When floodwaters came, one small Texas town sounded its alarm

CBC

4 days ago

It's just before noon and several news crews are gathered outside the fire hall in Comfort, Texas, their cameras pointed at a yellow siren high on a pole and set to go off every day at midday.
Ever since the deadly July 4 flash floods that ripped through the region, this small community of roughly 2,000 people and its flood warning siren have become a focal point amid questions about the failures of other warning systems in communities along the Guadalupe River.
As floodwaters from the river started to back up along Cypress Creek, which snakes around the town, officials in Comfort sounded sirens which wailed in two locations to warn townspeople of impending flooding.
"These sirens helped us," said assistant Fire Chief Danny Morales, a more than 50-year veteran of the volunteer fire department in Comfort, which is in Kendall County, immediately east and downstream of Kerr County which was hardest hit by the flooding.
Inside the fire hall is the emergency command centre where responders can monitor weather patterns and data from water gauges along the river and creek.
"That really is a dangerous creek for us," Morales said. "If it's flooding and runs into the river... it backs all that up."
WATCH | Long history of flooding:
'Being prepared is our thing'
24 minutes ago
Duration 0:56
The region around Comfort, Texas, has a long history of flooding which makes being able to warn the populace — often late at night — very important, says volunteer firefighter Danny Morales. 'Being prepared is our thing,' he says.
There's also a little black, electronic box with some buttons. One is for tornados, the second is for floods. That's the one Morales's team pushed around 10 a.m. on Independence Day.
"The officers that were in charge, we made the decision that, 'Hey, we better hit this siren,'" he said.
Per procedure, the community also sent police and fire department vehicles — with their sirens and lights turned on — to let residents know it was time to go, he says.
Morales has a personal stake in making things better.
"I lost my granddad in the '78 flood here in Comfort and ever since then I've made it a point that, you know, I'm going to try to better our warning systems for our community," he said.
The sirens are part of a series of emergency upgrades within the community. A small team of local ladies helped "a lot," he said.
Betty Murphy is one of those ladies, a group of four women in their 80s who started the ball rolling looking for government, corporate and foundations to enhance the town's warning system.
Murphy "can be demanding," said Morales, and used to volunteer with the town's emergency medical services, wrote a book about the 1978 flood. As she researched the previous disasters that hit the community she and her friends couldn't stop thinking about solutions to make the community safer. They talked to Morales, got his input, and banded together to make change.
"It took four women over age 80 to... suggest that Comfort move forward and try to improve our situation so that we wouldn't lose people," Murphy said.
The latest flood, which killed more than two dozen youths at Camp Mystic upriver, brought her back to another disaster that devastated the area.
"Our hearts were aching because we knew that it was not going to be good," she said. "In '87, a busload of campers from Pot O'Gold" — another area summer camp — "turned and the river carried them away. And it was a nightmare for the community. I think 10 children were lost and many of them had to be rescued from tall trees."
This time, Comfort was spared the worst of the flooding but the community is heavily involved in helping searchers look for the missing. The members of the volunteer fire department, almost all of whom have day jobs, have been out on the river searching, or helping to transport other search teams in their high-water rescue vehicle.
Katie Rode surveys a dense debris pile across the river bank. The department recovered a body nearby and, as the waters recede, searchers are getting better access to look for the missing.
"I think Comfort has been lucky this time. I think that the siren definitely helped. But the heaviest flooding just happened upriver from us and next time it could be here," she said.
"Our job is generally to go in to help and to render aid," she said. "We're losing the hope that we'll get to resolve this other than reuniting families with their loved ones so that they can have closure."
Rode, who is also a pastor, says it is emotionally and spiritually draining.
"There's a line in the funeral prayer where we say that God makes holy the resting places of all of God's people," she said, pausing as tears ran down her cheek.
"And if you think about it that way, this entire river has become a very holy place because this is a resting place for a lot of God's people."