biggest fear, however, is the decorative
plaster that adorns the restored historic theater.
“It tends to fall very quickly
when it gets wet,” he said. It’s also not cheap, or
simple, to replace.
The damage should not affect
screenings of “The Haunted” Friday and Saturday, or
auditions Sunday and Monday for “A West Texas Christmas
Carol.”
The rainstorm caused some tense
moments at The Grace Museum, where millions of dollars worth
of French art is on the walls for a new exhibit that opened Tuesday.
There was knee-deep flooding
in the basement — partially caused by a bundle of newspapers
that blocked an outdoor drain — and a leak on the southwest
corner of the museum.
However, the rooms and vaults
where art is kept remained dry, said executive director Judy
Godfrey. With repeated trips around the museum, Godfrey and exhibitions
director Amber McClendon made certain that water was not seeping
into the galleries and vaults.
The National Center for Children’s
Illustrated Literature also had leaking, and several paintings
were removed from the gallery, director Kim Snyder said. The
decades-old building at North 1st and Cedar streets recently
was restored to house the NCCIL.
Floodwaters accumulated so quickly at Hendrick Medical Center
that for a short time emergency vehicles were re-routed to the
hospital’s north side. Few trauma patients were seen as
a direct result of the deluge.
Abilene Regional Medical Center
reported no flood-related trauma cases — including to its
facility.
AEP West Texas Utilities reported only one significant outage
during the storm. Fewer than 500 customers in eastern Abilene,
in the area of Shotwell Stadium, to North Judge Ely Boulevard
lost power at 10:40 a.m. from a lightning strike at a northside
substation.
Most had service back in 30 minutes
and the rest were back up by noon, said spokeswoman Linda Caton.
Minor telephone outages believed to be weather-related were reported
in portions of southeastern and northeastern Abilene. However,
no major interruptions of services were reported to Southwestern
Bell, said Lindsay Lombar, the company’s media manager in
Dallas.
Public facilities
The city did not encounter any
street damage, said Andy Anderson, director of the city’s
public works department. And the creeks running through Abilene
appeared to be in good condition, meaning that not much flooding
was around the waterways.
“The creeks are holding
better than expected,” Anderson said.
Part of the reason why was the
location of the most rainfall. North Abilene was the heaviest
hit, and Abilene drains in a northerly direction.
While Lake Fort Phantom Hill’s
tide rose with the rains, Lake Abilene and Kirby Lake were hardly
affected, said Dwayne Hargesheimer, director of water utilities.
City Hall’s second floor
suffered as much damage as any city facility. City employees
began worrying when they found a virtual waterfall streaming
into a closet in City Manager Roy McDaniel’s office.
Ceiling tiles started to take
water from cracks in the roof and collapse into offices all over
the floor, said Mike Morrison, assistant city manager. Especially
heavy damage shut down the city’s planning, building inspection
and finance departments.
Other offices scrambled to move
equipment out of the way. Workers drained three inches of water
standing in the basement. Morrison said the city would not be
able to assess everything that had been damaged until the rain
stopped and people could start cleaning.
City Hall will be open for business
today.
Problems also hit the Abilene Civic Center and the Abilene Public
Library. Both facilities reported problems with leaky roofs.
Chief librarian Ricki Brown closed
the second floor of the downtown library so workers could mop
up and move materials out of the way. No books or collection
items were damaged.
Civic Center workers discovered
it was raining on their stage in the morning and immediately
began cleaning the auditorium for a cooking school event scheduled
for Tuesday night, said Audrey Perry, civic center director.A
Hendrick Medical Center Women’s Health Fair went on as scheduled
at the facility.
Off-duty employees for the civic
center and the library came to work without being called, both
administrators said.
“They knew what happens
when it rains like this and just came right in,” Perry said.
“It went as smoothly as it could go.”
Though the cost of the damage
is unknown, the city facilities are insured, said Scott Payne,
City Hall risk manager. Payne said the city will pay the first
$250,000 in damages with money it annually sets aside for emergencies.
Administrators also have catastrophe insurance to repair damages.
Leaks at the Law Enforcement Center caused some minor problems,
but none serious. The building’s one elevator was shut down
for a leak in the shaft, and employees scurried around mopping
up and setting wastebaskets under ceiling drips.
On the sheriff’s department
side in the south half of the building, an inadequately caulked
window admitted street floodwater churned into waves by passing
traffic. Some files sitting on a floor in a storage room were
moistened, said Sgt. Ed Carter.
Deputy Police Chief Jim Berry
said the police department had to deal with only a few minor
leaks through the roof, and some computer down time originating
at City Hall instead of the LEC building. But the emergency communications
system never ceased functioning, he said.
Obie Coker, maintenance chief
for Taylor County, said all county buildings probably sprang
leaks.
“When you have hot drought
conditions like we’ve had the past three years, all your
flat roofs crack,” Coker said. “They start shrinking
and cracking.’’
Then when a heavy rain like Tuesday’s
happens along, leaking is inevitable, he said.
“The roofers are going to
love this,’’ he said.
In the main courthouse, roof
leaks resulted in water dripping into courtrooms and offices
on the fifth floor and into a courtroom on the fourth floor.
The rains convinced Taylor County
Judge Lee Hamilton to suspend the countywide burn ban, which
was in effect for nearly 90 days. The Commissioners Court will
take up the issue next week after consulting with area fire chiefs
to determine how great the wildfire danger is.
At Abilene High School, students put aside their studies to help
sweep water out of the 15 or so classrooms sustaining water damage.
David Polnick, deputy superintendent for business and finance
for the Abilene Independent School District, said three or four
AHS classrooms were flooded after ceiling tiles collapsed, but
the problem was minor.
School officials said high winds
flushed small amounts of water into another 60 classrooms, thanks
to brittle, dried-out caulking lining the windows.
“The fire department asked
us to keep the students here,” AHS principal Royce Curtis
said during late-morning mop-up. “And this really is the
safest place for them. It’s a mess out there.”
Polnick said he received 69 phone
calls concerning leaking roofs by 1:30 p.m. But with 2.7 million
square feet of roofing in the district, Polnick said it could
have been worse.
“I don’t know of anything
that’s just totally ruined,” he said.
Facilities in the Wylie Independent
School District fared better. Superintendent Don Harrison didn’t
get any phone calls from worried parents or from school officials
reporting flooding damage.
Abilene’s three universities
also made it through the downpour in good shape. None reported
serious water damage.
At Abilene Regional Airport, two American Eagle flights were
canceled during the heaviest of the storm and several flights
of both airlines serving Abilene were delayed. By late afternoon,
flight operations had returned to normal for both American Eagle
and Continental Express.
“The wind was really coming
out of the north … just really, really heavy,’’
said Keith Kaspari, airport operations manager. “I couldn’t
even see across to our airport fire station.’’
Some flights were canceled and
others diverted at Dyess Air Force Base Tuesday because of thunderstorms.
Aircraft mechanics stopped work on the flight line during the
lightning.
KTXS-TV and Reporter-News weather
observers’ reports included: Anson, 1.69; Aspermont, 1.61;
Ballinger, 2.23; Brownwood, 3.1; Clyde, 5; Comanche, 0.80; Hamlin,
1.5; Rotan, 1.2; Snyder, 1.5; Sweetwater, 1.41.
Staff writers Bobby Horecka,
Jason Gibbs, Samuel Segrist, Sidney Schuhmann, Bill Whitaker,
Loretta Fulton, Jerry Daniel Reed, John Starbuck, Ken Ellsworth,
Brien Murphy, Larry Zelisko and Doug Williamson contributed to
this story. |
