Flood Waters Recede, but Texans Wary

When the creek finally drew back, there was nothing left of the Little Horseshoe but crushed pinball machines, shattered lights and chunks of insulation spilling from the ceiling.

“It was just a fun little place, and now I ain’t got ...” owner Kristen Schmid said Saturday, her voice breaking. She planted her rubber boots in the sludge, glanced about the wrecked game room and forgot to finish her sentence. She had just opened her arcade a few months back. She never bought flood insurance. “I had a jukebox here somewhere,” she finally muttered.

The skies over the Texas Hill Country were benevolent for the first time since warm summer showers thickened into a week of deadly floods and downpours. As the relatively dry day wore on, flood waters drained slowly away and miles of devastation rose into view. Houses had been swept off their foundations, and littered fields gaped where trailer parks once stood. At least eight people have died in the violent currents.

“The water packs a punch--you need to respect it,” said Bandera Chamber of Commerce manager Patricia Moore, scraping thick slabs of mud from the floor of the trashed visitors center. “We live with the flooding in exchange for tall cypress trees and clear streams. It’s a lifestyle, and it’s a beautiful one.”

An old cattle drive outpost and self-proclaimed “cowboy capital of the world,” Bandera is the sun-dappled, creek-laced home to dude ranches, rodeo champions and limestone bed-and-breakfasts. Late last week, Red Bluff Creek, Privilege Creek and Bandera Creek spilled from their clay banks, cutting all the roads out of town and making an island of Bandera.

It was Saturday afternoon by the time Elva and Joe Hernandez made their way back to the swath of slimy earth where their trailer once stood--and found nothing but an empty cement slab, a golf club and an old iron bed frame. “It’s shocking--we thought there would be something left,” said Elva Hernandez, 42. “You find a golf ball and think, ‘Why this? Why did I find this?’ ”

The water wasn’t done tormenting South and Central Texas: Massive pools still were washing over dams and working their way downstream along the bloated rivers from Austin down toward Victoria. Thousands have been evacuated from their homes, and many may have to stay away for days.

“We got no place to go if the house is ruined,” said Carl Verow, 22. He folded his lanky frame into a plastic chair outside a makeshift shelter in a New Braunfels middle school and pulled his 13-month-old son onto one knee. His wife was asleep inside--she’s due to deliver their second child next week.

When police ordered the Verows to abandon their house on the banks of the Guadalupe River, they moved to the shelter with nothing but a diaper bag and the clothes on their backs. Verow’s thin face was ashen Saturday from sleepless nights on a canvas cot.

“I can’t worry,” he said, kissing his boy’s cheek. “I can’t worry about things until they happen.”

Bridges, farm roads and highways were washed out Saturday morning, and thousands of people across Bandera County woke up stranded. Rescue workers dropped food from helicopters and hurled bundles of supplies over swollen creeks to marooned residents. Fields of sorghum, corn and cotton were devastated. Hundreds of cattle drowned. Across the county, 150 homes were swept away or crushed; many more were waterlogged and badly damaged.

“The hardest part is not knowing what’s going to happen,” said Tina Kesei, 30, who hunched outside the New Braunfels shelter, lighting one cigarette after the next, wiping sweat from her face.

“Just sit and wait,” Elizabeth Reynolds said in agreement, her eyes trained on the sidewalk.

On Friday, a boy who has been in a coma since he was pulled unconscious from the swollen Apache Creek died. Joey Alejandres was playing on the bank five days ago when his shoe slid into the water. He reached after it and tumbled into the current. The 11-year-old didn’t know how to swim. At least one more man was still missing Saturday. He was last seen paddling off into the flood after his car stalled and sank near Boerne.

Meanwhile Saturday, hundreds of miles away, residents fled small towns in the dry plains of West Texas after summer storms unleashed more than a foot of rain.

All over the South Texas region Saturday, there was a sense that the worst had passed. But the ground is saturated, dams are overflowing and waterways are engorged. Another rainstorm could provoke another disaster--and forecasters predict thunderstorms in coming days. “If we have these torrential rains again we’ll be back to where we were,” Medina County emergency manager Frank Perkins said.

On the front porch of a bed and breakfast on a Bandera side street, a small, weary wedding party gathered with platters of barbecue. In the morning, Daniel and Kimberly Cameron nearly had to call off their wedding. The musicians were trapped, the chapel was swamped and nobody could get to the ranch that was to host the reception. The families were stranded on opposite banks of a flooded river, the bridges were gone and the telephones were down.

But the guests had flocked in from Wisconsin, Indiana and Idaho, and nobody wanted to forgo the ceremony. And so the groom’s parents hired a helicopter from San Antonio and flew across the rivers, clutching homemade potato salad in their laps.

“It’s kind of all part of the adventure,” Daniel Cameron said, posing for photographs beneath the gnarled bows of live oaks. “Now that it’s all come out all right.”