After the Storm
Businesses are flooded, homes destroyed as flash floods hit the region again.
June 27, 2007 — -- A week after torrential rains hit Texas, the state is battling the weather again, with residents in central Texas ending up in life and death struggles against powerful floodwaters.
The rain hit central Texas Tuesday, and immediately sent a wall of churning water from overflowing creeks and rivers, burying roads in seconds.
"I've been here 35 years — haven't seen nothing like this," one man said.
In Marble Falls, a town 40 miles northwest of Austin, the annual rainfall is 30 inches. The town received nearly 20 inches of rain by this morning.
"It flooded the street, the yard, the whole house. Water was up to my wife's shoulders," said one resident.
Another said the waters rose so quickly, she had nowhere to go to avoid the deluge. "It was halfway up our walls so we got up on … the roof … and we were stuck there for the past three and a half hours."
The driving wind and rain forced rescue helicopters to turn back at one point, and after the storms subsided today, firefighters searched door to door, looking for those in need of assistance.
This was the latest in a series of heavy storms in Texas that have claimed 11 lives in the past week. The most recent was a 13-year-old boy who was playing in a swollen creek Tuesday night when he was caught in the storm.
"We attempted to throw him a life rope," a rescue worker explained. "Water was rushing 15-20 mph — it's hard to control at 12 inches, 18 inches — you can't fight it."
In Marble Falls, on the banks of the overflowing Colorado River, half the city is without drinkable water, and roads and bridges are gone, along with some of the town's businesses.
"All of our presses, inventory, it's ruined," said Dennis Phillips, whose T-shirt business was drenched under five feet of water that left as quickly as it came.
"It's pretty amazing what that amount of rain can do in a short amount of time," he added.
In Oklahoma City, Okla., it has rained for a record-breaking 15 days straight as a low pressure system that spreads from Texas to Missouri continues to draw moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and cause the storms.
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